If you have, I'm curious about your experience and what kind of returns you anticipate. Both are probably long-term plays.

I joined the Ring Ventures 2021 round of investments. They have an initial 20% mgmt fee.

To date, 9 companies have exited / closed of which 2 have had positive gains (Groq & Ghost Robotics).

There are still 20 investments still in play with the best right now being Aggie owned Venus Aerospace along with some residual potential from Groq and a pre-seed fund AVG manages.

So I've gotten back about 75% of mgmt fees. I joined thinking this was a 5-10+ yr investment so the potential is still there to have a win with the remaining companies. With the overall stock market gains over the last 5yrs I'm not sure this investment will beat a S&P 500 ETF fund.

When they call asking to invest in next round my answer has been, yes I will invest when the current investment generates the excess capital to fund.

I have not, but I've gotten their emails. I read a little bit and never pursued further information.

My thoughts, and mine alone...
Venture capital is a very risky game (yeah, duh...) The people that can put (I'm making up numbers here) 10% of a buy-in get board seats. They get voting shares, eve though they're not really tradeable. They get the CEO's phone number. In short, they get a voice in the company/venture.

When you crowd source this, you as the individual investor gets none of that. The Ring folks do.

If you do it on your own, if the company wins, you win. If the company loses, you lose.
With Ring... If the company wins you and Ring win. If the company fails, Ring wins, you lose. Either way... Ring wins.

I also have to think that it's possible that if a company is talking to a funding consortium that funds with buy-ins at Ring's threshold might have already exhausted the more conventional VC avenues.