John Avirett of StepStone Group on the Venture Capital Secondaries Market

Welcome to the Allocate Podcast, an interview and educational content series to help investors learn and navigate investing in alternatives. Join us to hear from leading founders, fund managers, and allocators on the latest trends and the keys to successfully participating in the private markets.

For our second episode, we’re delighted to have Allocate’s CEO, Samir Kaji, host John Avirett, Partner of StepStone Group, a leading global wealth manager of over $140B in assets across 26 individual practices. This was an inciteful conversation about the evolution of the secondaries market, from its history to the current landscape. John and Samir also dive into how venture secondaries work in practice and - with the amount of macro change we've seen over the last two years - why secondaries have been a popular area for investors.

About John Avirett:John Avirett is a Partner and member of the venture capital and growth equity investment committee at StepStone Group. He previously served as a General Partner at Greenspring Associates, which merged with StepStone in 2021. John’s responsibilities include sourcing and due diligence efforts for direct and fund investments on a primary and secondary basis. His prior investments include: Chewy.com, Roblox, WalkMe, Scopley, Woowa, GrubHub, Workfront, Nutanix, and UserTesting among others.

In this episode we discuss:(01:58) John’s journey to the secondary market(08:56) How market conditions have driven factors in the secondary market over the last few years(13:44) Mechanics of the liquidity windows and capital calls(19:29) How valuations differ in Venture Secondaries versus traditional PE secondaries(22:35) Factors driving the need for liquidity in the venture market(30:29) How emerging managers can sell in a structured way outside of later stage rounds

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