Alt Goes Mainstream

Welcome back to the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast.

Today’s episode features a pioneer in the sustainable investing world. Bill Orum, who is a Partner at Capricorn Investment Group, has proven that investors can do well and do good at the same time. Bill and his Partners have led Capricorn, a $9B AUM sustainable investment platform serving families, foundations, and institutional investors for over 20 years as a full service OCIO and investment platform.

Capricorn has been an innovator for a number of years and has evolved into a firm with three distinct but related investment strategies: an OCIO, a GP stakes business that backs asset managers focused on sustainable investing, and the Technology Impact Fund, a VC fund that manages both Capricorn capital and outside capital and is focused on backing companies providing climate solutions.

Capricorn has managed to navigate a complex investing strategy — impact or sustainable investing — and the many geopolitical and governmental challenges associated with climate focused investing in order to generate impressive investment results.

Bill and I had a fascinating conversation. We discussed:

* The evolution of impacting investing.

* How and why generating impact and strong financial returns aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive.

* How to find and seed managers.

* Why it’s so important to allocate capital to solving the climate challenge.

* How they’ve helped normalize sustainable investing.

Thanks Bill for coming on the show to share your wisdom and knowledge and for being a pioneer in the sustainable investing space, something so important for the future of our planet.

Join over 2,200 thought leaders from top private markets firms like Blackstone, Goldman Sachs, Apollo, Fidelity, iCapital, Franklin Templeton, and more.

Welcome back to the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast.

On today’s show, we dive into the world of wealth management with one of the industry’s leaders, Haig Ariyan, the CEO of Arax Investment Partners.

Haig has seen it all. He went from someone who grew up in the advisory world as a wealth manager at Dean Witter Reynolds to ultimately becoming President and CEO of Alex Brown, America’s first investment banking firm. At Alex Brown, he oversaw 220 financial advisors and $70 billion in client assets. When Alex Brown sold to Raymond James Financial, Haig became the Head of Global Wealth Solutions. Prior to Alex Brown, Haig was Head of Deutsche Bank Wealth Management in the Americas.

Haig is taking his expertise to build Arax Investment Partners. Together with RedBird Capital, an $8.6 billion private equity firm focused on financial services and sports and media, Arax is partnering with wealth and asset management firms and teams to build a differentiated platform that takes lessons learned and deep experience from running wealth management businesses.

Haig and Arax are well-capitalized and off to a flying start. They’ve already acquired their first few wealth businesses as well as a $1 billion AUM broker-dealer that will give them the foundation to build on as a hybrid platform.

Haig and I had a fascinating conversation about the evolution of wealth management and how alts are playing a big role in shaping the future of wealth.

We discussed:

* What it means to be an advisor.

* Why Modern Portfolio Theory was such an important innovation for the industry.

* Why the hybrid brokerage and advisory model makes sense.

* How the wealth management space will continue to evolve.

* How alts can be a differentiator for advisor practices.

* How to build a platform that incentivizes advisor teams.

Thanks Haig for coming on the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast to share your wealth of wisdom.

Join over 2,200 thought leaders from top private markets firms like Blackstone, Goldman Sachs, Apollo, Fidelity, iCapital, Franklin Templeton, and more.

Welcome back to the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast.

On today’s show, we have a fascinating episode that combines the macro and the micro.

Nimble Partners Founder John Burbank and Partner Ken Wallace come on the show to share their unique perspectives and discuss both the nuances and intricacies of investing in private markets and early-stage venture.

Nimble Partners is a technology investment platform that invests into early-stage fund managers through their manager selection program and as well as direct and co-investments into breakout performers from their fund manager relationships.

John and Ken have had illustrious careers in both public markets and private markets, investing in many of the biggest technology trends and many top early-stage managers over the past 15 years.

John was a top macro investor from founding Passport Capital in 2000, where he was amongst the best hedge fund managers of his time. He’s been investing into early-stage fund managers for the past decade. As a long-time macro investor, he has consistently focused on sectors and investments where technology can be disruptive and accelerate change. He’s also an investor in the Golden State Warriors, the championship winning NBA team.

Ken joined John to build Nimble after a stellar career at Industry Ventures, backing a number of emerging managers, most notably Chris Sacca’s first-time Lowercase Capital fund, which at over 200x+ returns, was amongst the best performing venture funds in history. At Industry Ventures, he specialized in hybrid fund of funds strategy, originating, valuing, and managing primary fund commitments, early secondary LP investments, and direct co-investments.

We had a fascinating conversation that spanned a number of topics:

* Why this is not the end of venture capital — and why the winners are still to going to win and win big.

* How global macro impacts venture capital.

* The framework that John and Ken use to evaluate technology trends and emerging managers.

* How the “portfolio manager” model can be applied to venture capital.

* How information is a huge edge.

* Why duration is the most important thing an investor can have.

Thanks John and Ken for coming on the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast to share your wisdom.

Join over 2,000 thought leaders from top private markets firms like Blackstone, Goldman Sachs, Apollo, Fidelity, iCapital, Franklin Templeton, and more.

Welcome back to the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast.

Recently, I had the pleasure of hosting a live podcast at the Allocate Beyond Summit, where I interviewed Avy Stein and Jordan Stein from Cresset.

Allocate’s founders Samir Kaji and Hana Yang brought together a fascinating and thoughtful group of allocators, family offices, and VCs for an engaging two days of discussion about private markets.

At the event, I interviewed father and son duo from Cresset. Avy Stein, the Co-Founder and Co-Chairman of Cresset, and Jordan Stein, Director of Private Capital at Cresset Partners, joined me on stage to discuss how their firm has achieved astronomical growth over the past few years, largely due to their business building acumen and in part powered by their focus on private markets.

Cresset is a client and family-owned award-winning multi-family office with over $40 billion in AUM that was built by founders and private equity professionals.

We had a fascinating discussion that covered everything from how and why Avy and Jordan built Cresset to the evolution of the wealth management space and how private markets is playing a large role in that.

Thanks Avy and Jordan for sharing your wisdom and thanks Samir and Hana for hosting such a fantastic event.

Join thought leaders from top private markets firms like Blackstone, Goldman Sachs, Apollo, Fidelity, iCapital, Franklin Templeton, and more.

Welcome back to the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast.

Today’s episode dives into an important and growing part of the alts ecosystem: how investors can access and invest into alternatives through their retirement funds.

We have Eric Satz, the CEO of Alto, a self-directed IRA custodian, with us today to discuss how he’s on a mission to provide everyday Americans with the same investment opportunity long favored by institutional investors.

Alto provides custody for a wide array of alternative assets, including private companies, real estate, crypto, loans, and securitized collectibles. Alto has streamlined the process for companies, funds, and SEC registered investment platforms to include IRA investors in their offerings. They’ve partnered with firms across the alts space, including AngelList, Coinbase, EquityZen, Republic, Masterworks, and others, to enable investors to invest into private markets with their IRA.

Eric is a serial entrepreneur and former investment banker. He worked at DLJ / Credit Suisse First Boston before co-founding Currenex (acquired by State Street for $564M), Plumgood Food, and Tennessee Community Ventures. His passion for entrepreneurship led him to serve on the Board of the Tennessee Valley Authority from 2015 to 2018 and he teaches an entrepreneurship class to high school students.

On today’s podcast, Eric teaches us all about the merits of a self-directed IRA. He shares why and how it makes sense to use an IRA to invest into private markets investments and how he’s taking lessons learned from prior IRA businesses to build Alto.

Thanks Eric for coming on the show to share your knowledge and passion for alternatives.

Join thought leaders from top private markets firms like Blackstone, Goldman Sachs, Apollo, Fidelity, iCapital, Franklin Templeton, and more.

Welcome back to the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast.

Wealth managers are increasingly participating in private markets, and for good reason. Today’s podcast is with an expert allocator in the alts space, Phil Huber, who has not only been actively investing in private markets as the CIO of $18B Savant Wealth, but has also authored a book about how advisors can approach private markets.

This podcast is a must-listen for any allocator, particularly in the wealth management space, as Phil shares actionable insights for how LPs can go about building a strategy for investing in private markets and how GPs and alternative asset managers can work with the private wealth space.

Phil is the CIO of $18B Savant Wealth. He comes onto the show to discuss how he approaches allocating to alts on behalf of their clients. Phil has spent much of the past 15 years thinking deeply about alts. The has culminated in him authoring a book, The Allocator’s Edge, A Modern Guide to Alternative Investments and the Future of Diversification.

Phil is a Certified Financial Planner professional, has attained his Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation, and is a member of the CFA Society of Chicago. Phil has been featured in a number of notable media outlets, including the WSJ, New York Times, and Bloomberg TV, and Phil recently won RIA Intel’s CIO of the Year award.

He produces his own investing blog, bps and pieces, in addition to authoring his book.

Thanks Phil for coming on the show to share your wisdom.

Join thought leaders from top private markets firms like Blackstone, Goldman Sachs, Apollo, Fidelity, iCapital, Franklin Templeton, and more.

Welcome back to the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast.

Today we peer into one of the most fascinating companies in private markets, AngelList, and talk with AngelList’s CEO Avlok Kohli.

AngelList is building the operating system for modern startups and tech innovation, and as such, they see themselves as building a company of companies. AngelList has had almost 19,000 startups raise capital from syndicates and funds on their platform, they support over $15B in assets, and 40% of all US unicorns have had a GP invest in them through AngelList.

To date, AngelList's GP business has largely been known for its marketplace and fund admin product. That changes this week when they begin to release a series of software products available to any venture firm, even if they don't run a fund on AngelList, which automates and adds intelligence to the most onerous and ambiguous parts of running a fund. It all starts with the most comprehensive and tailored banking product, built specifically for venture funds.

Avlok has an impressive background as a tech founder and operator and gives us an insight into how AngelList is building their business.

Avlok is the CEO at AngelList and the Founder and CEO of LegalReach. He is also the former Founder and CEO at Fairy. He created Fastbite, a food delivery service, which was acquired by Square a few months after launch and was integrated into Square’s delivery product as Fastbite by Caviar.

Avlok and I had a fascinating discussion about how AngelList’s product driven culture has enabled them to evolve with customer needs and build all sorts of products and services for GPs, startups, and LPs. We discuss:

* What makes AngelList a n-of-1 company.

* How his experience at Square has informed his company building strategy at AngelList.

* How AngelList's data can track relative health of companies and what will make a “sustainable unicorn.”

* Why it’s almost impossible to compare them to a single traditional financial services company given the breadth and depth of their product offerings.

Thanks Avlok for coming on the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast to share your wisdom and experiences and for all the work you're doing to power private markets.

Join thought leaders from top private markets firms like Blackstone, Goldman Sachs, Apollo, Fidelity, iCapital, Franklin Templeton, and more.

Welcome back to the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast.

Today we talk with John Avery, an executive who is leading the charge for private markets, Web3, and tokenization at one of the largest publicly traded financial services companies, FIS.

FIS is one of the world’s leading financial services companies. Over 95% of the world’s banks work with FIS. Their asset management technology processes $40 trillion on an annual basis. And their products and services reach 20,000 clients globally. In the alts space, they work with the majority of the world’s largest private equity funds and alternative asset managers.

FIS has a focused initiative on Web3 and digital assets. John is responsible for that initiative. John’s background spans both technology, where he was a developer in the 1990s, and financial markets, where he built capital markets software that was acquired by SunGard, which was acquired by FIS.

John believes in the infrastructure promise of blockchain technology and how it can create efficiencies in private markets, so we had a fascinating conversation as we delved into how digital assets can transform private markets and how a set of evolutionary changes might deliver transformation on a revolutionary scale.

Thanks John for coming on the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast to share your wisdom and experiences.

Join thought leaders from private market firms like Blackstone, Goldman Sachs, Apollo, Fidelity, iCapital, Franklin Templeton, and more.

Welcome back to the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast.

On today’s episode, we talk with Seyonne Kang, a Partner at StepStone, which acquired her former firm, Greenspring Associates. StepStone is a global private markets firm that provides customized investment and advisory solutions to some of the world’s most sophisticated investors.

StepStone has a total capital responsibility of $602B of assets and has $134B of assets under management across the spectrum of private markets investments, giving them incredible purview into the current private markets landscape.

At StepStone, Seyonne is a member of the private equity team, where she focuses on venture capital fund and growth equity investments.

Prior to StepStone, Seyonne was a Partner at Greenspring Associates, a venture capital and growth equity firm that merged with StepStone in 2021. She spent the 7 years prior in investment management, with a focus on private capital, working at Jasper Ridge Partners and Commonfund. She also spent a decade on Wall Street in institutional equities.

Seyonne and I had a fascinating conversation about the current state of venture capital and what it means for LPs and GPs. We discussed:

* How GPs can weather the storm.

* How LPs can navigate the current venture environment.

* Advice for emerging managers.

* Why secondaries might be an interesting investment opportunity right now.

* How newer allocators to private markets can approach investing into venture and growth.

* Why subject matter expertise matters for fund managers.

* Why Seyonne is excited about innovation and venture in the US in the current market.

Thanks Seyonne for coming on the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast to share your wisdom and experiences.

Join thought leaders from private market firms like Blackstone, Goldman Sachs, Apollo, Fidelity, iCapital, Franklin Templeton, and more.

Welcome back to the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast.

On today’s episode, we have Sheel Mohnot, the co-founder and Partner of FinTech VC fund Better Tomorrow Ventures.

Sheel is a career fintech investor and operator. He has built Better Tomorrow Ventures into an active pre-seed and seed stage fintech VC that has grown to over $225M AUM. Prior to founding BTV, he was the GP at 500 FinTech, where he was the first institutional investor in Albert, Kin, Indio, Chipper Cash, Ethic, and others. He was also an early investor in Stripe and Flexport. He also co-founded two fintech startups – FeeFighters, which was acquired by GroupOn, and Innovative Auctions.

Sheel and I had a fascinating conversation about the evolution of FinTech, how to build and scale an emerging manager, the challenges of raising a first time fund, and why smaller funds can outperform.

We didn’t have a chance to discuss the experience of his Taco Bell wedding in the metaverse, but congrats Sheel and Amruta on your marriage and wishing you happiness in both life and the metaverse.

Thanks Sheel for coming on the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast to share your wisdom and experiences.

Join thought leaders from top private markets firms like Blackstone, Goldman Sachs, Apollo, Fidelity, iCapital, Franklin Templeton, and more.