Origins - Inside Venture Capital, Hosted by a GP and an LP

Thomas Lenehan is Deputy CIO at Rockefeller University, helping to manage their $2B endowment. We discuss how managing an endowment compares to his previous LP roles and committing long-term to the private markets and venture, through good and bad cycles.

We’re very excited to have Brad Feld to help us kick off season two. In addition to co-founding Foundry Group, and Techstars, Brad also co-founded Mobius Venture Capital in 1996. So he’s as qualified as anyone in the world to discuss starting venture firms, and that’s exactly what we did in this episode. Brad has already spoken at length about starting companies and angel investing, so we dug into getting a first fund off the ground, building a firm that’s consistent with one’s belief system, and investing as a personal LP into dozens of funds including Lowercase, SoftTech, Techstars, USV, and now institutionalizing that endeavor with Foundry Next.

Evan Jaysane-Darr is a Partner at Invesco Private Capital, a public asset management company where he focuses primarily on investing in venture. We discuss what's different about investing in venture as a public company, his experience investing in private equity vs venture funds, and why emerging managers are still important even though Invesco is in great funds like USV, Foundry, Greycroft, and LHV.

Judith Elsea is a co-founder and Managing Director at Weathergage Capital. Judith and her Weathergage partners are investors in some of the most respected venture firms in the world. We discuss building out a venture practice at the Kauffman Foundation, where she was previously Chief Investment Officer, starting Weathergage Capital, what they look for in venture partnerships today, and Weathergage’s unique approach to backing managers, which is partially informed by an internal product they’ve built called “Weathervane.”

Michael Kim is the founder of Cendana Capital, one of the first fund of funds focused entirely on backing micro-VC firms. Since 2010, Cendana has been a very early institutional backer of firms like Lerer Ventures, Forerunner, Founder Collective, IA Ventures, SoftTech VC, K9 Ventures, among others. In this episode, we discuss Michael's path to starting Cendana and how he thinks about and decides to back venture capital firms.

Joelle Kayden, Managing Director and Founder of Accolade Partners, joins us to discuss her deep experience as an investor in venture funds.

Josh Abramson, co-founder of Connected Ventures (CollegeHumor, BustedTees, Vimeo) and TeePublic, joins us to discuss founding and operating companies as well as investing as an Angel and as a Limited Partner.

Chris Douvos, Managing Director and member of the General Partner at VIA (Venture Investment Associates), joins us to discuss growing up in Brooklyn, investing courageously, & being the first institutional backer of First Round Capital.

Naval Ravikant, CEO and founder of AngelList, joins us to discuss sources of capital from the founder's perspective.

Elizabeth "Beezer" Clarkson, Managing Director at Sapphire Ventures, joins us to discuss her path to becoming an LP, what she looks at when considering investments, and why we're starting to see the LP world become more open and transparent.