#363 - Jason Illian - GP & Co-Founder @ Highmount Capital - Growth Equity, Investing in Dude Perfect, Launching Koch Disruptive Technologies

Jason is the General Partner and Co-Founder of Highmount Capital, a unique investment firm focused on growth stage and middle market investments in transformative technology and other growth-related platforms. He is the former Managing Director and founding member of Koch Disruptive Technologies (KDT), the venture and growth arm of Koch Industries, the largest privately-held company in the US with over $130B in revenue. Jason was responsible for helping KDT grow to billions in AUM across 40+ companies.

We discuss:

- What makes a great venture partner

- What venture firms look for in late-stage companies

- The process of making a $100mm investment in DudePerfect

We'd appreciate you filling out our audience survey, so we can continuously work on providing relevant content to our listeners. 

https://www.thefortpod.com/survey

Links:

Dude Perfect

Highmount Capital

Jason on X

Topics:

(00:00:00) - Intro

(00:05:23) - Jason's Early career

(00:10:03) - What makes a great venture partner 

(00:13:23) - Joining Koch Industries

(00:15:18) - Building the venture framework for Koch

(00:19:48) - What does a great late-stage company look like in the eyes of a venture firm?

(00:26:40) - Founding Highmount Capital

(00:29:56) - Building a great origination engine

(00:35:44) - Investing in Dude Perfect

(00:40:18) - The craving for family-friendly brands

(00:44:10) - How do you think about your role post-investment?

(00:46:44) - What are unique ways to make money in the creator economy?

(00:54:14) - Are the Dudes a technology business or technology-enabled business?

(00:57:34) - How do you find a CEO for a company like DudePerfect? 

(01:01:18) - How is Highmount structured?

Support our Sponsors

Vesto: https://www.vesto.com/fort

Better Pitch: https://bit.ly/42d9L0I

Fort: https://bit.ly/FortCompanies

Follow Fort on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fort-companies/

Chris on Social Media:

The Fort Podcast on Twitter/X: https://x.com/theFORTpodcast

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thefortpodcast

LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/45gIkFd

Watch The Fort on YouTube: https://bit.ly/3oynxNX

Visit our website: https://bit.ly/43SOvys

Leave a review on Apple: https://bit.ly/45crFD0

Leave a review on Spotify: https://bit.ly/3Krl9jO 

The FORT is produced by Johnny Podcasts