We help assemble and then invest in a team of entrepreneurs or scientists. Usually the ventures are startups. In the end, we're recruiters who pay you for the right to help build your team. You reward us with shares of stock. We both work like crazy to make the stock valuable.
Money is actually the easy part of the equation.
There's lots of sources for money. Netscape is a good example. Co-founder Jim Clark personally had all of money needed to finance Netscape. However, he wanted the help in team-building. Without that team, by now Netscape might have been killed by Microsoft.