Jamie Rhode of Family Office Verdis Investment Management on using decision science to drive fund allocation strategy, their view on large portfolio sizes, and biggest trends they see in VC.

Limited partners come in a few different varieties, one of the largest, but also most opaque groups is that of the Family Offices, and today’s guest Jamie Rhode, CFA, Vice President at Verdis Investment Management, gives us a glimpse into the large family office world.

Verdis uses a unique data-driven approach to fund allocating that allows them to optimize on their portfolio and ensure they find the outliers.

Prior to Verdis, Jamie was at Bloomberg serving in roles roles in both equity research and credit analysis where she created, managed and leveraged an extensive library of financial and market data for buy and sell-side clients.

In this episode we discuss the following topics:

01:46    Jamie’s journey to Verdis and VC

03:08    How family offices are different from other LPs

04:14    The use of data and decision science and why they invest in seed stage

07:08    Finding the outlier startups and funds using data

08:44    How Jamie ensures diversity of investments

12:32    Life Sciences as an investment sector focus

16:29    Targeting networks that provide consistent outlier production

18:52    Qualitative measures for managers

21:54    Thoughts on reserve ratios, and why she prefers lower reserves.

24:43    The emergence of solo GPs

27:27     The importance brand and of long term goals when talking with LPs

30:39    Making sure their managers hit their minimum viable fund size at first close

33:26    Trends in seed over the next five years

37:08    Biggest learning as an LP

40:10    The common theme amongst successful funds

We’d love to know what you took away from this conversation with Jamie! Follow @SamirKaji and give your insight and questions using 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 a direct message on Twitter.

Podcast Production support provided by Agent Bee Agency

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