An SPV is a "Special Purpose Vehicle"; a legal entity set up for a specific purpose. In our case, it is used in order to pool funds from a syndicate of multiple investors in order to purchase an asset, such as shares in a startup.
You can think of it as a fund set up to do a single deal.
A Syndicate is a group of investors that pool their funds via an SPV in order to make an investment. The Syndicate Lead is the person responsible for organising the syndicate.
Odin SPVs allow Syndicate Leads to:
Pool funds from multiple investors and buy shares in a startup. You can collect money from investors anywhere, and invest in companies everywhere.
Charge carried interest and other fees to the other investors in the deal
Proxy voting for the shares to a single individual (the syndicate lead)
Distribute profits without any tax liability for the SPV itself.
SPV's offer a number of benefits to both founders and investors. Their key advantage is that they allow individual investors to make smaller per deal investments, improving portfolio diversity and enabling people to access competitive venture deals with small cheques more easily.
Founders can also use SPV's, in order to pool funds from multiple small cheque investors into a single entity.
We will soon also be launching funds, which allow you to do the same thing as SPV's, but permit you to invest in multiple deals, not just one.