Venture capitalists are a lot like professional athletes. They often work in teams, but are largely judged on their individual statistics. A great VC can be part of a lousy fund, because his successful deals get drowned out by the aggregate performance of mediocre partners. To keep the analogy going, think Paul Pierce on the ’06-’07 Celtics.

That’s kind of the idea here. This proposal would have an experienced institutional LP (likely a fund-of-funds), create a series of loosely-affiliated evergreen “funds,” with each fund to contain just a single VC. In other words, cherrypick the cream of the crop. Give the VC an annual salary of around $1 million, an assistant, an associate and 15% of any carry. Perhaps a three-year contract, with a two-year LP option.

But what if you could have changed the ’06-’07 NBA from team vs. team to one-on-one? Wouldn’t Pierce have become far more successful?