Hey all, Inversion founder here.

Nice to see some interest in what we're doing. Given the TC paywall and other misconceptions about how the art world and Inversion work, I thought I'd clear a few things up.

There are many different types of artists and many routes to success and monetization. We are initially focused on fine art because you cannot start out in other artistic fields and then be taken seriously by the fine art world. Also, the appreciating potential of fine art creates a VC-like opportunity, where a small handful out of 1,000 works will achieve unicorn multiples and return the whole fund many times over. We added an income sharing component to reduce our risk, but also to finance the offering of services that artists desperately need.

As artists achieve some success, the burdens of the studio become increasingly more difficult to manage. Things like invoicing, contract review, exhibition logistics, shipping, insurance, hiring assistants, managing payroll, etc., are all a distraction from their creative work, and most artists are not good at managing their business affairs. There are many, many companies that try to help brand new artists achieve sales, etc., but there are no scalable companies which help artists who are already making sales bridge the gap between earning a living and making enough money to hire a full time, competent studio director - to say nothing of hiring accountants, tax professionals, lawyers, etc.

Our goal when starting out was to invest in artists under a YC-inspired model. Right now, their only options for funding are mostly grants, which are time consuming and often provide very small amounts. The most equitable way to invest in contemporary fine artists is to simply buy a significant amount of work and hold onto it. Taking an equity stake in their studio would not be of interest to them, and there would be no liquidity events. So, we buy work and that is our "equity". On that work, we pay them a 10% resale royalty, donate 10% of our profits to charity, and other guarantees that are far more generous than 99% of collectors.

After many conversations with artists, it was clear that they are hamstrung by operations as much as they are by funding. Investing in them and letting them make terrible business decisions, or waste hours each week managing their own invoicing, would be a bad investment strategy. So, we added the studio management services as part of the value we bring. In the VC world, that's called Platform, and most great VCs provide some services to their portfolio in this way. We also needed to have an income sharing component to reduce risk, and offering services during the income sharing period ensures that artists are still seeing value as they pay back our investment.

Eventually, we hope to offer programs for commercial artists and other types of artists, but for now the unique dynamic of fine art appreciation and the branding requirements to enter the fine art market make that our beachhead market. We focus on artists whose work is likely to appreciate, which is a narrow group and requites solid traction to identify. We already have 7 artists we're working with. Their works are in most of the prestigious US art museums (The Met, the Whitney, LACMA, MoMA, SFMOMA, The Smithsonian, the Guggenheim, and others). Some of them earn our $50k minimum, or less in cases where we made an exception, and others earn very solid six-figure incomes. We have been providing all kinds of services to them - exhibition logistics including communication, creating 3d models of exhibition spaces to ensure proper installation, arranging shipping, and contracting with past collectors to borrow works, filing insurance claims for work damaged in transit, responding to inbound sales inquiries with marketing materials and invoices, monthly accounting reconciliation, and tax consultations, securing coverage by critics and publications, contract management, editorial direction for high profile grant applications, and contract enforcement.

These artists have joined us because we are super transparent about our model and our goals, and because our advisory board is highly regarded. They also join us only after 3+ conversations with our founding team, and sometimes after we have provided value to them before they even joined. We supported some of our artists for many months for free before we asked them to sign any agreement.

It seems most people in this thread don't really understand how the fine art world or our company operates, or how artists' careers tend to progress, but that's okay. I am happy to answer questions.