The Witter Family Office and Sampoerna Family Office are among a group of investors backing Cyrannus, a prediction market app that funds startups using its proprietary rating system. The platform aims to enhance liquidity for venture capital investors.
Cyrannus currently oversees more than $100 million in assets under influence from its investors and plans to fund over 200 startups annually from an anticipated pool of 2,000 applicants. More than 1,000 industry experts in fields such as artificial intelligence, fintech, climate and biotech have joined the platform to rate startup applications and provide founders valuable business feedback.
“I’ve got great relationships with other family offices. I co-invest with other family offices, collaborate with other family offices. And we are all in agreement that the venture model as we knew it historically was broken and that there had to be a better way to do it,” Sherry Witter, managing partner and chief investment officer of the Witter Family Office, told Crain Currency. Her husband, Michael, is a grandson of Dean Witter, founder of the Dean Witter Reynolds brokerage, which merged with Morgan Stanley in the 1990s.
Cyrannus uses collective expert scores to rank startups by their probability of success, distributing immediate funding to the top-ranked ventures. This continuous investment model aims to disrupt the traditional venture capital process, where investors typically commit funds for 10 to 15 years while startups are scaled toward exits that generate profitable returns.
“Family offices really like to do things with an eye toward liquidity,” said Witter. “If you don't have any idea when you’re going to have liquidity, it’s just much more difficult to manage your family office with all those unknowns.”
The focus on liquidity comes as global venture capital investment is facing headwinds. After peaking at $722 billion in 2021, it fell to $326 billion in 2023 and is on track to have a slight rebound this year, according to data by Deal Room.
“The ability to get out of a deal early is very contrarian to the venture capital mindset,” said Howard Lee Mosbacker, Cyrannus' founder and CEO. “Cyrannus’ platform is a game-changing prediction market disrupting a conventional landscape by providing investors with liquidity via private market swaps, agile investment strategies and reduced risk of hype and fraud, effectively unlocking billions in capital to fund the world’s next great ideas.”