Noa Khamallah's $10M Fund Challenges Mega-VCs

Noa Khamallah, a former convict and street kid, has launched Don't Quit Ventures (DQV), a $10 million fund that is demonstrating significant success against larger, established venture capital firms. DQV recently announced the second close of its Fund I, bringing its total capital to $10 million, which is 2.5 times the initial investor commitment. The fund has made 17 investments, with three already valued at over $1 billion, resulting in a unicorn rate of nearly 20%. This figure significantly outpaces the industry average, where roughly one in seventy investments becomes a unicorn. Khamallah's unconventional approach includes cold-emailing prominent figures like AI researcher Yann LeCun, who responded positively to Khamallah's self-description as a "statistical anomaly." The fund's cap table includes stakes in Mira Murati's Thinking Machine Lab, AMI Labs, and Replit. DQV has already provided early returns to its limited partners (LPs) by selling a portion of its stake in one company just 14 months after its first close, achieving a 1.5x return on investment. This success aligns with broader market trends indicating that smaller funds are outperforming larger ones. Data from Carta's Q4 2025 report shows that funds under $10 million are still delivering better cash returns to investors and growing their paper value compared to funds exceeding $100 million. Further research by iCapital indicates that smaller funds (under $275 million) returned 36% of capital, while larger funds returned 24%. The impact of a successful investment is amplified in smaller funds; a tenfold increase in a $10 million bet dramatically alters the fund's performance, whereas the same gain in a $1 billion fund has a more diluted effect. Despite the success of smaller funds, the launch of new funds has slowed considerably. In 2025, only 101 first-time funds were established, marking the lowest number in 14 years. Concurrently, the ten largest funds now command one-third of all capital raised, a disproportionate share compared to the rest of the market. Khamallah's journey from a difficult upbringing and incarceration to leading a successful venture capital fund highlights a unique path into the finance industry, challenging traditional notions of access and background within the investment world.