Day: October 22, 2025

• Slow Ventures keeps a small team and doesn’t promote from within.
• The early-stage venture firm made an exception by elevating Yoni Rechtman to partner.
• Rechtman is a generalist investor who’s helped source deals like SuperDial and Heave.

In 2022, when Yoni Rechtman’s boss asked where he wanted to be in five years, the newly hired venture capitalist told him, “Not here.”

What might have sounded like defiance was exactly what Kevin Colleran, managing director of Slow Ventures, wanted to hear. The firm doesn’t promote from within. It keeps funds small — “easier to return many multiples of success,” Colleran said — and so the firm needs fewer investors.

This month, Slow made an exception to its rule, giving Rechtman, 30, a seat at the partners’ table.

The firm, now nearing $1 billion in investor capital, has four partners investing out of its core seed funds. Colleran says Rechtman is the first principal to be promoted to partner for those funds in 10 years; Megan Lightcap made partner in 2024 to co-lead the firm’s creator-focused fund.

It’s a precarious time for junior venture capitalists. Many came of age during the frothy post-pandemic boom, when deal flow was brisk, valuations soared, and portfolio companies seemed to double in value every few months. Then the market cooled and funds pulled back.

Suddenly, midlevel investors had fewer chances to prove themselves, and some of their once-glittering deals now looked painfully overpriced. The path to partnership, already murky, became even narrower. Some disillusioned investors left the industry altogether.

Back in 2022, Rechtman assumed he’d eventually leave Slow to raise his own fund. Plans changed, and not, he says, because the market soured. Through September, 68 debut funds closed, versus 183 in all of last year, per PitchBook. Emerging managers are also taking twice as long to raise their next funds — a headwind that would give any investor pause.

Rechtman says he’s staying for a simpler reason. The job’s not finished.

Early on, Slow general partner and early Facebook executive Sam Lessin gave Rechtman this advice: “Fish in waters where other firms aren’t fishing.” Rechtman took it somewhat literally.

This year, he grabbed a last-minute flight to Tampa to reconnect with a startup billing itself as “Uber for heavy-equipment repair.” Founded in 2020, Heave has quietly assembled a network that it claims covers nearly a third of the country’s heavy-machinery mechanics.

Rechtman closed a handshake deal with the founder over smoked fish, and Slow joined its $7 million seed round, which was announced in August. It’s the kind of off-beat, unsexy bet that has become Rechtman’s calling card.

That approach has nudged Slow into areas it might have otherwise overlooked, such as healthcare, growth buyouts, and what Rechtman calls “real-world businesses.” This spring, Slow backed SuperDial, which builds voice agents for healthcare organizations and has already handled more than 1 million calls. Colleran said Rechtman also worked with him to close Journey, a travel rewards platform created by Brian Kelly, founder of The Points Guy.

Slow doesn’t vote by unanimity. It runs on a simple rule: any two partners can greenlight a deal. Decision-making power is flat. “Because we are small and we trust each other, if two people like an idea, that’s good enough,” Colleran said.

Colleran, now in his forties, calls Rechtman a “younger and hungrier” network-builder. Rechtman hosts a twice-yearly mini-conference for young partners, principals, and emerging managers, and says a meaningful share of his deals now come through that circle.

He’s also built an audience by publishing. He’s written a weekly Substack for more than a year and says he has roughly 15,000 subscribers. Rechtman said if investors want credibility with founders on weird, non-consensus ideas, they have to put their thinking in public. “Frankly, I have a style that either attracts or repels founders,” he said.

Instead of leaving Slow to raise a debut fund, Rechtman says he now sees a path to help build a differentiated franchise from inside a partnership.

As a Brooklyn native, he wants to do it from New York. The city is awash in seed checks, he says, but starved for growth capital to scale the most promising hometown companies.

Slow has raised three opportunity funds, totaling $295 million, to join later rounds for its top performers. This gives Rechtman a way to keep backing breakouts rather than watching them migrate to out-of-town investment firms.

“When something takes off in New York, other people make the money,” Rechtman said. “I see an opportunity to change that.”

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• The White House is paying law enforcement during the shutdown, including ICE and border patrol.
• Funds for the “super checks” will come from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
• Military personnel are also receiving pay, but most other federal workers are not.

Select federal law enforcement officers will see a “super check” in the bank by Wednesday, while most of their colleagues in government are approaching their fourth week without pay during the government shutdown.

The Department of Homeland Security plans to pay some employees at Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Secret Service, and the Transportation Security Administration by October 22. A spokesperson for DHS confirmed to Business Insider that paid employees will include over 70,000 border patrol agents, deportation officers, special agents, and air marshals.

“President Trump and I will always stand by law enforcement, and today we are keeping our promise to always support them by making sure they are paid during the Democrats’ shutdown, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said, adding, “DHS remains deeply grateful to our law enforcement for their continued professionalism, vigilance, and service under challenging circumstances.”

The selected law enforcement employees will receive a “super check,” DHS told Business Insider, meaning they will be compensated for the current pay cycle, in addition to the first few days of the shutdown at the end of their last pay cycle, plus any overtime.

Trump is paying federal law enforcement and the military

The plan to pay law enforcement builds on pre-shutdown contingency plans. DHS estimated that around 19,626 of 21,028 total ICE employees would continue working either with or without pay until the shutdown ends. Similarly, around 63,243 of CBP’s 67,792 workers were expected to be on the job.

The funds to pay DHS workers are being drawn from the Trump administration’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, a department spokesperson told Business Insider. The law allocates billions toward “activities in support of the Department of Homeland Security’s mission to safeguard the borders of the United States” to be available between 2025 and 2029. The move to pay employees during the shutdown comes alongside the administration’s deployment of ICE agents to US cities, such as Chicago and Portland.

Bobby Kogan, the senior director of federal budget policy at the left-leaning Center for American Progress, likened the usage of that funding to keep paying workers to the agencies having a credit card that doesn’t expire until 2029, with very broad funding language from the legislation itself.

Military personnel also began receiving paychecks in mid-October. Trump approved the White House and Pentagon to use funds left over for the current fiscal year for payroll, likely from the standard research and development testing and evaluation budget. The administration did not provide more information on what funding is specifically being used or how long that money will last, and Congress has not greenlit troop pay.

“In such a dire circumstance as this, where there is no other appropriation providing for payment of military salaries, and where failure to pay our troops directly undercuts the effectiveness of other appropriations,” the White House wrote in an October 17 memo to lawmakers. “The President may, as Commander in Chief, direct that such appropriations be used to cover military salaries.”

In past shutdowns, legislation has specifically passed either ahead of or during other funding lapses that stipulated troops would be paid. This time around — despite bipartisan entreaties from lawmakers to pass legislation — the administration unilaterally decided that troops would be paid, a move that stoked some ire among lawmakers.

Employees at most agencies are furloughed or working without pay

Since the government ceased normal operations on October 1, Business Insider has spoken with over two dozen federal workers across agencies about how the shutdown is impacting their jobs and financial security. Hundreds of thousands remain furloughed or are working without pay, and many told us they’re anxious about paying bills.

“Gas stations don’t take IOUs,” Johnny Jones, a TSA worker and president of local 1040 for the American Federation of Government Employees, said last week. “I talked to a couple employees, and they said, ‘this is my last fill-up and I won’t have any money,’ because they don’t have credit cards. They’re literally like, this is the last tank of gas I’m going to have until I get paid again.”

Staff at agencies like the Social Security Administration, the Centers for Disease Control, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration aren’t receiving paychecks. These employees received a prorated check earlier this month for their days worked immediately prior to the shutdown, and the White House has hinted they may not receive back pay for hours worked after October 1.

Most government contractors and employees at federal buildings, such as those who work in food service and janitorial jobs and staff museums and historical sites, are also not being paid. Members of Congress are receiving normal salaries.

Without a Senate budget agreement, the government shutdown will continue without an end in sight, and Americans could continue experiencing disruptions at the post office, national parks, and airports. The longest-ever shutdown in 2018 lasted 35 days.