Welcome to the Allocate Podcast, an interview and educational content series to help investors learn and navigate investing in alternatives. Join us to hear from leading founders, fund managers, and allocators on the latest trends and the keys to successfully participating in the private markets.
For our third episode, we’re delighted to have Allocate’s CEO, Samir Kaji, host three experienced institutional venture LPs - Chris Douvos of Ahoy Capital, Beezer Clarkson of Sapphire Partners, and Guy Perelmuter of GRIDS Capital. This was an inciteful conversation about the dramatic shift in the market over the past couple of years. Together, they address the impact of the current market on emerging managers, what managers can do to navigate this market, and the role of secondaries.
About Beezer Clarkson:
Beezer Clarkson is Managing Director of Sapphire Partners, the LP arm of Sapphire Ventures. She began her career in financial services over 20 years ago at Morgan Stanley in its global infrastructure group. Since, she has held various direct and indirect venture investment roles, as well as operational roles in software business development at Hewlett Packard. Prior to joining Sapphire in 2012, Beezer managed the day-to-day operations of the Draper Fisher Jurvetson Global Network.
Additionally, she is a judge for 100&Change, a MacArthur Foundation competition that provides funding to solve critical challenges of our time. In 2014, she was named to the Forty Over 40 list of women to watch.
About Chris Douvos:
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 University’s endowment fund where he got his start in venture before moving on to The Investment Fund for Foundations (TIFF). At TIFF he decided that the right strategy was to make “heroic investments” and invest in very early-stage, and often unproven managers.
About Guy Perelmuter:
Guy Perelmuter is the Co-Founder and CEO of GRIDS Capital. Guy began his career in Banking as Chief Risk Officer at Banco Pactual (acquired by UBS), one of the largest banks in Latin America. He went to Vinci Partners, an investing platform for alternative investments in 2009 as Chief Risk Officer. He and his partner, Isabelle, Co-Founded GRIDS Capital in 2016.
He received a BS in Computer Engineering and an MS in AI from Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro.
In this episode, we discuss:
(02:51) Venture is _______
(06:46) Outlook for emerging managers
(09:42) Why it’s so difficult to raise a fund two right now
(13:01) Is new money and funders in venture a net positive
(16:16) Why emerging managers are still important for LPs
(21:46) What they look for in a fund one investment
(22:48) The decision to stop investing in grownups and look to emerging managers
(25:24) How GPs get mentored and how information flows to them
(27:23) Peer pressure amongst GPs to grow their fund size
(31:53) How managers are recalibrating their funds to the current market
(35:12) The role of secondaries
(39:49) Why Venture is an unsophisticated asset class
(44:29) How do you get institutional investors
Special LP roundtable: What LPs are thinking about in Venture with Beezer Clarkson, Chris Douvos, and Guy Perelmuter