There are founders who build to be remembered. And there are founders who build to last. The difference is not ambition. It is architecture.
Legacy is not about how loudly you are celebrated. It is about whether the systems you designed still function after you leave. Whether your ideas hold when no one is defending them. Whether your presence is required, or your structure endures.
In venture, we still reward velocity. But the truth is, velocity without structure is waste. You can raise fast, grow fast, and vanish just as fast. Because speed is easy to market. But permanence is hard to design.
I have spent the last few years investing in systems that do not need to shout. Infrastructure that underwrites capital markets. Protocols that protect identity. Teams that move with restraint because they are building for conditions that do not exist yet, but will.
The best founders I know are not chasing relevance. They are working backwards from permanence. They understand that regulation is not an obstacle, it is part of the blueprint. That culture is not an accessory, it is a risk vector. That storytelling is not branding, it is governance.
Legacy is not what people say about you. It is the environment they inherit because of your work.
This is also why I care about institutions. Museums. Think tanks. Diplomacy. Not because they are static, but because they remember. And in a world that forgets quickly, being remembered by the right people is more powerful than going viral to the wrong ones.
Hevea Capital was never built to be the loudest fund. It was built to be the one that shows up early in cycles and late in judgment. The one that reads a jurisdiction before deploying into it. The one that is invited to private conversations because we listen before we speak.
I do not want to be first. I want to be right. And more than anything, I want to fund things that are still standing long after the cycle ends.
Because in the end, legacy is not a story.
It is a system.
And the people who design systems are the ones history does not forget.