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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 in emerging venture funds, and alongside them through direct co-investing. As you’ll hear on the interview, they are very comfortable and excited about backing solo-GP funds.

Summit Peak has backed such solo emerging managers such as Josh Buckley, Raymond Tonsing, and Lachy Groom while making direct investments in Airtable, Virta Health, and Sourcegraph.

Prior to starting Summit Peak, Apurva and Patrick led venture investments for the Cook’s Children Health System.

In this episode we discuss the following topics:

03:36    Why Summit Peak was created to investing in funds

05:52    What it’s like trying to raise a fund of funds.

07:04    Why they though investing in next-gen managers was the right approach.

09:01    The big risk they took at the start of their fund.

10:29    The framework they use to evaluate GPs to invest in.

14:07    Why they believe network can be a killer competitive edge.

16:41    What they view as the intangible factors GPs must have and how try and measure it.

19:20    How they think about founder reference calls.

22:42    The importance of speed in their diligence process.

24:34    How a podcast interview and LinkedIn led to one of their best deals.

29:08   Thoughts on the solo GP model.

34:07    What is an LPAC, and what does it do?

37:54    The pace of new emerging managers entering the market.

44:02    His biggest piece of advice for newer managers.

Mentioned in this episode:

Cook’s Children

I’d love to know what you took away from my conversations with Apurva Mehta. Follow me @SamirKaji and give me your insights and questions with the hashtag #ventureunlocked. If you’d like to be considered as a guest or have someone you’d like to hear from (GP or LP), drop me a direct message on Twitter.

Podcast Production support provided by Agent Bee Agency

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