A working map of how Aqua Access Vehicles actually functions today — assembled from Dev's Drive, Gmail, and Slack files plus customer-facing transcripts. Built to externalize the routing logic that currently lives in Dev's head, so GTM, CS, and marketing can use it without pulling him onto every call.
A sponsor brings a deal. Aqua picks a legal shell, configures a white-label tenant, wires together compliance and ledger, then orchestrates Sydecar (or NAV Consulting) to do the fund-admin mechanics underneath. The bundled fee covers everything below the shell.
Per the handoff, no premature deduping. These are the distinct structure patterns visible in the materials — five "shells," with three orthogonal axes (shell type × securities-law positioning × sponsor control) that combine to make a real structure. Most volume (~80%) sits in the Series LLC family.
Aqua owns and manages the master entity. Each series gets its own bank account, cap table, K-1. Setup in ~8 business hours. Default for sponsors without their own master entity. Examples: ABC, Lumiere, Sunshine Lake, ICP-DO.
Sponsor owns the master; Aqua administers series under it. Florence Cap, LLC is the canonical example (SPV VII through XVIII). Master setup is ~2 days, then series in 8 hours. Rubik proposed a variant with their mgmt co as sole managing member.
A traditional partnership when you need it — multi-close, separate from any series structure. Annual fee scales differently ($85K/yr on Syon's $23.45M = 36 bps).
Sponsor wants bespoke economics — IA collects fees and GP calculates carry back to each underlying investor's entry date. Outside counsel drafts a custom op agreement. Standalone LLC, not a series.
Securities-law positioning that sits on top of a series shell. Lumiere is both a Series-under-Aqua-master AND a 3(c)(1) fund-of-funds. The structure axis is orthogonal to the shell axis.
No Aqua compliance wrapper. Used for one-offs where the customer doesn't need audit / RIA-side reporting. Dev submits directly to Sydecar Slack channel. Likely not counted as full Access Vehicles revenue.
SPV (typically A or B) bundled with deeper API + white-label customization for a UHNW wealth manager. Embassy's proposed $25M SPV is the canonical example.
Real customer pull (DrawingBoard India, Investa EU, Asia LPs through Ardenwood) but unresolved: Sydecar blocks non-US partnership targets, offshore feeder structures hit US-investor tax friction. Glide acquisition may fill this gap.
Standalone registered fund-of-funds with NAV Consulting (not Sydecar) as fund administrator. Document flow is manual / email-based. Used when sponsor needs a traditional regulated fund. Scion Capital is the example Dev called out.
The "subscriber account" mechanism is the load-bearing technical concept. Each SPV has one master Sydecar account; each investor gets a virtual sub-account with unique wire instructions. That's how anyone — Sydecar, the API, or Aqua's UI — knows who wired what.
"There's a notion of a subscriber account — a virtual bank account that sits on top of the main SPV account. Everybody has a unique set of wire instructions they're wiring capital into. That's how we know who is wiring capital. The Sidecar API keeps track of balances on a subscriber-by-subscriber basis."
Dev Patel · Daily Forms Sync · 2026-05-14
Aqua pulls Sydecar subscriber balances and renders four statuses to the advisor and investor UI:
Dev's exact words: "The integration with Sidecar breaks all the time." This explains the SL-SLAI1 manual capital-call correction and the SPV XX missing-funds Slack threads — they're not one-offs, they're a known operational tax that the team works around case-by-case.
Sydecar isn't the only admin. Traditional fund-of-funds structures (Scion) use NAV Consulting on a manual document-relay basis — Dev physically forwards quarterlies and capital-call notices between NAV and the advisor. Email-based, not API-integrated.
Dev's plan: new clients route through AIX going forward; existing Aqua data eventually migrates over. The forms-builder Shane is shipping is the AIX-side intake that will eventually replace the direct Aqua → Sydecar handoff. Customer-facing this won't change much short-term, but the routing path is being rebuilt underneath.
The "two pricing models" appearance in the invoice CSV was an artifact of where each deal lands relative to a $15K floor. There's one model — greater-of basis-points or flat — confirmed directly by Dev today.
Floor binding. Series-LLC formation fee plus the annual floor of $15K.
35 bps binding. Quote Rohan gave Ardenwood verbatim.
Syon LP. Bigger ticket = bps fully takes over.
"We take the greater of [bps or flat] — that's going to be the annual fee. If somebody comes to us with a $1 million deal, they're going to probably get charged 15,000 annually plus 15,000 formation fee. So in doing so, a deal that's large enough we can have some flexibility on the basis points fee to lower it a little bit to make it more digestible to somebody coming in at high enough breakpoints."
Dev Patel · Daily Forms Sync · 2026-05-14
The bundled fee includes: third-party audit, ILPA reporting, Form D + Blue Sky filings, KYC/AML via Alloy, K-1 prep (target April 15), digital ledger / carry calculations, white-label tenant. Custom carry & management fee from the sponsor sit on top (e.g. Rubik's 5% upfront mgmt + 5% L2 carry).
Reconstructed end-to-end from emails (Florence SPV XX), the canonical onboarding template, and Dev's walkthroughs.
| # | Step | Who | Typical time |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Rohan-led sales conversation → structure recommendation | Sponsor + Aqua | Variable |
| 2 | Sponsor completes Deal Onboarding Information Request | Sponsor | — |
| 3 | Aqua provisions tenant subdomain & white-label config; entity formation w/ Sydecar | Aqua + Sydecar | 2 days (new master) or 8 hrs (new series) |
| 4 | Outside counsel drafts PPM + sub-docs | Counsel | Variable |
| 5 | Investors onboarded (advisor-driven OR investor-driven via portal access code) | Sponsor → investors | KYC instant US · +days offshore |
| 6 | Sub-docs signed in-platform; Sydecar signs on behalf of SPV upon Organizer authorization | Investors + Sydecar | Minutes |
| 7 | Capital wired to investor-specific subscriber accounts at Sydecar (JPMorgan) | Investors | 10-14 days notice cycle |
| 8 | Ongoing: capital calls, distributions, K-1s (target Apr 15), third-party audit | Aqua + Sydecar + auditor | Annual |
What looks like a white-label skin is actually the platform's organizing principle. Every sponsor, wealth manager, and advisor is provisioned as a tenant at a subdomain, with tier-based feature flags, and a choice between two workflow archetypes.
Default for most RIAs. The advisor onboards investors manually; investors typically don't get a portal login. Their view of the deal happens through the advisor.
Investors self-serve through the white-label portal with an access code. Florence Capital is the canonical example — investors log into florencecapital.investwithaqua.com directly.
A sponsor (Hamilton Point, Alexander Capital Ventures) exposes their fund to advisors at other tenants. Advisors at DAI / Concord / Forum can permission-in and subscribe their investors. Subscription works cross-tenant; account monitoring doesn't (current gap).
Tenants are provisioned with tiers that gate features. Aqua admins set the tier when the tenant is created; the sponsor then onboards their own users without admin involvement. [INFERRED — tier list not yet documented in materials.]
Routing logic for shell choice is the biggest gap. The materials show what was done; almost never why. These eight questions become the Dev interview agenda.
| # | Question | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | What triggers C (Standalone LP) vs A (Series under Aqua master)? | Routing rule for the most common alternative shell choice. Nothing in the files makes this explicit. |
| 2 | When customers bring their own master (B) vs use Aqua's (A)? | Florence has its own; ABC / Lumiere / Sunshine Lake use Aqua's. What's the rule? |
| 3 | What's Lumiere's dual identity — Series under Aqua master AND 3(c)(1) FoF — about? | Suggests the structure axis is orthogonal to the shell axis. Routine or special? |
| 4 | When does the Sydecar-direct light wrap (F) path apply? | Are these counted as Access Vehicles deals? Or a separate product line? |
| 5 | When do we route to NAV Consulting (I) instead of Sydecar? | Manual admin path. Triggered by fund structure (FoF) or by ticket size? Or by sponsor preference? |
| 6 | Is the capital-call calculation bug a one-off or systemic? | SL-SLAI1 correction suggests the formula isn't fully automated. Worth surfacing if it's a real ops gap. |
| 7 | What specific Access Vehicles capability does the Glide acquisition fill? | David said "frame Glide as beefing up our Access Vehicles capability." Which gap? |
| 8 | Is the non-US partnership constraint a hard structural limit, or a workaround Aqua has been declining to offer? | Blocks the cross-border feeder use case (DrawingBoard, Investa, half of Ardenwood's clients). |