It's still way to early to be worried about the fund but to be fair, its been a good time for most quantitative funds. And the space that I imagine Quantopian is competing in, factor based models for US Equities, is a very crowded space right now.
I'm sure having a flagship fund was an important project for the company I'm reminded of the Paul Graham story where he tells Jerry Yang his idea for selling ads and then realized when Jerry told him no that yahoo was already selling ads for more than they were worth.
I'm wondering if there is a parallel here with quantopian where they were better off letting people think that they could beat the market with a factor based model, rather than actually starting a fund and showing their users how tough it really is.
> Still, Quantopian manages about $50 million in a hedge fund, a tiny amount in that world and well below the $250 million executives anticipated at the end of this year
This might work in their favour.
The difference in the management fee doesn't translate into alot of money and its much easier to manage a sub $100 million fund than it is to run a $250 million dollar fund. Especially for one that is just starting out and doesn't appear to have found their secret sauce just yet.