I’m Izzy Slodowitz, founder of Glidepath, an exchange fund for concentrated stock positions. AMA.
Hey there r/Experienced_Founders!
I’m Israel “Izzy” Slodowitz. I’m the founder and CEO of Glidepath, and I also run Craft, the private aviation company I started in 2019. Before becoming a founder, I worked as an analyst at Renewable Resources Group.
Craft put me around a lot of founders, executives, and early employees who had done extremely well on paper but had most of their net worth tied up in one stock. That introduced me to a problem I eventually became pretty obsessed with: selling can mean realizing a large capital gain, while holding means continuing to bet a huge percentage of your wealth on one company.
That eventually led to Glidepath.
We built an exchange fund where investors can contribute appreciated stock to a diversified pool rather than selling it first. But the more interesting founder story, at least to me, has been questioning some of the assumptions behind how these funds have traditionally operated.
Traditional exchange funds often charge around 1% annually and generally need at least 20% of their assets in qualifying illiquid assets. We charge a $0 direct management fee, and instead of filling that qualifying sleeve entirely with traditional real estate, part of ours consists of business jets leased to Craft. That obviously creates some unusual operational questions, including conflicts of interest, financing, asset risk, and how the economics ultimately reach investors.
Our first fund closed at more than $50 million last year. The current structure is newer, particularly the use of aircraft in the sleeve, so there’s plenty I’m happy to get challenged on.
I’d be glad to talk about building Craft, going from aviation into investment management, raising and operating our first fund, concentrated founder equity, exchange funds and Section 721, why we eliminated the direct management fee, the seven year commitment, using operating assets inside the fund, and the conflicts and risks that come with having Craft involved on both sides of that structure.
I’ll be answering your questions on October 5, 2026. Ask me anything!
