Capital that rolls up its sleeves

Fantastic is a hands-on investment firm with a twist: Instead of writing checks, we invest sweat equity — embedding our team of seasoned builders and doers into your company to deliver the commercial results you need to build something generational. You could say our capital comes with calluses. And we bring receipts.

How Our Sweat Equity Model Works

We deploy for however long is necessary (from months to years), working shoulder-to-shoulder with your team to deliver an agreed-upon set of clear, measurable commercial outcomes - revenue/ARR, customers, distribution and integration partners, new markets - in return for an ownership stake (equity).

When we deliver those outcomes, our equity vests.

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Founder-friendly by design

Skin in the game: Equity is earned based on completed work and real value created, not simply offered advice or recommendations
Multiplier on the traditional capital you've raised
Deployments are milestone- and outcome-based, and you decide how much or little to involve us
We don't seek board seats or operational control
Extend runway by reducing costly operational iterations
Accelerate time to commercial viability
Create more leverage for yourself and your team

We Deliver Exceptional Products and Services Around the World

OUR APPROACH

Boots-on-the-ground + Concrete Deliverables

Deploy us "in the trenches" as a multiplier on the traditional capital you've raised, to achieve your key commercial goals, including:

Closing your first enterprise customers
Defining and operationalizing your monetization strategy
Developing and implementing your inorganic customer acquisition strategy and plan
Building your partner and customer pipeline
Sourcing, negotiating and closing your most critical distribution, integration and co-sell partnerships
Structuring and negotiating your key external relationships (with investors, customers, suppliers and the like)
Designing and activating your channel/reseller GTM program
Establishing a repeatable sales motion
Hiring and onboarding your commercial leadership
Implementing your IP and contract infrastructure at scale

Battle-tested Expertise

Our principals bring 50+ years of experience building world-class commercial capabilities from the ground up, across start-ups and established companies..

However, in a world in which AI is rapidly changing the fundamental ground rules of building a successful company, experience only goes so far. You don’t want to work with anyone who’ll just copy and paste from a playbook of a different era. What matters at least as much is possessing the muscle – strengthened through multiple business cycles and technology disruptions (web, mobile, cloud, etc), and tested by both soaring success and painful failure – to deftly apply first principles to chart a course through novel situations and circumstances. We bring this combination of varied experience, raw brainpower and problem-solving aptitude to every deployment.

Deployment that Works for You

Every engagement starts with a clear Statement of Work: agreed-upon deliverables, milestones, outcomes, and timelines. No surprises.

We embed on-site, virtually, or both — whatever works for your team. No pre-existing commercial infrastructure required; we'll build it from scratch or scale what you have.

Deployments typically run 6–12 months, but we stick around as long as the work demands. And as a shareholder, we remain available long after our day-to-day work is done — because your success is still our success.

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Meet Fantastic

Our co-founders have extensive experience navigating platform shifts and uncertain macroeconomic conditions to transform emergent products and technologies - often first-of-their-kind - into profitable, revenue-generating businesses at scale.

Principal & Co-Founder

Marc Leibowitz

Marc's career has been defined by driving "zero-to-one" commercial innovation and hyper-scaling at both start-ups and some of the world’s most influential technology companies.

He most recently built and ran Adobe’s global partnerships and AI alliance function, generating hundreds of millions of dollars in NNARR. He previously pioneered digital health models at J&J and led multiple functions at Dropbox through its massive expansion and IPO. As the first business hire at StumbleUpon, he scaled revenue to $100M, following a foundational tenure at Google building multibillion-dollar mobile, search and advertising ecosystems from the ground up. Prior to Google, Marc co-founded a venture-funded fintech start-up and was a banker at the legendary Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette.

He earned a BS from Wharton (summa) and a law degree from Stanford.

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Principal & Co-Founder

Jonathan Manson

Jonathan has been working closely with technology startups for more than a decade. Prior to this role, he was a senior member of the Google legal team, where he worked closely with leadership across the company to develop and implement commercial and product strategies across search, ads, Android, Chrome, infrastructure, cloud, and Google apps.

Before Google, Jonathan was an attorney at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, focusing on IP strategy and technology transactions.

Jonathan received his law degree from Stanford, a PhD in physics from UIUC, and an AB in physics from Harvard (where he was an NCAA All-American swimmer).

ARE WE RIGHT FOR YOU?

Our sweet spot is Seed through Series B companies who've found product-market fit and are poised for breakout growth. We invest where both sides agree our work will have material impact, and we can earn a meaningful equity stake in the business when we deliver results.

We are largely sector-agnostic, though our principals have extensive hands-on experience in consumer, enterprise, AI, cloud, SaaS and healthtech.

We’d be delighted to sit down and talk through how we might be helpful. If you’re not sure exactly what we might do for you, we’d be happy to take a quick peek under the hood to understand where you’re at and make some recommendations (no strings attached, of course!). If we think we can be additive, we’ll tell you; but if not, we’ll tell you that, too. We love when companies succeed, with or without us.

Let's Work Together

FAQs

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What is "Sweat Equity"?

Unlike "financial equity", sweat equity is stock earned over time in return for a defined set of deliverables that add real value to your company. While sweat equity arrangements require a bit more upfront effort to contractualize, they better align incentives and can be tailored to your specific needs.

Do you only work for equity?

Sweat equity is an essential part of every Fantastic deployment, as our goal is to participate in the financial upside our work drives. In addition, we may also propose some form of cash compensation, depending on the duration and complexity of the work we're being asked to drive. We'll clearly spell out our expectations and work through all the details with you before we get started so there are no surprises.

Do you have references we can speak with?

Absolutely! We'd be happy to connect you with founders and investors who are familiar with us and our work and can help you determine whether Fantastic would be a good addition to your operating efforts and cap table.