[malandrew]

Yes and no. Is it entrepreneurship? Yes. Is it a startup in the Steve Blank sense of the word? No. It's a proven business model that works for those individuals that have a solid reputation and professional network. Is it more risk than being a partner or principal as a big VC? Yes.

Risk-wise, setting up and running your own fund is somewhere between starting a new business with an unproven business model and opting for a career path. IMHO it's not the risk profile described in this post.

[borski]

The business model isn't proven - 500's idea of investing in a lot of companies and looking for lots of singles and doubles, rather than a few home runs, is unusual, unproven, and some would argue impractical. Whether that's true or not remains to be proven, but they've had some (minor) successes so far - sounds a lot like "the first few business deals" to me.