Avestor

Badri Mallianar left corporate America in his early 40s to start Avestor in 2019, driven by a frustration with how private funds operated. While traditional GPs like BlackRock wanted sole discretion over investments, Mallianar realized that LPs actually preferred choice. He discovered that 95% of investors wanted to pick and choose which deals, asset classes, and timeframes they invested in—similar to customizing a mutual fund. This insight became the foundation for building the world's only platform offering truly customizable private funds.

To validate the concept, Mallianar built and ran a company-owned fund to test the platform at scale. The fund grew to $5M with approximately 60 individual LPs making micro-investments, proving that the model worked and that investors valued the ability to select specific deals. This "eat your own dog food" approach gave him credibility and data to show potential customers that the platform could handle real transactions across multiple asset classes—self-storage, retail, hospitality, multifamily, student housing, and RV parks.

Once validated, Avestor opened the platform to other fund managers less than two years before this interview (around 2021-2022). Growth came almost entirely through organic channels. Mallianar appeared on real estate-focused podcasts, leveraged referrals from GPs wanting to collaborate with each other, and relied on word-of-mouth within the private fund community. The company attended only one conference and ran minimal paid advertising, letting the product's stickiness and community appeal drive adoption.

The platform's revenue model proved remarkably resilient. Avestor charges 30-50 basis points on AUM, calculated daily but paid monthly. To ensure baseline revenue, they introduced a $400/month minimum membership fee (covering the first $1M in AUM), which all 100 funds pay regardless of size. This created a hybrid revenue model that generated over $40K MRR by August 2023—100 funds × $400/month plus AUM fees on the $60M under management. The stickiness is exceptional: less than 5% churn lifetime. Because customizable funds are "evergreen," GPs can add new deals within minutes (versus expensive PPM filings for each traditional fund), and multi-year deals (3-7 years) lock LPs in naturally. Facebook ads proved effective when tested, while Google AdWords and YouTube targeting were less successful. By contrast, the company's attempts to be a broker-dealer or primary fundraising channel would have diluted focus; instead, they've stayed focused on being the operational backbone.

As of August 2023, Avestor had 100 funds on the platform with $60M in AUM across 30 active funds that had completed at least one deal. Another 70 funds were in launch stages. The company had raised just under $1M in seed funding a few months prior (early 2023) at a post-money valuation over $8M, selling less than 10% equity. With 7 full-time employees in the US and about 12 in India, the company was nearly cash flow positive and considering a Series A raise only to secure strategic investors, not out of necessity. Mallianar is confident in the product-market fit, crediting organic marketing and word-of-mouth as the primary growth drivers, with newly tested paid ads beginning to scale the business.