How VCs Are Using Shared-Salary Pacts to Cut Burn

Episode notes

This episode dives into a quiet but growing trend in venture capital: shared-salary agreements between portfolio companies. Instead of letting struggling startups raise down rounds or shut down, some VCs are bundling back-office teams—HR, legal, finance—across multiple portfolio companies, splitting the cost. We look at how one early-stage firm, Contrary Capital, formalised this with its 'talent share' model, and how Sequoia's recent 'Platform-as-a-Service' experiment is pushing it further. With the current market sell-off punishing high-burn names—Shopify down 11%, Palantir down 15%—investors are pressuring founders to stretch runway. But shared-salary pacts carry risks: conflicts over who owns the shared employee's loyalty, and potential liability if one company in the pact implodes. Lucas and Luna debate whether this is a smart evolution of the VC operating model or a sign that firms are trying to paper over bad underwriting.