Five hundred dollars is an unusual opening line for a story about Hollywood connections. It is the minimum investment Cashmere announced when its fund became available through SoFi in July 2025. Behind that modest number stands Elia Infascelli, a former talent agent whose career has taken him from motion pictures to brand building to venture capital. He has worked on businesses involving people with very large audiences. Now he wants a larger audience to participate in the business of investing.
That ambition gives his career an interesting reversal. An agent learns how to get the right person into the right room. A fund seeking retail investors has to think about how many people the room can hold. Infascelli has carried the same central interest through both jobs: what happens when a relationship becomes useful to a business? At Cashmere, the question applies to athletes, founders, brand partners and people investing a few hundred dollars.
The cast includes Dwayne Johnson, Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen, fashion entrepreneur Jenna Lyons and three college quarterbacks. But the plot turns on something less photogenic than a celebrity introduction: an investment structure. His present work combines the visibility of sports and entertainment with the mechanics of a registered fund. The glamour gets your attention. The mechanics determine what you actually own.
Rome, Lyon, Los Angeles
Infascelli is originally from Rome. He earned a bachelor's degree at the Institut Paul Bocuse in Lyon, France, before building his career in Los Angeles. His professional biography places him there with his wife, Jordan, and their two daughters. The geography is worth pausing over. It gives the career a European beginning and an American working life, without requiring a convenient childhood prophecy about a future in finance.
His first extended professional chapter was Endeavor. Across 17 years, he worked as a motion picture agent, led the International Group and eventually built the Brand Ventures business. Those are related jobs with different objects of attention. Representation deals with careers and opportunities. Brand building asks whether the audience for a person will also become the audience for a product.
At Endeavor, he oversaw the creation of Johnson's Project Rock and represented corporate clients including Rolex, Anheuser-Busch and Visa. Here was an intersection of talent, advertising and commerce that he could work on directly. The relationship between a familiar face and a commercial enterprise became part of his professional practice. It would later become part of his investment thesis.
From representing talent to building businesses
In 2017, Infascelli was named global CEO of Wanda-owned Propaganda GEM. The title marked a move into operating leadership after his agency career. He subsequently co-founded Parallel Brands, a creative talent partnership studio and strategic investor. His career had acquired another layer: alongside negotiating and developing opportunities, he was helping put businesses together.
These roles matter because celebrity investing can look deceptively simple from the outside. A recognizable name appears beside a company. An announcement follows. The arrangement looks complete. Infascelli's background includes the work that comes before the announcement: brand development, partnerships and operating responsibilities. A name has to be attached to something people can buy, understand and return to.
That practical history helps explain the shape of Forma Capital, which he co-founded with sports and entertainment executives Bruce Popko and Josh Feine. By 2023, he was working as its managing partner. His responsibilities included finding investments, conducting due diligence and working alongside portfolio companies. The progression was gradual enough to retain the earlier skills, while moving the central decision toward where capital should go.
Propaganda GEM
Forma Capital
Cashmere
The first check, and the right fit
Forma's early approach was specific. Infascelli described wanting to be the “first check post-revenue.” In October 2023, the firm's investments included non-alcoholic cocktail brand De Soi, BloxSnacks, Chubby Snacks and Major League Pickleball's Los Angeles Mad Drops. Consumer brands and sports properties gave the firm places to apply the connections its partners had spent their careers developing.
The thesis depended on a fit between an influential person and a business they actually cared about. An audience could be reached directly through social media, and that connection could help a relevant brand. It was a proposition about how to support growth. It was also a selection problem. A large following alone did not tell the team which business would suit the person behind it.
In his November 2024 Slice interview, Infascelli put the emphasis on information about potential partners: “Who are you partnering with? Do they have a track record of success?” The questions are almost stubbornly ordinary. They puncture the idea that an introduction to a famous person ends the investigation. For him, the introduction gives the investigation somewhere to begin.
An existing fund, a different audience
On September 23, 2024, Forma announced that its affiliate had been approved as subadviser to the Sweater Cashmere Fund. The fund had launched in 2022. Infascelli and his colleagues were joining an existing vehicle, bringing a strategy and network to a structure already designed to admit retail investors.
The partnership divided responsibilities. Forma would lead fundraising, marketing and capital deployment. Sweater would oversee investor relations, compliance and asset valuation. Infascelli, Mary Owen and Ari Schottenstein were named portfolio managers in the announcement. This was a partnership between investment judgment, commercial reach and the infrastructure needed to run a fund.
Cashmere describes its approach as Compound Influence: founders, backers, businesses and an investor community contributing connections that can build on one another. In that model, the investor base is also a possible audience for portfolio companies. The idea is appealing in a very human way. People can introduce things to other people. Turning that familiar activity into a repeatable investment advantage is the work the team has set itself.
operators & investors
& brand partnerships
build their businesses
The calendar behind the invitation
The entry point deserves a second look because access has several meanings here. A $500 minimum reduces the amount needed to start. Eligibility for non-accredited investors broadens who can participate. Neither feature makes the underlying businesses public companies, or turns a venture investment into cash on demand.
Cashmere operates as an interval fund. Its December 2025 prospectus described semiannual repurchase offers in February and August, each covering 5 percent of outstanding shares. Requests can exceed the available repurchase amount, meaning investors may have only part of a request fulfilled. The shares are not traded on a national securities exchange. A ticker is an identifier, not a promise of an open exit door.
That distinction belongs inside Infascelli's story because his stated aim is wider participation in private markets. The invitation comes with a calendar. The portfolio needs time, the fund has expenses and investments can lose value. His task involves communicating those terms alongside the attractive idea of owning an interest in companies before they reach public markets. The smaller entrance fee leaves the investment's complexity intact.
in the 2025 prospectus
February & August
offered for repurchase each time
Three quarterbacks look beyond the next game
In June 2025, Cashmere announced its College Investing Class: LaNorris Sellers of South Carolina, Kevin Jennings of Southern Methodist University and Avery Johnson of Kansas State. All three invested in the fund and partnered with its subadviser. The arrangement linked college athletes' names, images and likenesses to an investment business, extending a network that already included Allen, Lyons and Damar Hamlin.
Infascelli noticed something beyond their capacity to attract attention. “They didn’t need to do this, but they wanted to,” he said of the college players. Their interest in learning and longer relationships was part of the attraction. It brought a quieter motive into a world usually described through sponsorship prices and audience size: young athletes choosing to become investors.
The partnership served both sides. The players could help bring attention to Cashmere and its portfolio, while gaining experience with venture investing. That symmetry is central to Infascelli's approach. Someone with influence becomes a participant with a financial interest. A business gains a connection to a new audience. Whether the arrangement produces lasting value depends on what follows the introduction.
“They didn’t need to do this, but they wanted to.”
Elia Infascelli, on Cashmere’s college athlete investors, June 2025
The least glamorous part of reaching millions
The SoFi distribution announcement arrived on July 8, 2025. Cashmere became available on the platform's Alternative Investments offering, with the announced $500 minimum. SoFi reported 10.9 million members at the time. That was the potential audience of the platform, rather than the number investing in Cashmere, but it changed the scale of the fund's possible reach.
Infascelli described the mission as reaching “all investors regardless of accreditation status.” Distribution was a concrete step toward it. A person could encounter the fund in an investing platform they already used, instead of first finding a specialist venture manager. For someone trained in brand building, the placement of the product is part of the product's commercial life.
Getting there also produced a small, revealing joke. Responding to a colleague's account of the work behind the SoFi launch, Infascelli wrote, “And almost no one is in a hurry.” Anyone who has tried to coordinate several organizations will recognize the sentiment. There are signatures and systems behind the announcement. Even a business built around influence has to wait for the paperwork.
Back to storytelling, with a different purpose
In December 2025, Cashmere introduced Culture & Capital, a podcast developed with SoFi and hosted by strategic advisor Katie Perry. The opening guests included Lyons and brand strategist Jonny Bauer, RSE Ventures co-founder Matt Higgins, and Graza co-founder Andrew Benin. It brought brand building and early-stage investing into conversations intended for a wider audience.
For Infascelli, the show connects to the concern running through his career: how companies get built, backed and understood. He promoted its launch as a way to explore the roles of culture, brand and conviction before public markets enter the picture. The storytelling skill from his entertainment years now sits beside an educational purpose. Wider access creates a reason to explain the business more clearly.
By March 2026, his work still included deal sourcing, due diligence and support for portfolio companies. Those responsibilities give the story its daily scale. Behind the athletes and the distribution agreements is an investor deciding which opportunities to pursue and helping businesses after the check. Infascelli's career has widened the circle of people involved. The question he asks about a prospective partner remains useful at every size: what can this relationship actually help build?