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 second episode, we’re delighted to have Allocate’s CEO, Samir Kaji, host John Avirett, Partner of StepStone Group, a leading global wealth manager of over $140B in assets across 26 individual practices. This was an inciteful conversation about the evolution of the secondaries market, from its history to the current landscape. John and Samir also dive into how venture secondaries work in practice and - with the amount of macro change we've seen over the last two years - why secondaries have been a popular area for investors.

About John Avirett:John Avirett is a Partner and member of the venture capital and growth equity investment committee at StepStone Group. He previously served as a General Partner at Greenspring Associates, which merged with StepStone in 2021. John’s responsibilities include sourcing and due diligence efforts for direct and fund investments on a primary and secondary basis. His prior investments include: Chewy.com, Roblox, WalkMe, Scopley, Woowa, GrubHub, Workfront, Nutanix, and UserTesting among others.

In this episode we discuss:(01:58) John’s journey to the secondary market(08:56) How market conditions have driven factors in the secondary market over the last few years(13:44) Mechanics of the liquidity windows and capital calls(19:29) How valuations differ in Venture Secondaries versus traditional PE secondaries(22:35) Factors driving the need for liquidity in the venture market(30:29) How emerging managers can sell in a structured way outside of later stage rounds

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 inaugural episode, we’re delighted to have Allocate’s CEO, Samir Kaji, host our first guest, Robert Picard, Head of Alternative Investments at Hightower Advisors, a top RIA managing over $110B in assets across 128 individual practices.

This was an insightful conversation about the growing trend of high-net-worth investors investing in the private markets, the things that have led to this wave over the last decade, and Robert's view on how he expects the markets to evolve in the future years across all categories, including private equity and venture capital.

About Robert Picard:Robert Picard is Head of Alternative Investments at Hightower Advisors. He has been responsible for building 5 multi-billion-dollar alternative investment platforms at First Republic Private Wealth Management, The Carlyle Group / Rock Creek, Optima Fund Management, RBC Capital Markets, and State Street / InfraHedge. Robert has performed due diligence on private market investment strategies since 1997 and visited over 1,000 firms domestically and globally during that period.

Robert did undergrad at College De Geneve and studied Law at University of Geneve.

In this episode we discuss:(01:55) Robert’s career path to Alternative Investing(04:43) How Robert defines an Alternative Investment(07:32) What has driven the growth of the Alternative Investment market in the last 15 years(09:53) Factors holding back retail investors from diving into Alternative Investments(14:47) The speed of money and excitement around investing in the modern markets(20:16) The spectrum of advice from wealth advisors around portfolio construction(22:58) Types of returns Alternative Investors have seen as a premium for the risk and illiquidity of funds(25:53) How higher interest rates will affect Alternative Investments moving forward(29:02) What it will take for individual investors to enter venture capital at scale(33:30) Robert’s view on the next 10 years in the tech space(37:14) The narrowing gap between public and private companies(39:59) What the future holds over the next decade for Alternative Investments and Private Wealth