Superclusters - The Emerging LP Podcast

“We’re going into a world where there will be an increase in inequality in terms of the have’s versus have-not’s. And so if you are invested in some of the have’s, I would actually bet on their acceleration of value aggregation in the later stages of scaling which is why I, personally, think a winning strategy is to hold onto them for as long as possible." Charlotte Zhang from Inatai Foundati...

“How you modulate a good story is by inserting dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins at the right times to be able to deliver that story so that the person listening to that story can form an opinion.” Asher Siddiqui from the Song Family Office joins me on El Pack to answer your questions on how to build a venture capital fund. We bring on 3 GPs at VC funds to ask 3 different questions. In...

“The question at Fund IV is, ‘Okay, you’ve proved that you’re a great firm builder. Congratulations, you’re raising Fund IV. Are you still a great investor?’” Zach Ruchman joined HB Wealth in 2025 as a Shareholder after working with WMS Partners since 2023. In his role as Managing Director, Private Markets, Zach leads the team responsible for research and due diligence of private market investment...

“Our best GPs are talking to their founders all the time. And our best GP relationships, we talk to all the time.” — Apurva Mehta “If you can’t handle something going to zero, then you shouldn’t do one.” — JD Montgomery Apurva Mehta is the co-founding Managing Partner of Summit Peak Investments, a fund-of-funds that boasts a portfolio of both venture fund investments and direct investments, includ...

"In private equity, some of the older tricks about just picking on more leverage are not going to work as well now because rates are higher. We need to have more focus on operational improvement and margin expansion. And in venture, you’re not expected to have good margins.” — Julia Rees Toader Julia Rees Toader is the Founding Partner of PrinCap, an independent investment portfolio strategy...

“GPs over-index on how that value-add ties into a portfolio strategy.” — Stacey Kline Stacey Kline and Ben Gallacher are co-founders of February Capital, a fund-of-funds dedicated to providing access to the best in venture. Prior to starting February, they've each held roles as professional athletes, corporate lawyers, startup founders, emerging managers themselves, family office allocators, j...

“To whom much is given, much is expected.” — JD Montgomery JD Montgomery leads the Family Office division at Canterbury Consulting and is a seasoned advisor with nearly four decades of experience serving prominent families with a focus on strategy, organization and measurement. Based in Newport Beach, he serves a select group of multi-generational families and helps them navigate the complexities...

“Lower barriers to entry doesn’t mean higher probabilities of success.” — Sam Huleatt Sam Huleatt is the co-founder of The Side Letter, a platform driving network-based research for capital allocators. Prior to The Side Letter, he created and ran the The LP Institute at VC Lab, as well as let On Deck Angels at On Deck. Moreover, he's a serial founder, active angel investor in over 35 companies...

“The game you play as you’re building a reputation becomes a different game than when you have a reputation. And I tend to find, from an LP’s perspective, when you’re building reputation, that’s actually when you deliver the most value.” — Alex Felman Alex Felman is an entrepreneurial and family office professional. For over 10 years, as a second-generation member, he has run his own family office...

“One thing that is unique to private equity and venture capital is persistence is a little easier because of the brand. ‘They did good deals, so therefore, the good deals come to find you.’ If you were in a long-only private equity shop or hedge fund, Amazon is not going to come find you because you invested in Shopify.” — JD Montgomery JD Montgomery leads the Family Office division at Canterbury...

“You’re making decisions in an incomplete vacuum. What I think many people should do more of, in terms of those mental models, is frame it in the reverse. Which of these decisions am I going to make that is the most regret-minimizing? That I have the least likelihood of regretting later on in life, assuming that in most cases, I will be wrong.” — Peter Walker The holiday season has always been a g...

Warning: This is a brief-ish, but hopefully entertaining intermission from the usual Superclusters programming. When we passed the 50th episode mark more than a few episodes ago, Tyler (my editor) and I thought it'd be interesting to record an episode where I change seats. Instead of me asking the questions, someone else would ask me questions. And I couldn't imagine any better person to d...

The holiday season has always been a great time to celebrate the movers and shakers in our world. This season we're celebrating my personal favorites in the LP world. To start this mini-holiday series off, Earnest Sweat and Alexa Binns runs one of the most popular podcasts on venture capital limited partners, Swimming with Allocators. I was also fortunate enough to be on their podcast as well...

Ben Choi from Next Legacy joins David on El Pack to answer your questions on how to build a venture capital fund. We bring on 3 GPs at VC funds to ask 3 different questions. Gilgamesh Ventures' Miguel Armaza , also host of the incredible Fintech Leaders podcast, asks Ben what is the timing of when a GP should consider raising a Fund III. Similarly, but not the same, Strange Ventures' Tara...

"The limiting downside is actually something a lot of emerging managers don’t think about. If you can turn all of your portfolio companies that don’t hit that exit velocity, if you can find a soft landing for those companies versus that’s a writeoff and they’re dead and done, that’s extra effort, but that’s an extra turn on your fund’s performance." — Carson Monson Carson Monson is a sea...

“A manager doesn’t generally fit into their ultimate quartile until Year 6.” Apurva Mehta is the co-founding Managing Partner of Summit Peak Investments, a fund-of-funds that boasts a portfolio of both venture fund investments and direct investments, including the likes of Affirm, Anduril, Airtable, Opendoor, and Wish, just to name a few. Prior to starting Summit Peak in 2018 with his co-founder,...

“It’s a mathematical reality that the highest performing GPs in this part of the market often also have the highest kill rates, which means some things are incredible and other things are super wonky and you have to be cool with that. You can’t be doing a six across the board.” — Caroline Toch Docal Caroline Toch Docal backs early stage fund managers as the lead of BCV’s Emerging Manager Program....

“The intuition part comes from activities of creativity that change your perspective.” — Yiwen Li Yiwen Li is a seasoned investor with a successful track record of investing in AI, blockchain, and healthcare tech while developing global business partnerships to fast-scale the business. Yiwen is currently Head of Venture Investments at Bayview Development Group, a global family office with diverse...

“Once you hit a billion dollars, you should probably consider some sort of internal team. Just to mitigate risk. There’s audit risk involved when you have such a small number of people managing a huge pool of capital. It’s going to differ for everyone. That’s probably a good benchmark.” — Trish Spurlin Trish Spurlin is the Investment Director at Babson’s $800M endowment, covering private markets i...

“There’s this thing called alpha, which is returns driven by skill not market return. And when you start to think about what does that mean, skill means you’re doing something that other people aren’t. You have to be different from the average. What can drive that? How are you going to have that be positive expected value? You need to have unique information, unique insight, unique access, or get...

“I hate checklists. I like outlines. I don’t like checklists. A checklist says ‘I have to have this, and then I’m good. An outline is ‘This is my starting point. These are the kinds of things I want to talk about or kinds of things I need to look at.” — Eric Sippel Eric Sippel currently runs his family office and is an active investor in and adviser to many venture capital, private equity, hedge a...

Adam Marchick from Akkadian Ventures joins David on El Pack to answer your questions on how to build a venture capital fund. We bring on 3 GPs at VC funds to ask 3 different questions. Cocoa VC's Carmen Alfonso Rico asks what belief Adam held firmly for years but changed his mind recently on. Good Trouble Ventures' AJ Thomas asks about how GPs can better communicate risk to first-time LPs....

“There are a thousand ways to put lipstick on the pig and there are a thousand skeletons [in the closet]. I’ve only seen five or six because I’ve only seen three startup experiences. And so you need to deputize as many people as you possibly can to essentially triangulate.” — Anurag Chandra Anurag Chandra has spent over two decades in Silicon Valley as an investor, operator, and allocator. He has...

Beezer Clarkson from Sapphire Partners joins David on El Pack to answer your questions on how to build a venture capital fund. We bring on four GPs at VC funds to ask four different questions. Precursor Ventures' Charles Hudson asks what is the one strongly held belief about emerging managers that she no longer believes is true. NextView Ventures' Stephanie Palmeri asks how much should an establis...

“You need to make space for weird types of conversations to happen on the fringes that really inform you what’s going on at the frontier.” — Thorsten Claus Thorsten Claus is a venture investor and builder with more than 15 years of private equity and venture capital experience. He has raised nine funds, managed over $4.8B across global platforms, and led or overseen more than 120 direct investment...