Why we will never take a success fee

Every marketplace for capital eventually faces the same temptation: take a cut of the round. Here is why that breaks the product.

A success fee sounds harmless — you only pay when it works. But the moment a platform earns a percentage of closed rounds, its incentives detach from yours. It wants volume and speed; you want the right partner at fair terms. It starts ranking profiles by expected fee, not fit. The deck stops being honest.

Flat subscriptions keep the incentive clean: the only way we grow is if matching keeps working well enough that people stay. That is also why quiet passes, field-level privacy, and verified traction exist — none of them maximize transaction volume, all of them maximize trust.

It costs us money. Placement agents charge 2–5% of raised capital; on the $480M matched through Aligned so far, that would be a very different business. We think the compounding asset is a network where both sides believe the deck — and you cannot buy that back once you have sold it.

Alex Kim, cofounder

More from the blog