The Next Venture Cycle Is Moving Back into Real Life

Why the next decade belongs to the Experience Economy.

By Alejandra Godoy, Managing Partner

When we launched IDC Ventures in 2019, the market was telling a very specific story about venture capital. The largest funds would keep getting larger. Software would keep absorbing more of the economy. Capital would concentrate around the most visible names, while everyone else would either specialize narrowly or become irrelevant.

We disagreed with these notions. Scale mattered, but we believed there was another way to compete: stay closer to founders, align more deeply with investors, and remain committed when the easy part of the cycle ended. What has changed since then is not our philosophy. It is the size of the opportunity and the tools available to pursue it.

Software Was the Starting Point

For much of the last decade, venture investing was organized around digital expansion. SaaS, fintech, marketplaces, data infrastructure, and consumer platforms reshaped how businesses and consumers operate. That was the right starting point for IDC Ventures.

But it was never the destination. Early on, we knew we needed a foot in the future. That led us into blockchain through Protein Capital, into VC fund of funds through VC4 to gain macro visibility and manager access, and into years of work studying sports before launching our first Sports Fund.

Today, we are A.GAIN, a capital creation company investing across Technology and Sports & Entertainment. We manage approximately $1 billion in assets, work with 300 families office investors across 30 countries, and invest across venture and private equity strategies.

Just as we evolved from IDC Ventures to A.GAIN, our flagship technology strategy has evolved alongside the market. Our first fund was built around fintech and marketplaces, two defining categories of the last venture cycle. Our next flagship fund, A.VC, reflects today's reality: AI is no longer a sector, but rather is becoming the foundation of every sector.

Through A.VC, we are building a proprietary agentic AI operating system designed specifically for venture investing. Rather than relying on general-purpose AI tools, we are developing specialized agents that support the entire investment lifecycle, from sourcing and origination to diligence, benchmarking, underwriting, portfolio support, and ongoing monitoring.

The objective is not to replace investment professionals. It is to expand what we can see, how quickly can we evaluate opportunities, and the quality of conviction behind every decision.

And our timing is very intentional. Traditional venture investing has largely been an 80% qualitative exercise, driven by relationships, intuition, and experience. We believe AI allows that balance to shift toward an 80% quantitative, 20% qualitative model, where proprietary agents automate the collection, analysis, and scoring of objective signals at scale. Human judgment remains the final decision-maker, but it is applied where it creates the greatest value rather than where machines can do the work faster and more consistently.

Reinventing the Investment Process

We believe the next venture cycle is changing not only what investors back, but how they invest.

For decades, venture capital competed on privileged access. The firms that won controlled relationships, proprietary networks, and information that others could not easily obtain.

AI changes that equation.

Access becomes broader and information becomes more available. The competitive advantage shifts toward objective conviction at scale: the ability to process vastly more signals, identify patterns humans cannot easily detect, and make better decisions with greater speed.

Traditional early-stage venture investing has largely been a qualitative business. Relationships, intuition, reputation, and experience have driven many of the industry’s best investments. Those qualities remain essential, but they are no longer sufficient on their own.

Through A.VC, we are building proprietary agents that continuously evaluate founder quality, customer demand, execution velocity, competitive dynamics, network strength, market timing, funding quality, valuation benchmarks, and portfolio performance. Together, they create an investment operating system that compounds knowledge with every investment, every outcome, and every new signal.

Human judgment remains central. Our investment professionals still make the decisions. The difference is that those decisions are supported by a proprietary system capable of evaluating opportunities at a scale and speed that would be impossible through traditional workflows alone.

Experience Became the Scarcity

AI is accelerating productivity and changing the economics of digital work.McKinsey estimates that generative AI could add $2.6 trillion to $4.4 trillion in annual value across industries. That signals what we would call a “productivity reset.”

As digital output becomes easier to create, scarcity shifts elsewhere. Content becomes abundant. Code becomes easier to generate. Automation compresses work that once required large teams and significant time.

The question becomes: what remains scarce?

Our answer is simple: real life.

People still want to travel, gather around sports, attend live entertainment, eat well, recover well, and belong to meaningful communities. If technology gives people back time, more attention and capital will flow toward how that time is spent.

We do not see technology and experience as opposing forces. Increasingly, the most attractive opportunities exist where the digital and physical worlds converge. We often describe this as the phygital economy: businesses that use software, AI, data, and connectivity to improve experiences that ultimately happen in the real world.

Whether people are travelling, attending sporting events, dining, shopping, or engaging with brands, technology is becoming the infrastructure behind physical experiences rather than a substitute for them.

The data is already pointing in that direction. WTTC forecasts travel and tourism GDP will grow at a 3.6 percent annual rate over the next decade, 1.5 times faster than the wider global economy, and support almost 89 million new jobs. PwC's Global Sports Survey, meanwhile, found that sports executives expect 7.3 percent annual market growth over the next three to five years. McKinsey also describes wellness as a $2 trillion global market increasingly shaped by Gen Z and millennial consumers who treat health as a daily, personalized practice.

The capital base behind that demand is changing, too. In fact, UBS estimates that $83 trillion in wealth will transfer globally over the next 20 to 25 years. A new generation of wealth holders will make different decisions about time, access, community, and experiences. That matters for investors because preferences eventually become markets.

Becoming A.GAIN

A.GAIN reflects what we have become: a capital creation company built to invest across structures, sectors, and cycles. The name also reflects how we believe value is created. Long-term relationships. Repeated conviction. Continuous learning. Compounding over time.

That philosophy applies not only to how we invest, but to how we build our own capabilities.

Our focus is Technology and Sports & Entertainment because we believe they sit at the center of the Experience Economy. Technology makes experiences more personalized, scalable, and measurable. Sports combines scarcity, community, media, and global passion. Travel, wellness, food, live entertainment, and immersive media increasingly sit at the intersection of both.

Many of the companies we find most compelling are neither purely digital nor purely physical. They combine software economics with real-world engagement to create stronger customer relationships, proprietary data, and more durable businesses.

The easy version of this story would be to say IDC Ventures became A.GAIN because the firm grew larger. That is only part of the story.

We became A.GAIN because both the markets and our own capabilities evolved.

We believe the next decade will reward investors who understand where technology is changing human behavior. We also believe it will reward firms that build better systems for investing itself.

The strongest competitive advantage will no longer come simply from having access to the best founders. It will come from seeing more opportunities, evaluating them more objectively, and supporting them more effectively throughout the investment lifecycle.

That is the platform we are building.

And it is why we believe the next venture cycle belongs to firms that combine human judgment with proprietary intelligence at scale.

A.GAIN. Absolutely Invested.