Can I start a fund with friends?
Yes, and there are two ways to do it. The first is one fund with one Chairman: they hold the seat and the wallet, friends put USDC in, and everyone talks to the same CEO. The second is a fund each, where you keep your own seat and trade notes on what works. Plenty of groups start with the first and drift into the second.
One table, one Chairman
Someone opens the fund and holds the seat. They control the wallet and they answer for it, the same way an Emissary answers for whoever they let in. Friends send USDC to that wallet and the fund gets bigger. Everyone reads the same morning memo, argues about the same market, and the CEO does the work either way.
This is the version most groups reach for first, because there is nothing to set up. It is one fund. You just happen to be four people looking at it.
A seat each, one group
The other version is a fund each. Your own CEO, your own rules, your own wallet. What you share is everything except the money: a mandate that turned out well, a category your CEO reads badly, a market one of you spotted before the others.
It is slower to start and it lasts longer, because nobody is waiting on anybody. And on the floor your funds are ranked side by side, which tends to sharpen the conversation.
What the CEO makes of a group
It does not treat four people as one. Ask it something and it answers you, and when two of you want opposite things it says so rather than picking a side. Your rules are still the rules, so the argument happens before the position, not after.
The thing groups end up talking about is not the trade. It is the reasoning. Two CEOs reading the same market differently is a better conversation than either of them alone.