Albert Azout is the Co-founder and Managing Partner of Level Ventures, combining first-principles thinking with state-of-the-art data science to back and build top seed-stage firms and their breakout companies.
Venture investing is hard, and this conversation covers all their research unpacking exactly how to generate alpha.
We also talk about how Level picks and backs emerging venture managers to invest in, and Albert gives a demo of the custom internal software they’ve built.
Thank you to Jake Kupperman, Sasha Kaletsky, Nathan Benaich, Amanda Robson, and Dave Fontenot for helping brainstorm topics for the conversation.
Special thanks to Ramp for supporting this episode. It's the corporate card and expense management platform used by over 40,000 companies, like Shopify, CBRE and Stripe. Time is money. Save both with Ramp. Get $250 for signing-up here: https://ramp.com/ThePeel
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Timestamps:
(5:01) Top 3 forms of alpha in VC
(10:11) Other ways to generate alpha
(12:47) Avoiding false positives
(17:11) Optimal fund size and portfolio construction
(22:25) The role of Luck
(23:55) Spin-out vs outsider funds
(25:43) Level’s backchannel reference process
(29:29) Finding alpha in Criticality Investing
(34:45) Why capital flows drive all returns
(43:53) Early, consensus investing has the most alpha
(48:46) Networks are more persistent than performance
(52:03) The strongest and weakest networks
(58:41) Demo of Level’s internal software
(1:04:48) Building a Fund of Funds around their data
(1:10:01) Ideal LP GP relationship
(1:12:39) Benchmarks are relative
(1:15:39) VC funds using AI
(1:17:43) How venture will change in the next 10 years
Referenced
Level Ventures: https://levelvc.com/
Level’s Research Papers: https://levelvc.com/research/
Follow Albert
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/albertazout/
Newsletter: https://albertazout.substack.com/
Follow Turner
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak
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