Pure Play Internet Fund
Pure Play Internet was the most concentrated of the original StockJungle funds. It was a bet that the businesses being built on the early commercial internet would matter for a long time, and that owning the cleanest examples of that thesis was worth the volatility that came with it.
Fund overview
The fund was an open-end equity fund focused on businesses whose revenue and economics depended on the internet rather than on legacy distribution. The thesis was simple. The internet was a permanent change in how commerce, media, and software reached customers. The businesses native to that change deserved a dedicated portfolio rather than a corner of a generalist fund.
Investment thesis
A pure play meant the company would not exist in its current form without the internet. Marketplaces, web first publishers, software delivered over the network, infrastructure providers for the same. The fund was deliberately uninterested in companies that bolted a website onto an offline business and called it a transformation. The screen was strict because the thesis was specific.
Sector and security selection
The candidate set was small by design. The fund preferred companies with clear unit economics, identifiable network effects, and management teams that understood the durability of their advantage. It avoided concept stocks with no path to profitability even when those names were the loudest in the market. Position sizes were larger than a typical diversified fund because the thesis required real conviction.
How it differed from generalist funds
A generalist fund of the era held the internet leaders alongside industrials, financials, and consumer staples. The Pure Play Internet Fund did not. The whole point was to give an investor a direct expression of the thesis, with no other variables. That made the fund easier to evaluate and harder to hold. Concentration means the years that work and the years that hurt are both larger than average.
Risk profile
Concentrated thematic funds carry concentration risk, sector risk, and the risk that the thesis arrives later than the fund's investors expect. The fund was explicit about that. The disclosure language did not soften the volatility. It explained it. An investor who could not stomach a deep drawdown was told, on the prospectus and on the public site, that the fund was not for them.
Lessons learned
Two ideas held up. The thesis that the internet was a durable change was correct in the long arc. The thesis that you could ride it as a single concentrated portfolio underestimated the cost of being right too early. The fund taught a useful lesson that still applies. A correct theme does not guarantee a comfortable ride, and concentration must be sized for the patience the actual investor base has.