June 30, 2022

Tusk Venture Partners Jordan Nof: Evolving to an early stage firm, navigating regulatory hurdles for startups, and what the future holds for crypto.

42 minutes

Follow me @samirkaji for my thoughts on the venture market, with a focus on the continued evolution of the VC landscape.

On this week’s episode, we were thrilled to b joined by Jordan Nof, co-founder and managing partner of Tusk Venture Partners.

Jordan co-founded the firm in 2015 along with Bradley Tusk to help founders build companies in areas that require regulatory navigation and expertise. The firm recently closed a $140MM Fund III, and it has previously invested in companies including Coinbase, MainStreet, Lemonade, and FanDuel.

Jordan and I went deep into the evolution of Tusk, including moving from a multi-stage firm to an early-stage firm, how they’ve constructed their investment mentality, and his overall views on regulation, including within the Crypto Markets.

About Jordan Nof:Jordan Nof is a Co-founder and Managing Partner at Tusk Venture Partners L.P. and is a member of the firm’s Investment Committee. He has led many of the firm’s investments including Lemonade, Bird, Coinbase, Alma, Sunday, and Wheel. He currently serves on the board of directors of Alma, Sunday, and Wheel.

Prior to Tusk Venture Partners, Jordan spent six years as a Director at Blackstone, where he focused on the development of the firm’s corporate venture capital portfolio. During that time, Jordan focused on investing in early-stage technology companies that could accelerate operations across Blackstone and the firm’s underlying portfolio companies.

Before joining Blackstone, Jordan spent four years in the institutional investment management division at Alliance Bernstein. During that time, he worked with many of the firm’s largest global institutional sub-advisory relationships.

Jordan received an M.B.A. from Rollins Graduate School of Business and graduated from Florida State University where he received a B.S. in Finance. He is based out of the firm’s New York office.

In this episode we discuss:

01:09 Why Jordan and Bradley decided to start Tusk Venture Partners05:36 How Tusk supports founders through complex regulatory environments09:10 Transitioning from a multi-stage thesis to an early-stage thesis11:23 Why they decided to lead rounds and how they built conviction with founders16:09 How the current market landscape has affected Tusk’s investing strategy21:01 Tusk’s reserve strategy and advice they are giving to portfolio companies to combat the changed capital environment25:41 How Jordan spends his time between fundraising, working with existing portfolio companies, and finding new ones30:38 Where Crypto/Web3 is today and where regulation fits into its future36:16 How regulation is a validation of a market position39:18 The biggest career lesson he’s learned

I’d love to know what you took away from this conversation with Jordan. 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.

For full disclosure, Tusk is also an investor in the company I co-founded, Allocate.

Podcast Production support provided by Agent Bee Agency

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ventureunlocked.substack.com

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By Samir Kaji

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