Venture Unlocked: The playbook for venture capital managers

Limited partners come in a few different varieties, one of the largest, but also most opaque groups is that of the Family Offices, and today’s guest Jamie Rhode , CFA, Vice President at Verdis Investment Management , gives us a glimpse into the large family office world. Verdis uses a unique data-driven approach to fund allocating that allows them to optimize on their portfolio and ensure they fin...

Contrarian based investing requires extreme conviction, and the ability to consistently invest in founders and businesses that don’t always have mainstream acceptance. Bullpen Capital has long been known as a firm that will not shy away from the overlooked companies, but instead seeks out the undiscovered gems to drive alpha for their investors and founders. This week’s guest Paul Martino , one of...

On this week’s show, we are joined by Ashmeet Sidana , founder and chief engineer at Engineering Capital , a seed stage firm with $139.5M AUM. Prior to founding Engineering Capital in 2015, Ashmeet spend nearly 10 years at Foundation Capital which he joined after various technical roles at companies such as VMware and Silicon Graphics. His investments include Azure (NYSE: AZRE), Netsil (acquired b...

Non-traditional paths into venture have been a common theme among many emerging managers, and our guest this week, Katie Jacobs Stanton , founder of Moxxie Ventures , is no exception. Katie started her career as a Banker at JP Morgan, but subsequently worked within the Obama White house as special advisor to the office of innovation, and she had operator roles at Twitter, Google, Yahoo, and Color...

In venture, many people speak about being contrarian, but very few investors truly are comfortable with consistently thinking outside of mainstream consensus. One exception is Daniel Leff, co-founder of Waverley Capital. Waverley was founded in 2019 with Edgar Bronfmann, Jr. and is focused on investing in media start-ups. Prior to Waverley, Daniel founded Luminari Capital , a top-performing media...

Today, we’re seeing major startup hubs emerge across the US (and globally). Up until fairly recently, LA was not considered a major US technology and venture hub. My guest on this week’s episode, Brian Garrett , has been in the LA venture ecosystem for two decades now. He also co-founded Crosscut Ventures , one of the very first seed funds in LA (if not the first). Today LA has claims companies su...

The use of data is playing a bigger and bigger role in our everyday lives. Venture is no exception, but most of data use in VC is related to sourcing, picking, and helping founders. My guest today, Kelsey Chase , co-founded a company called Aumni that uses granular level data contained in deal docs to help managers have a much better understanding of their portfolio positions and offer accurate, r...

On this week’s show, we’re lucky to have on Clara Brenner , co-founder of the Urban Innovation Fund which provides seed capital and regulatory support to entrepreneurs shaping the future of our cities. Along with her co-founder Julie Lein , their story is very compelling, from how they raised their first fund (from primarily strategic investors and special interest investors) to how they help foun...

Our guest today is Lindsay Lee , managing member of Authentic Ventures . Lindsay has over 20 years of investing experience in technology. Prior to starting Authentic, he served as CIO for an investment management firm to which he helped grow to almost $1B in assets and also managed a family office where he focused on seed and early-stage investments. He brings a unique combination of operating exp...

One of the key benefits of the shift in the venture landscape has been the ushering in of more diverse funding sources to entrepreneurs. In this week’s Venture Unlocked episode (available both on Spotify and Itunes) I’m excited to bring you Ryan Hoover , founding partner of Weekend Fund . Ryan grew up in Oregon and worked in the gaming industry prior to launching technology product discovery platf...

If you enjoy the show, please subscribe at Itunes or Spotify or if you already have, leave a rating or review, as it really helps us out!! I’m excited to bring you another duo interview, this time with Renata Quintini and Roseanne Wincek , co-founders and managing partners of Renegade Partners . They are without a doubt two of my favorite people in the industry as despite their incredible backgrou...

As the Emerging Manager world continues to grow, so does the importance of providing these managers with key education, resources, and community. Enter Oper8r , founded by Welly Sculley and Winter Mead , which is looking to become the “Y-Combinator for venture fund managers”. Prior to launching Oper8r in 2020, Winter worked as a fund-of-funds manager at both Sapphire Capital and Hall Capital Partn...

On today’s show we have Beezer Clarkson , Managing Director of Sapphire Partners, the LP arm of Sapphire Ventures . Not only does Beezer have tremendous depth and insight into the world of VC, but she catalyzed the #OpenLP movement, which looks to bring transparency within the LP world. She’s someone I’ve known for nearly a decade and one of the smartest minds in the LP world. Beezer began her car...

This episode was particularly a fun one to record in that we moved a bit away from our traditional interview format to more of a water-cooler format with Mac Conwell of RareBreed Ventures and Roy Bahat of Bloomberg Beta for a wide-ranging chat about the state of emerging venture capital.  As many may now, Mac is using the seldom used 506C provision of Reg D to publicly solicit capital for his new...

We have a special treat of an episode this week with one of the top first generation seed investors in Mike Maples, Jr. of Floodgate . After leading two successful startups, Mike started Floodgate (formerly Maples Investment) in 2006, and has since invested on companies such as Twitter, Lyft, Twitch, and Okta.  As is always the case when I speak to Mike, he provided many nuggets of investing, firm...

Remember to subscribe here on substack, Spotify, or Itunes to get notified as soon as new pods are released. Also follow me @samirkaji on Twitter to get my ongoing thoughts on venture. Welcome back to another episode of Venture Unlocked. This week we have Apurva Mehta , Managing Partner at Summit Peak Investments . Apurva and his partner Patrick O’Connor founded Summit Peak in 2018 to invest both...

We’re excited to release our newest episode with another great guest, Jaclyn Freeman Hester , Partner at the Foundry Group . Founded in 2007 by Brad Feld , Jason Mendelson , Ryan McIntyre , and Seth Levine The Foundry Group has $2.4B under management and has invested in startups such as FitBit, SendGrid, Beeswax, and Notion. Several years ago the firm, led by Jaclyn and Lindel Eakman, started inve...

Happy New Year! I’m thrilled to announce that Avidan Ross is our first guest of 2021 Avidan is the Founder and managing partner of Root Ventures and one of the most thoughtful newer seed stage managers in the market. Like many that have appeared on the show, Avidan took a non-traditional path into venture. After graduating from Columbia, Avidan spent time in various engineering roles before becomi...

As we wrap up what’s been perhaps the most interesting and difficult year in modern history, the holidays still remain a time to to spend with family and reflect on the things we all still do have. I’m incredibly grateful for what I do have, and am looking forward to brighter days ahead for all of us as we move to 2021. On our final episode of the year, I’m thrilled to share my conversation with M...

Deena Shakir is a General Partner at Lux Capital , a firm founded in 2000 and has since raised $2.5 billion. Lux invests in emerging science and deep technology startups such as Auris Health, Cerulean, Zoox, and Bright Machines. Deena graduated from Harvard undergrad and began her career as a presidential management fellow at the US Department of State, where she built partnerships with tech compa...

For daily thoughts on the venture landscape, follow me @samirkaji on Twitter. Chris Douvos is the Founder of Ahoy Capital , a boutique Fund of Funds that focuses primarily on allocating into early-stage venture capital funds, while selectively co-investing directly into companies. Chris started his career at Morgan Stanley while still at Yale earning his MBA. From there he worked at Princeton Univ...

In this episode, we speak with Nate Williams, Co-founder and Managing Partner at UNION Labs. Nate Co-founded UNION Labs in 2018 with his partner, Chris Kim while an Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR) at Kleiner Perkins. Nate is a seasoned Operator and angel investor including August Home, where he served as Chief Revenue Officer and Head of Business. Following their acquisition in 2017, he went on to...

In this episode, we speak with Soraya Darabi, Co-Founder and General Partner of TMV.  The firm primarily focuses on investing at the seed stage through Series A and is active in areas such as the future of work, education tech, logistics and mobility, and sustainable solutions. While not specifically diversity-focused, the firm’s portfolio is nearly 2/3rd comprised of female or minority-led compan...

In this episode, we speak to industry veteran Greg Sands, who founded Costanoa Ventures after spending 13 years at Sutter Hill Ventures. Prior to Sutter Hill, Greg serves as the first product manager of Netscape (where he wrote the initial product plan and coined the name “Netscape”). He founded Costanoa Ventures as a boutique early stage firm to solve for a gap he saw between seed stage funds and...

In just a few short years, Fifth Wall Ventures, which focuses on investing in companies in the “built world” economy, has quickly become one of LA’s largest venture firms with over $1.2B in committed LP capital. I met Co-Founder Brendan Wallace when he and Brad Greiwe started Fifth Wall nearly five years ago and the trajectory of the firm has been nothing short of astounding.   Brendan started his...