In this Episode

Courtney McCrea spent more than a decade watching the behemoths of venture capital grow too large for their own good. As fund sizes ballooned and general partners grew wealthier, she noticed a persistent paradox: returns were becoming increasingly muted. In 2019, Courtney saw the signal in the noise. The true alpha no longer resided with the multi-billion-dollar “asset gatherers,” but with the hungry, scrappy, and often overlooked emerging managers.

As a co-founder and managing partner of Recast Capital, Courtney has shifted from being a traditional allocator to a “New Builder” in the asset management space. Her firm operates with a dual-track mission: a fund of funds that backs top-performing emerging managers and a productized support system designed to institutionalize the next generation of venture talent. For Courtney, the goal isn’t just to write checks—it’s to build an ecosystem where diversity of thought and experience drives superior returns.

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Precision Over Scale: Redefining True Venture Returns

Courtney distinguishes between two very different businesses currently operating under the “venture” umbrella. On one side are the large aggregators, firms like Andreessen Horowitz or Sequoia, which she describes as competitors to Blackstone or TPG (large asset managers). These firms prioritize stability and the ability to absorb $500 million checks from massive institutional LPs. However, with that scale comes a shift in the risk-return profile. When a firm manages $28 billion, a 1.8x return is a success; for Courtney, that isn’t venture capital.

True venture returns are generated by firms that stay “right-sized.” Courtney focuses on managers who maintain the discipline to invest at the early stages where 10x or fund-returning outcomes are still possible. By backing these smaller, specialized funds, Recast provides institutional investors with a diversified pipeline to the blue-chip firms of tomorrow. Courtney argues that the market saturation at the top has created a vacuum of opportunity for specialist managers who possess the specific “founder-market fit” required to navigate sectors like artificial intelligence.

Systemic Resilience: Productizing the Playbook

The traditional LP/GP relationship is often transactional and siloed, but Courtney and her co-founder, Sarah, sought to break that mold by productizing the LP experience. Through their “Accelerate” program, Recast has supported 156 managers, offering a 12-month cohort-based curriculum that covers everything from fund formation to executive coaching. This framework recognizes that being an emerging manager is an inherently lonely endeavor, and that a cohesive community can serve as a powerful risk mitigation tool.

By providing services like AI-driven operational audits and liquidity solutions, Courtney is helping managers build firms, not just funds. This “skin in the game” approach goes beyond capital; it involves a year-long engagement with a manager’s fundraising and development process. Courtney believes that by professionalizing the operations of these emerging firms, Recast effectively de-risks the asset class for other institutional allocators who might otherwise be wary of the “first-time fund” label.

“If you have a tiger by the tail and you are a seed-stage investor, and that company is now a fund-returning position for you—lock that in. Get your invested capital off the table and play with house money.”

The Human Algorithm: Betting on the Decision Maker

When Courtney evaluates a potential manager, she isn’t just looking at a track record; she is looking for a “good community actor.” In the long-term marriage of an LP/GP relationship, alignment of character is as critical as alignment of interest. Courtney utilizes an “off-the-books” vetting process, tapping into a network of over 150 managers to gauge how a GP interacts with their peers. The “hidden signal” she seeks is a manager who lifts up others—someone who is active, engaged, and participatory.

This human-centric lens extends to how managers pitch. Courtney often finds that emerging GPs spend too much time defending their thesis and not enough time emphasizing their unique qualifications. She looks for “GP-fund fit”—the specific life experiences, networks, and points of view that make a person the only one who should be making a specific set of decisions. In a market where anyone can write a check, Courtney bets on the decision-makers who have the discipline to be succinct, the patience to allow their wins to be absorbed, and the humility to sell when the valuation outpaces the reality.

The Future Outlook

As the venture landscape enters a new era of liquidity constraints and AI-driven disruption, Courtney remains focused on the fundamental math of the asset class. While the secondary market has matured into a viable path for mid-market companies to provide DPI, she maintains that venture capital cannot be timed. The “New Builders” who remain in the market through these cycles—those who focus on quality over voice and precision over scale—are the ones who will define the next decade of performance. Courtney’s work at Recast ensures that when the next financial cycle peaks, it will be the right-sized, diverse, and operationally sound managers who are standing at the top.

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In this Episode

Octavio Sandoval is not interested in the charity of venture capital; he is interested in its inefficiencies. As a principal at Oakland-based Illumen Capital, Octavio is helping lead a charge to prove that bias in asset management is not merely a social failure—it is a data blind spot that leaves alpha on the table.

Octavio’s trajectory from a founding student at a KIPP charter school in the South Bronx to the halls of Choate Rosemary Hall, Cornell University, and MIT Sloan provides him with a vantage point few institutional allocators possess. After years in capital markets and private wealth, Octavio realized that his CFA charter was better utilized uncovering overlooked value than simply compounding existing wealth. At Illumen, he oversees a strategy that combines a fund-of-funds model with a surgical direct co-investment arm, all underpinned by a proprietary bias-reduction curriculum.

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The Alpha of the Blind Spot

The venture capital market remains stubbornly exclusive, but Octavio views this through the lens of market friction. Illumen’s primary thesis is that inherent biases cloud investment decisions, leading to a misallocation of capital. By requiring portfolio GPs to undergo a bias-reduction curriculum, Illumen essentially installs a psychological patch for the venture industry’s operating system.

Since Octavio joined in 2021, Illumen’s assets under management have tripled, growing from approximately $88 million to nearly $300 million. This scaling serves as a quantitative validation of the firm’s “Bias Alpha” thesis. In a tightening liquidity environment, institutional allocators are increasingly looking for managers who have a proprietary edge in sourcing; Illumen’s edge is the ability to see what the rest of the market is conditioned to ignore.

The Logic of Network Underwriting

While Illumen began as a pure fund-of-funds, it has evolved into a multi-vertical powerhouse through its co-investment strategy. Octavio leverages the deep underwriting of his portfolio GPs to identify high-potential founders, particularly women and underrepresented leaders who receive less than 2 percent of all venture capital.

“We read every quarterly investor report and attend every annual general meeting,” Octavio says. The strategy is built on signal detection: when a trusted seed-stage fund takes its full pro rata in a Series A round priced by a strong external lead, it creates a de-risked entry point for Illumen. This “network underwriting” allows the firm to deploy capital with the speed of a direct investor while maintaining the diversified safety of an institutional allocator.

“There is an old adage: When you ask for money, you get advice, and when you ask for advice, you get money. The best time to build a relationship with an LP is when you are not actively raising. It demonstrates coachability and allows the LP to feel invested in your journey long before a check is signed.”

The GP Unit Economic

In Octavio’s framework, the most critical metric for an emerging manager is not just a track record; it is the GP commitment. He views “skin in the game” as the venture equivalent of unit economics. For Octavio, a manager’s willingness to commit their own net worth to a fund is the ultimate signal of alignment and resilience.

While the firm remains empathetic to managers from non-traditional backgrounds who may lack personal wealth, they utilize creative structures like management fee offsets to ensure that the “marriage” between LP and GP is built on a foundation of shared risk. It is a philosophy that prioritizes “scrappy DNA” over pedigree, looking for managers who have a history of overcoming the odds—a qualitative metric Octavio knows intimately from his own upbringing.

The 15-Year Marriage

As venture capital shifts away from the “grow at all costs” mentality of 2021, Octavio is looking for builders who understand that this is a relationship business, not a transactional one. He views the LP/GP bond as a 10- to 15-year marriage that requires radical transparency; what he calls “the good, the bad, and the ugly.”

For the next class of builders, Octavio’s approach serves as a blueprint for the future of institutional investing: a blend of rigorous quantitative signals and a deep, intuitive understanding of human resilience. By focusing on sustainable unit economics and the “fight” of the investment thesis, Octavio is not just uncovering new founders, he’s re-architecting how the industry values them.

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In This Episode

Regina Green shares her journey from her upbringing in Georgia to her extensive career at Goldman Sachs, where she navigated through various roles during tumultuous market conditions. She discusses the origins of Catalyze, a platform aimed at supporting underrepresented fund managers through their Fund Fellowship and the launch of GP Runway Fund, which provides non-dilutive capital to help them build sustainable firms. Regina emphasizes the importance of understanding the unique challenges faced by emerging managers and offers valuable insights for those looking to succeed in the finance industry.

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Key Quotes

“My parents also instilled the value of education as the one thing no one can take away from you.”

“I now operate with the assumption that the person across the table sees the world differently, and I’m curious to learn what I can from them.”

“Lead with what makes you different. The thing that will win an LP over is your unique story and the thing that differentiates you from the pack. Lean into that.”

“I wanted to find a way to connect my passion for finance to something with a deeper purpose.”

About Catalyze

Founded in 2022, Catalyze is a national platform providing Capital Entrepreneurs — underrepresented and innovative investors – with the capital, capacity building, and community they need to build enduring firms. The company launched GP Runway Fund to provide flexible working capital loans to firms raising funds 1-3.Catalyze offers firm-building support through its Fund Fellowship program, Capital Solutions to bridge financing gaps for GPs, and Investment Consulting Services for LPs backing the next generation of investment firms. They partner with Capital Entrepreneurs and Allocators across private markets to improve the flow of capital to overlooked businesses.

Who is Regina Green, and what shaped your early life and career?

A lot of my life’s context is built around this idea of being just a little bit different. I grew up in the suburbs of Atlanta, but my parents weren’t southerners. My dad is from Brooklyn, New York, and my mom is from a tiny town in Southern Illinois also coincidentally, named Brooklyn.

They were also a bit older than was typical for parents in the 80s, having been born in the 40s and 50s. They grew up in a very different cultural and legal world than I did. For example, my dad was recruited to IBM through a partnership with the National Urban League right after the Civil Rights Act passed. This history definitely informs how I think about diversity and inclusion today.

Both my parents worked at IBM for most of their careers, for 30 and 40 years, respectively. This idea of longevity at one institution was normal for me. When people are shocked I spent 17 years at Goldman Sachs, my reaction is, “I barely made it half as long as my parents!”

Between my parents’ backgrounds, their large families (my dad was one of nine, my mom one of seven), and me being an only child, I learned from a young age that people see the world through very different lenses. I hope this shaped a deep sense of curiosity and empathy. I now operate with the assumption that the person across the table sees the world differently, and I’m curious to learn what I can from them. This is vital in my work, where I’m evaluating potential fund managers. You’re investing in a “blind pool,” so you have to understand how their lived experience and unique perspective informs their investment thesis.

My parents also instilled the value of education as the one thing no one can take away from you. I ended up getting a scholarship to NYU, which wasn’t a long-held dream, but a last-minute decision. I think moving to New York without any preconceived notions helped me assimilate really well. I majored in Math and Economics, interned at Goldman Sachs, and fell in love with macroeconomics.

I started full-time in 2007 in sales and trading, which was a chaotic time to join Wall Street. My first couple of years were insane: watching competitors cease to exist was stressful, but it was also an incredible learning opportunity. It “leveled the playing field” because everyone, even senior folks, was coming in asking, “What’s the Fed going to do today?”

After that role shrank due to market changes, I moved to the Conflicts Resolution Group for 10 years. Our team was the traffic cop, reviewing every significant investment or advisory assignment to ensure the firm avoided conflicts of interest or reputational risk. It was a unique, high-level seat where I got to learn about every single business line at the bank.

You built your adult life in New York instead of returning South. What kept you there?

It’s true, a lot of my friends have moved back home. I always say New York is where I learned how to be an adult. You quickly learn you can only buy as many groceries as you can physically carry home!

But I love that it’s a surprisingly communal city. When you’re walking everywhere, taking public transportation, and spending time in places like Central Park, you feel a real sense of community. That feeling was amplified during COVID, seeing the city band together.

I’ve built deep roots here, including a strong church community. You need that sense of community, or the stress and energy of New York will overwhelm you. It’s also a place with unparalleled access to theater, entertainment, and, most importantly, a diversity of industries and perspectives. You can always pivot or learn something new here.

Plus, it’s a place people love to visit, and with three major airports, it’s easy to get anywhere.

What compelled you to pivot to Launch with GS during the 2020 pandemic?

In early 2020, I was the COO for the interest rate trading business. My job became figuring out how to keep our trading desk resilient during a global pandemic. It was one of the hardest seasons of my career, trying to solve an unprecedented problem: How does a trading floor, which relies on people yelling across the room, operate from home?

Once we settled into a remote-work steady state, I was watching the news, overwhelmed by the fact that people who looked like me were serving as essential workers, risking their lives, while I was safe at home.

It caused a lot of reflection. I love finance, but I felt the industry wasn’t serving people as broadly as it could. So many of my friends hate talking about it. I wanted to find a way to connect my passion for finance to something with a deeper purpose.

As I was exploring the venture and growth equity world, an internal role at Goldman’s Launch with GS initiative opened up. They had been focused on gender equity and were expanding to include founders and fund managers of color. In the interview, they told me, “This is a new thing. Nobody knows how to do it. We’re going to figure it out together.“

It wasn’t just an investing role; it was a chance to build an ecosystem and infrastructure from scratch. Goldman didn’t really have an emerging manager practice, so my job was to be a bridge between the bank’s massive platform and this new ecosystem we were trying to support. It appealed to the creative problem-solver in me.

What led you from Goldman to joining Catalyze?

At Goldman, we successfully executed on the firm’s $1 billion commitment over five years, and then the program was concluded. From everything I had learned, I knew the ecosystem still desperately needed support, particularly for emerging fund managers.

You can’t just decide to back diverse managers if you don’t also have an intentional way to incorporate new managers. It’s not like there’s a huge pool of underrepresented managers who have somehow already built institutional-quality firms while being underfunded. That infrastructure needs to be built, and that’s the gap I saw. I wanted to work with an organization tackling this challenge.

Why is it so much harder to underwrite an emerging manager versus an established firm?

Institutional allocators (like pension funds or banks) focus heavily on a repeatable track record. A first-time fund, by definition, doesn’t have that data.

But it goes beyond that. Allocators also have a fiduciary duty, so they need to see that you have the professional controls, processes, and service providers in place to handle their money. They’re asking, “Are my funds going into the right accounts? Are you complying with all regulations?”

All of that operational infrastructure—legal, compliance, fund administration—costs a lot of money and requires a meaningful team, which new managers just don’t have on day one.

How did you connect with the Catalyze team, and how are you helping emerging managers scale?

Historically, new venture managers would start with small “friends and family” funds, then raise from high-net-worth individuals, then family offices, and then finally graduate to institutions. That process, while slow, is important because it gives the manager time to learn and build their systems.

In 2020, many institutions wanted to short-circuit that process to improve representation, but they either struggled to find satisfactory managers or were trying to invest without all of the typical infrastructure being in place.

Catalyze was founded to provide that operational support and technical assistance. We’re not here to teach someone how to be a great investor; we’re here to bridge the information gap. We help talented managers avoid costly mistakes and build the firm infrastructure that institutional LPs (Limited Partners) actually care about.

I got connected to the Catalyze team (Maegan and Brendan) through two separate mutual friends around the same time. I joined as a consultant to help build out a new product, the GP Runway Fund.

We built it to solve the “chicken and the egg” problem: You need firm infrastructure to entice LPs. You need LP commitments to get management fees. You need management fees to pay for the infrastructure. Underrepresented managers who don’t have personal wealth or wealthy networks get stuck in this loop.

What exactly is the GP Runway Fund, and how is it different from a typical LP investment or a GP stake?

The GP Runway Fund is our first investment strategy. We provide flexible working capital loans, typically $100,000 to $500,000, directly to the manager’s management company.

Unlike an LP investment, which goes into the fund to make investments, this capital is to build the firm itself. The loans can be used for formation and growth expenses such as hiring, engaging service providers, and fundraising costs.

And critically, unlike GP staking, our capital is entirely non-dilutive. We are not taking any ownership in the firm or the GP (General Partner). We believe diluting a manager’s ownership is counterproductive to our mission of closing the wealth gaps and increasing access to capital in historically overlooked communities.

You mentioned GP staking. Why can that be detrimental to a new manager?

When you’re just starting, selling 20% or 30% of your management company for a check might seem cheap because the company isn’t worth much yet and you aren’t required to make cash payments early on.

The problem is, if you’re successful, if you go on to raise multiple funds and generate significant carry (investment profits), that 20-30% stake becomes massively expensive over the life of your firm.

More importantly, it can create incentive misalignment. An LP’s interests are aligned with the GP’s: make good investments, and everyone wins. The management fee isn’t what makes you wealthy; the carry is the real incentive. If you’ve given away a huge chunk of your firm and your carry, it impairs how much you’re tied to that investment performance, which can be a concern for future LPs.

What are the most common use cases for the GP Runway Fund?

We often say you need at least $150,000 just to get started. That’s just for legal counsel to draft the documents, to engage basic service providers, or travel to meet LPs, and it doesn’t include a salary for the GP.

For Fund 1 managers, the capital is used for those initial formation costs, hiring the first team members (like a platform or operations lead), and travel.

For Fund 2 and 3 managers, it’s often about scaling. They need to hire more people to manage a larger fund. They also need to invest in more robust, institutional-grade infrastructure, like cybersecurity and compliance, which LPs may ask to see before they commit capital.

We want managers to see this as strategic growth capital to invest in their firm’s execution capacity.

What’s one common mistake you see new managers make?

They don’t run their fundraising like a sales process.

There are many different types of allocators, and they all care about different things and invest at different stages. Too many managers approach their “later close” LPs (the big institutions) way too early, before they have the initial traction and capital raised that those LPs need to see.

You have to qualify your LPs and run a disciplined process, just like you’d advise your startups to do with their customers.

What’s a great tactic you wish more managers would use?

I recently saw a manager in our network bring a founder from one of their portfolio companies to an in-person LP meeting.

It was brilliant. It makes the GP’s strategy feel concrete and real. It’s also a creative and different way to provide an update. LPs are in meetings all day, and they told the manager, “A GP has never done this before.” It was memorable.

What’s your final piece of advice for fund managers?

Lead with what makes you different. Yes, there are basic, fundamental best practices you must have in place. But at the end of the day, the thing that will win an LP over is your unique story and the thing that differentiates you from the pack. Lean into that.

How can people learn more about Catalyze?

You can definitely reach out to me on LinkedIn.

You can also visit our website: catalyze.community. We have an inquiry form right on the site where GPs can express interest in the GP Runway Fund and learn more about the Fund Fellowship. We’re always happy to chat with GPs, even if it’s early in their fund-building journey.

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More by Uncovered Media

In this Episode

You’ll learn about Sabrina’s personal journey from a STEM background to impact investing, a path shaped by her experiences in Teach for America and at Oxford. She details her core philosophy that economic systems must be fixed to allow communities to thrive and that those with lived experience are best equipped to solve complex problems. You’ll get an inside look at Spring Point Partners’ “whole toolkit” approach, which combines grants and flexible, risk-tolerant investments to advance social justice, and learn how the firm navigates the tension between social impact and financial returns. Finally, she shares her candid perspective on AI, noting her concerns about its effect on startup defensibility and the mentorship pipeline, and provides actionable advice for General Partners on managing long LP timelines.

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Key Quotes

“Talent is distributed evenly, but opportunity is not.”

“People who have the lived experience are going to be the best people to solve that problem.”

“I think I always understood at an innate level the power that financial access, inclusion, or education really provides.”

“Your impact should match your return profile.”

“I like to operate with the idea that honesty is kindness.”

About Spring Point Partners

Spring Point Partners is a social impact organization based in Philadelphia dedicated to fostering community-driven change and advancing social justice. The firm takes a collaborative approach by investing in transformative leaders and solutions, using grant-making, impact investing, and organizational development to support its partners. Guided by a commitment to equity, Spring Point focuses on key areas including leadership, economic justice, youth development, and animal welfare.

What led you to the intersection of “doing good” and impact investing?

I grew up in Oklahoma City, and I think that really shaped my worldview. Oklahoma’s economy is pretty one-note; it’s really focused on one major industry, which is energy, oil and gas. That has a lot of pros and cons for the state; it’s kind of a boom-and-bust economy.

When I went to undergrad at Oklahoma State, I was a STEM major. I always actually thought I was going to be in STEM, but through that degree program, I started to notice all these trends about my home state around the lack of educational access, in particular for people of color and for women in STEM fields.

I became really passionate about “How do we shift this? How do we fix this? How do we get more representation in science and in industries that I think are going to be really high-paying jobs in the future?” That led me to TFA (Teach for America) and then long-term into business school and the work that I do now.

At the end of the day, money is a power and a tool. How do we better leverage and flow these capital systems to make sure that we’re maximizing value for the most people?

What did your time with Teach for America (TFA) teach you?

I taught high school science; biology, chemistry, and physics. Teach for America really opened my eyes in a lot of ways, both to the difficulties and complexities of education, but also to the fact that this is a system that fundamentally needs a lot of shifts and changes.

As a 22-year-old with a lot of hubris, I thought: “If we have better access to education, we can fix so many things.” I still firmly believe that, but I quickly realized that we need to fix economic systems around our communities if we really want students to survive and thrive.

In terms of professional skill sets, I gained so many. High schoolers are wonderful, really harsh people. Being heckled for years by 16-year-olds in front of them every single day really gives you a lot of confidence to get up on the stage or to do podcast interviews, knowing that it’s going to be a slightly friendlier audience.

I also learned so much about stakeholder engagement and how to meet people where they are. With our work at Spring Point, we sit at the intersection of so many different tables. We’re meeting with GPs, we’re meeting with other LPs, we’re meeting with folks who maybe have an impact mandate, and people who couldn’t care less but want to see outsized returns. I learned a lot about adaptability and how to tailor messages through that work.

What gave you the vision that long-term sustainability is also about the economics behind it?

I think it actually started a lot earlier than even my TFA experience. My mom has been in commercial banking my entire life, and she was a really big role model for me. I grew up in a very finance-forward household. I didn’t realize that it was abnormal that I had a fake checkbook that I was balancing while growing up.

I think I always understood at an innate level the power that financial access, inclusion, or education really provides.

I started to look at economic opportunities, economic growth, and economic mobility. I quickly realized that money needs to be different. When I take off the impact lenses, the way money flows is capital-inefficient. That creates instability in our economy; we see booms and busts constantly happening. Are there ways that we can create better systems and processes to make financial markets a little bit more stable?

When I left educational work, I questioned what my role was: “What is authentic for me?” At the same time, I was consulting with a lot of educational and tech startups and I realized I like startups, “there’s some interesting stuff happening here.”

That led me to the path of business school.

How did getting your MBA at Oxford shape your trajectory, and where did you land afterward?

I chose that program specifically and intentionally. I wanted to go abroad. I had spent the majority of my life in the middle of the country. I wanted to expand my worldview and I wanted to understand global systems and global markets. Oxford was a great program for that, and they also had an interesting investment program for career pivoters like myself.

It was fantastic. There’s a difference when you go to grad school and you’re actively taking yourself away from earning a salary. I said to myself: “Okay, we need to maximize the return on this investment.”

For the Oxford MBA, you sit in the Saïd Business School, but you get access to the broader Oxford University. Oxford and Cambridge are set up like Harry Potter, where you have your program but then you have your college or your house. I was sitting at dinner with people who are researching subatomic particles and, as a science nerd, I was really excited to get to have those conversations. We had people from 64 countries in my program, so I gained a global perspective that challenged my worldview in a productive and healthy way.

That led me to post-MBA. I ended up working at Plan International. I had a dual mandate. I was setting up an in-depth pilot in Kenya where we were running an accelerator and incubator and doing direct venture-style investing. Then I also acted as an international consultant across the federation. We had an endowment we were setting up in Europe, a debt bond facility in India, and we were doing direct social entrepreneurship work in Southeast Asia as well as Latin America. It was an interesting experience to get to try different financial tools in different geographies.

Was there any pattern recognition from working across those different regions?

The biggest takeaway I had is that people who have the lived experience are going to be the best people to solve that problem. If you’re an entrepreneur and you have experienced that pain point, you’re going to have the grit and the tenacity as well as the actual experience to be able to solve that problem.

It is so hard to launch a company, so when I see founders or GPs that are “bandwagoning” onto something they know is an industry trend, my assumption is they’re not going to have the grit or the tenacity, and honestly, the insights to do it best. They’re not going to hit product-market fit quickly enough.

I think that rings true in any geography that I’ve worked in, and I definitely see it here in the United States, especially as we’re seeing this proliferation of new technology as AI hits.

How did that global footprint shift into your current work at Spring Point Partners?

It’s been an absolute joy. Spring Point has been set up for flexibility, learning, and to develop systems and structures in order for markets to survive and flourish. It’s been the privilege of my career to work with so many thoughtful, wonderful, amazing people, both on our direct side and on our fund manager side.

Everything seems so linear and perfect, but I also want to flag for people who are maybe going through career switches that there are a lot of vulnerable moments that go into that. When you’re on the other side, you see: “I went to business school and I’ve got the job I always wanted to have.” But there were a lot of nights at home where you question: “Can I do this? Am I good enough? Do I have the right skill sets?”

I don’t know if there’s a perfect script other than continuously believing in and betting on yourself. You have to do the hard work. Don’t shy away from it. For example: I needed to learn accounting. Continue to bet on yourself, figure out what your strengths are, figure out what your deficits are, and continue to grind.

Tell us more about Spring Point Partners

Spring Point was founded in 2017. We’re a Philadelphia-based social justice organization. We do grants and investments. We have a really robust grants side of the house and that sits alongside and complements our investment strategy.

Our core mandate is around economic justice and creating future growth markets that are more stable and altering perceived risk. We have a lot of tools at our disposal to do that. What I love about the way we are set up is we have a whole toolkit. For a lot of folks, they only have a hammer and if you have a hammer, the only problems you can solve are related to nails. When you have a screwdriver and a saw, there are so many other things that you can do.

We’re really focused on how we use this flexibility, this agility, this risk-tolerant capital to create a more inclusive economy.

What programs do you have in place for emerging managers?

This is something we’ve done a lot in collaboration with a bunch of other LPs as well as our GPs. Obviously, we have our core investment strategy where we mostly act as a limited partner across various asset classes, and then we have a pretty robust directs portfolio.

We also offer potential grants. We’ve offered grants for research and development for new fund structures to be developed. Innovative financial structures that we see as “ecosystem building” plays that actually allow for the market to be more efficient.

We also have done recoverable grants for smaller businesses that can’t access traditional bank lending. For example, if they don’t have the collateral.

Then, we are constantly thinking about technical assistance and building out that support offering around both GPs and LPs: how do we better upskill and educate and create community between both parties?

Our investment thesis is looking for ways to create economic opportunity and economic justice. We have an employee ownership strategy that looks at how we can challenge who owns parts of companies. Most of our checks out the door right now are focused on our emerging manager program, where we’re looking at ways that we can help to back some of the best and brightest in their asset class. That strategy is sector- and asset-class-agnostic, but I would say it’s heavily weighted in early-stage venture.

How do you incorporate your vision and values into investment decisions?

This is, I think, one of the biggest tensions in impact investing. The way I like to say it, and the way we think about it here is: Your impact should match your return profile.

For instance, for our emerging manager program, if those aren’t top performers, if you are not a top-decile fund, then the impact strategy actually doesn’t work. For those funds, I want to see you returning at the same rate as, if not higher than, your peers. I want to see the best in your vintage. We hold you accountable to that.

I want a shrewd steward of capital who’s the best and brightest in their asset class.

We don’t require our fund managers to be impact-focused. I’m looking for people whose judgment I can trust, who will outperform and who will operate in a way that I feel like is values-aligned to our ethos here.

Now, if we’re giving a recoverable grant to a small business, that’s a very different return profile. I’ve priced in what we call the “impact premium” into that return profile. It’s never a situation where we feel like there’s tension in the return expectations, financial or impact. We just are making sure that they’re in alignment.

What other assets do you invest in, and how do you think about balancing the venture category?

It’s a tough market right now, and I really feel for GPs that are in pursuit of the ever-elusive liquidity and DPI.

I really appreciate that the ethos here is really long-term. We’ve been set up for that, we were budgeted for that, which is such a gift. The best way to win is to have steady deployment. So we’re not pulling back. We want to continue to double down in this space. We’re continuing to actively deploy in venture and emerging managers. These are going to be some of the best vintages that we’re going to see. Pricing discipline has come back, founders are being really cash efficient. If you can be patient in this moment.

In terms of our broader assets, we have quite a bit in real assets for a few of our different strategies: We have some water, some farmland, some forestry, as well as later-stage growth equity and some debt.

On the LP side, we look at our portfolio and ask: “How do you balance some of these things out? How do you allow for a potentially higher-risk, higher-return asset class to be balanced out by some of these others?”

How are you looking at AI and your investment exposure to that category?

I have so much angst, good and bad, about AI. I read about it, I get excited, and then I read about it again, and I get terrified. There’s just so much hype, and it’s so hard right now to know what is real, what is not.

I’m a huge history dork, so I’ve also been looking at some of the quotes whenever we go through these big technological advances. In the past economists have said: “Well, now that we have electricity, no one’s ever going to have to work again.” It’s about knowing and acknowledging that this is revolutionary. What is real and what is not real?

When I put on my investor hat, how do you even create anything that’s defensible right now? With the level of development and shift and change, defensible moats are really challenging. I really feel for founders, I really feel for GPs. It’s complicated.

I think some of the initial buzz is starting to wear down around things that I don’t think were actually super value-add, but were really cool. I think we’re starting to see, potentially, an over-leveraging of technology in ways that are pushing people to more in-person interaction. I heard somebody say that a year and a half ago and I thought, “Oh, I don’t know if that’s true.” Now I am considering, “Yeah, that’s actually true.”

How do you see AI impacting talent and the future workforce?

Internally, I would say we’re not a super technology-first adopter. We are leveraging it for things such as reporting, internal processes or automations but nothing too crazy yet. I do see and hear some of the stuff our fund managers are doing and it is so exciting and so fascinating.

But for talent, I get really worried.

For folks that are more established, for senior, mid-career, senior leadership, it’s awesome. You can get so much done. But so much of that is to the detriment of young professionals or interns. I worry about the lack of internships or mentorship opportunities because it’s a lot easier to tell a chatbot how to do “X” versus managing somebody who’s in their first job out of college. I worry about that on-ramp and the potential gap that it’s going to cause us in five to ten years.

What skills should young professionals focus on in the age of AI?

Make sure you don’t outsource your critical thinking. I can’t imagine going to college with this at my fingertips. That would have been so tempting. Every time you’re thinking or problem-solving or putting yourself through the gauntlet that is education, you’re forging new neural pathways and your brain is getting better and more efficient. Do the hard work. It’s going to be really tempting to have ChatGPT write your essay, but make sure you’re not shortchanging yourself.

Make sure you’re pushing yourself on the social side of things. There is going to be a world where a lot of the “quant of finance” will be quicker and easier for ChatGPT to adopt than some of the interpersonal relationship and trust-building pieces that can only happen human-to-human.

Any final perspective or advice you want to leave people with?

I would ask, especially for all the GPs and LPs: How are you making sure that you’re operating in ways that use the most people-centered approach and with the most grace and transparency and candor?

In this moment when we’re going through a crazy market cycle, how do we stay grounded in respect and communication with each other? How do we keep people at the center of financial markets when it’s easy to look at numbers? We must think through to the people behind them.

What’s your advice for GPs on managing LP timelines and communication?

I really have a lot of empathy for the GPs right now. It’s a really tough market. The biggest thing is: Be okay with LP timelines. They’re longer than yours. LP timelines are six months, at a minimum.

I know right now it’s crunch time. It’s the end of the year, and bombarding or trying to get too much time on LPs’ calendars can be detrimental. Respect that some of the conversations you’re having right now probably will not come to fruition until Q1 or Q2.

This is tough because it’s LP-dependent. For me, I love touching base when something material has happened, one way or the other. If there was a specific milestone I asked you to hit, hit it before we talk again. Because we’ve all sat on those Zooms where nothing material has changed since our last conversation.

This is also something for both LPs and GPs to think about: “How do we create better communication and alignment around whether people are actually interested or not interested?”

I like to operate with the idea that honesty is kindness.

Is there an example of a GP that you feel really got it right?

Anyone that we’ve invested in.

The ones that are doing it really well are finding ways to leverage their co-investor network as well as their LPs that they might have relationships with already. The more you can get people talking about you when you’re not in the room, the better.

One of my first screens that I do, if I’m looking at a manager, is back-channeling with my GPs. They’re my most trusted advisors in the space. I learn so much from them.

Then, give yourself the time to build the relationship. It does take a while. You’re selling trust. It takes a while. We’re hoping when we cut a check, we will be with you for multiple funds. That’s a multi-decade relationship. I ask myself: “Is this somebody I want to be in business with for 20-plus years?”

How can folks get in touch with you?

I’m on LinkedIn and I actually do check it, so feel free to ping me there. I am doing many of the Emerging Manager LPGP conferences. I will be at Raise, Grosvenor, EMC, so all of the above. I would love to see you there.

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