LP10X - Venture capital as a strategic play for corporations - Grady Buchanan, Co-founder & MD, NVNG

Grady Buchanan is a Co-founder & Managing Director at NVNG, a fund of funds with corporations as limited partners investing into venture capital funds.

Before launching NVNG, Grady worked with the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation’s (WARF) $3B investment portfolio.

Links:

⭐ Sponsored by Podcast10x - Podcasting agency for VCs - https://podcast10x.com

NVNG website - https://nvngia.com/

Grady Buchanan on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/gradynvng

🎙️ Hosted by Prashant Choubey

Follow Prashant on X - https://x.com/ChoubeySahab

Follow Prashant on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/choubeysahab

In this episode, we talk about -

- The investment thesis at NVNG

- Why do corporations invest in NVNG fund of funds?\

- What's the strategic significance of having corporations at LPs? How does it help the portfolio companies of the portfolio funds?

- Key things they look for in fund managers

- Advice for GPs raising in a difficult fundraising environment

- How they generate DPI in the fund of funds

- Approach to portfolio construction

& lots more

Timestamps:

(00:00) Introduction to Grady Buchanan and NVNG

(02:46) Grady's background and journey into investing

(05:30) Origin story of NVNG (Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained)

(07:11) Corporations' need for innovation and startup exposure

(09:33) Strategy of having corporations as Limited Partners (LPs)

(13:15) Addressing concerns about outsourcing innovation

(17:41) Value creation for portfolio companies through corporate connections

(22:33) Key criteria for selecting fund managers

(26:31) Assessing fund managers' long-term potential

(30:14) Sector focus and corporate investment preferences

(34:47) Generating Distributed Paid-In Capital (DPI) in a fund of funds model

(38:32) Advice for VCs fundraising in a challenging environment

(42:48) Portfolio construction strategy

(45:42) Rapid fire round covering:

- Themes and regions of investment

- LP commitment size

- Fund stages

- Contact information

- Follow-up channels

For sponsorship or guest appearance requests, write to prashantchoubey3@gmail.com

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