Introduction

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

I started Venture Unlocked to bring more transparency to firm building by bringing on guests whose unique insights and experts could help venture fund managers, limited partners, and founders with their journeys. This week, we have a special guest in Anubhav Srivastava, Founder and CEO of Tactyc, who saw the pain point managers were having in portfolio construction. Prior to Tactyc, managers often used excel spreadsheets and other methods for forecasting models. Tactyc is a dynamic software dashboard that makes ongoing portfolio modeling easy.

Anyone who has listened to this show knows that portfolio construction is one of my favorite things to talk about, and Anubhav provided his data-driven insights on what he’s seeing on how emerging managers are modeling portfolios around number of companies, reserves, recycling, and follow-ons.

Here is a completed dashboard that shows the Tactyc platform in action. You can also schedule a 1-on-1 demo with Anubhav, Tactyc's founder directly here.  

We hope you enjoy my conversation with Anubhav.

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About Anubhav Srivastava:Anubhav Srivastava is the Founder and CEO of Tactyc. He is a former bulge-bracket investment banker with extensive experience in M&A and financing transactions. Having spent more time than is healthy with Excel models, the idea for Tactyc was born out of his observations of how he saw people using (and misusing) Excel-based models.

Prior to Tactyc, Anubhav was a Vice President at Evolution Media Capital and started his investment banking career at Deutsche Bank.

Anubhav has an MBA in Finance from the Wharton School of Business and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology.

In this episode we discuss:(02:26) Why Anubhav started Tactyc and what it does(05:10) The reason why using Excel becomes a pain point over time(08:10) How deeper portfolio analysis can give LPs peace of mind(10:55) Who has been more successful in raising over the last year(14:09) Trends of portfolio models in terms of initial valuation at the pre-seed, seed level today versus 2021(16:04) Changes in check sizes and dilution in recent months(18:04) How reserves and follow-ons have changed(19:36) The most important metric for a sub-$50 million fund(21:32) Portfolio strategies for nano-funds(23:32) How successful managers take emotions out of the equation in follow-on investments(26:46) What managers are seeing with follow-on MOIC hurdles(28:59) Why some managers are over-reporting to LPs to navigate this downturn(31:22) The biggest mistakes managers make in portfolio construction reporting(34:57) Understanding the difference between a management fee recycling and exit proceed recycling(36:53) Example of management fee recycling(39:08) What success for Tactyc looks like over the next 5-10 years

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

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