Podcasts about limited partner

David Zhou, co-founder of The Side Letter and host of Superclusters, shares lessons from his journey as a founder, venture investor, LP, and educator. He explains how sophisticated limited partners evaluate venture funds, why consistent decision-making frameworks matter, and how emerging managers can stand out in an increasingly crowded market. David discusses common mistakes new LPs make, the metrics that matter when evaluating venture performance, and why successful investors develop discipline around both entering and exiting investments. He also shares practical advice for fund managers seeking LP support, emphasizing the importance of understanding investor motivations before ever making a pitch. In this episode, you'll learn: [02:35] How David accidentally became an entrepreneur and investor [03:42] Why venture capital appeals to people who love imagining the future [06:52] The story behind Superclusters and educating emerging LPs [11:21] Common mistakes first-time LPs make when evaluating funds [15:25] Why investors need consistent frameworks instead of chasing excitement [23:04] Which venture fund metrics actually matter and when [30:24] The three disciplines every great fund manager needs [32:25] Why the first LP meeting should never be a pitch [35:22] How to identify and build a unique competitive advantage [39:57] Understanding the motivations behind different types of LPs [44:03] How The Side Letter helps LPs make better investment decisions The nonprofit organization David is passionate about: Friends of Children with Special Needs About David Zhou David Zhou is the co-founder of The Side Letter, a platform that helps limited partners source, evaluate, and understand venture capital funds. He is also the host of Superclusters, a podcast focused on helping emerging LPs learn from experienced investors and better navigate the venture capital ecosystem. Before becoming an LP and venture ecosystem educator, David was a founder and venture investor. Through his writing, investing, and podcasting, he has become a respected voice on venture fund evaluation, LP decision-making, and emerging manager investing. About The Side Letter The Side Letter is a platform built to help limited partners make more informed venture capital investment decisions. The company provides LPs with tools, research, data, and educational resources designed to improve fund sourcing, diligence, and portfolio construction. By helping investors access better information and stronger evaluation frameworks, The Side Letter aims to reduce information asymmetry within the venture capital ecosystem and empower a new generation of sophisticated LPs. Subscribe to our podcast and stay tuned for our next episode.

Hank Harris is a Limited Partner in Ego Death Capital, and co-owner of TheBitcoinShop.nz.Check out https://sovereigntysummit.nz/If you want to take greater control of what your KiwiSaver invests in, and if forms of 'sound money' are important to you also, then reach out. Book my free 15-minute discovery call Sign up to the fortnightly newsletter!Thank You Swyftx: With over 1 million customers across New Zealand and Australia. Ask yourself …”Where can crypto take you?". Check out Swyftx.Provincia: Whether you're looking to invest, or you have a commercial property that needs better management - they the true one-stop shop for wholesale industrial investors. Check out Provincia.co.nz for more.Affiliate Links!The Bitcoin Adviser: Plan for intergenerational digital wealth.Hatch: For US markets.Revolut: For a new type of banking.Sharesies: For local, and international markets.Loan My Coins: Bitcoin lending product.Exodus: Get rewards on your first $2,500 of swapsGet Social:Follow on YouTube , Instagram, TikTok: @theeverydayinvestor, X (@UngaroDarcy), LinkedIn, or subscribe on Substack.www.radicalinvestment.co.nz________________________Disclaimer: Please act independently from any content provided in these episodes; it's not financial advice, because there's no accounting for your individual circumstances, and nothing we say is intended as a recommendation. Do your own research, and take a broad range of opinions into account. Ideally, engage a financial adviser / pay for advice!

Passive investing is not always east. It's harder, more time consuming, and riskier than most people think. It takes evaluating dozens, even hundreds of General Partners and deals to learn the difference between a good and a bad opportunity. There is so much to learn, that often more time is required of Limited Partners than they have to spend. Unfortunately, this elevates the risk of making private Real Estate investments. Alexsey Chernobelskiy is Founder and CEO of GP/LP match, a website where GPs submit investment opportunities and LPs receive deals matching their criteria directly via email within minutes. 

Should You Start a VC Fund? Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing. There are more venture capital funds in the market today than ever before. It's never been easier to launch a VC fund. Here are some key steps to consider before launching one. Do you have a track record in startup investing? Limited Partners in the fund will want to know that the team has experience deploying capital. If you don't have a track record, consider partnering with someone who does. How will your fund stand out from the crowd? While it's easier to start a fund, there are many VC funds in the market today. Consider focusing on a niche or segment of the market that is not already well covered. How does the fund leverage your current investing? It's best to start a fund that extends the investing already underway. Having your own money in will help greatly with raising funding from investors. Do you have the time and commitment to see the fund through to completion? Most funds are deployed in the first three years but require ongoing support and maintenance for up to ten years. Consider carefully the support offered and the strategy behind follow-on funding. Answer these questions before launching your VC fund. Thank you for joining us for the Startup Funding Espresso where we help startups and investors connect for funding. Let's go startup something today. _______________________________________________________ For more episodes from Investor Connect, please visit the site at: http://investorconnect.org Check out our other podcasts here: https://investorconnect.org/ For Investors check out: https://tencapital.group/investor-landing/ For Startups check out: https://tencapital.group/company-landing/ For eGuides check out: https://tencapital.group/education/ For upcoming Events, check out https://tencapital.group/events/ For Feedback please contact info@tencapital.group Please follow, share, and leave a review. Music courtesy of Bensound.

The Great private Capital Reset is upon us. Markets are volatile and driving new economic imperatives. Are VC funds still VC funds, even if they raise billions per fund? What happened to the rest of the market? What is driving VC investments? What do Limited Partners think? What is on their minds? This and more, in episode 76 of Tech Deciphered. Navigation: Intro The State of the Reset: The Hangover from the Party? LP Fatigue and VC Differentiation What Really Matters: Performance.. Returns The Mega Fund Question The Case for Smaller… Rightsized Funds What Comes Next? Conclusion Our co-hosts: Bertrand Schmitt, Entrepreneur in Residence at Red River West, co-founder of App Annie / Data.ai, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, @bschmitt Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedro Our show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news Subscribe To Our Podcast Bertrand Introduction Welcome to episode 76 of Tech Deciphered. This episode will be about the great private capital reset. As you know, or you have probably heard, there is significant structural transformation in the world of venture capital, and we are probably witnessing a fundamental reset of the private capital stack. We got a huge bubble in 2020, 2021. Fueled by near-zero interest rates. We got inflated fund size, compressed due diligence, and now a generation of zombie funds and zombie startups. Now that rates have normalized, exits have not been as much as expected. LP patience is a warning sign, and I guess the industry is being forced to confront an uncomfortable truth: most VC funds raised since 2017 might not return what their LPs expected. You know, how do we start?   Nuno This is going to be a relatively nuanced episode. Obviously, there is going to be a lot of haves and have-nots, both in terms of VC funds, also in terms of startups. And so I want to start with that. This is going to be more nuanced than all transformational and disruptive.   Bertrand It’s not the end. It’s not the end.   Nuno State of the Reset: The Hangover from the Party? It’s not the end. There’s still huge mega funds that are raising more and more. It’s clear that the music has stopped, right? So if we’re playing the game of chairs, the music has stopped. Around ’22, ’23, we started seeing the first signals that funds had raised way too much money. Firms collectively raised around $669 billion globally in 2021 alone. If we fast forward now to last year, 2025, depending on the sources, we did some internal analysis at Chameleon. We came up with $75.6 billion was raised last year by 493 funds, right? So That’s a significant drop, right, in terms of fundraising. Other sources would say a little bit more. There’s a little bit of a discussion around how much did the top 30 funds capture. If you believe some of the stats out there, they would say that actually top 30 funds captured 75% of all capital raised last year. We did again some internal analysis at Chameleon, and the conclusion we came to, it was closer to 50 to 55%. So not as dramatic as some of the sources out there, but still pretty dramatic. There’s a lot of capital concentration on the top funds. Again, the top 30 funds would’ve raised 50 to 55% of capital or up to 75% according to other sources. So definitely a tremendous amount of concentration. There was a lot more fragmentation in terms of capital raised if we’re looking at the years from 2010, 2011, all the way through 2021. So 2021 would’ve been sort of the peak of non-concentration if you look at that. And that again, now we are getting more and more concentration. There’s more and more of this arbitrage around, I’ll give money to the top funds, I will not give money to the smaller funds, or I’ll give less money to the smaller funds. There’s a little bit of a movement around concentration. We’ll talk about it later and what that means. Are mega funds really better? Are the small funds still the way to go? We’ll talk a lot about that later in today’s episode. There seems to be a little bit of a bifurcation. We could say it’s either bifurcation around top-tier VCs or larger VC funds versus smaller VC funds. My perspective is the bifurcation that we’re seeing right now is more of a bifurcation between funds that are no longer just stepped into the VC space, but they’re actually becoming more and more private equity firms with full asset management range from early stage all the way to late stage. Think of it almost like a private equity hedge fund, quasi, versus classic VC funds. And I think what we’re seeing is the Andreessen Horowitzes, the a16zs of the world, the NEAs, the Sequoia Capitals, just to name a few, becoming more and more broad asset class managers across private equity, whereas you have more classic VC happening in earlier stages. And so that’s the real bifurcation that I think is actually happening.   Bertrand And maybe not really hedge fund, because they are always still long-only funds. So there is no hedging happening, at least as far as I know.   Nuno Well, some of these guys have become RIAs, like A16z has become an RIA, so they can do secondaries.   Bertrand That’s true. Yeah.   Nuno And they can also sell stuff, etc. So I don’t know how aggressive they’re going to be in terms of secondaries and selling and actually doing other kinds of services you can do if you’re an RIA. But it’s not, I think, out of the realm of possibility that they would sort of acquire and sell stock more rapidly. In that way, to your point, Bertrand, maybe they actually become beyond just long guys, right?   Bertrand Yes. Another trend I have seen is some of the larger VC funds seems to have no problem investing in multiple competitors. This was not possible before. I mean, if you’re a VC fund, you had some sort of duty not to invest in the competitors, but now some invest OpenAI, Anthropic at the same time. Do you see that as part of this evolution?   Nuno For sure. And I think there’s a lot of people like the ostrich putting their heads below the ground and it’s like, “Eh, no, no, nothing to see here.” But that does constitute a conflict of interest. And if I’m a startup raising, this assumption that you will not invest in one of my competitors is no longer there, certainly for the mega funds, because of that notion of deployment of capital. Now, some funds will still hide under the notion, actually formally from a fund perspective, we’re not investing in competitors. It just happens that different types of our funds are investing in competitors. Like maybe my growth fund is investing in a competitor to my early stage fund, right? But our funds are relatively independent. So I think there’s a little bit of hide and seek that will go on if you talk to some of the fund managers. Well, they say, well, we’re not investing out of the same fund into these competitors. But between you and I, as we know, a lot of these partnerships actually do a lot of stuff together at the general partnership level. So are there really actual Chinese walls between the funds? Well, it really depends on the partnership. And to be honest, most of the partnerships don’t have very significant Chinese walls between the funds, right? The managing general partners sometimes actually occupy investment committee roles across different funds. So I think the conflict of interest is there. So that’s why I say there’s a little bit of ostrich behavior. Put your head behind the ground or below the ground and just pretend nothing is happening. Just sharing maybe a couple of interesting stats. Global fund closings for 2025, according to our numbers at Chameleon, 1,098 closed. In 2025. Closed is when you start deploying capital, right? Whereas— so it’s not closed down, it’s closed like we start deploying capital. And that number, 1,098, is dramatically down from 1,600 in 2024. And it’s actually the lowest number of closings that we saw since 2014. So again, this is bad, right? It means there’s less funds doing fund closings and deploying capital in the market than since 2014 and dramatically below the 2024 numbers, right? Where we already saw some market readjustments. The number of active VC firms in the US that did 2+ deals, which is not a huge bar, has dropped 38% back to numbers in 2023. So we don’t have numbers that are a little bit more up to date, but basically in 2023, those numbers are already dramatically dropped. So there’s less and less active funds. So there’s funds that might be in the market, but they’re not actually deploying that much capital, not doing that many investment. They’re sort of either zombie funds or relatively passive funds that have passed their investment period. For those listening to us, the investment period for a VC fund is normally between the first 3 to 5 years of the fund, which is when you build your portfolio, when you can invest in new companies. After that time period, everything that you do up to normally what would be year 10 is follow-ons. You put more money into the companies that you’re already invested in, that you already constructed portfolio with during those 3 to 5 years.   Bertrand Yeah, that’s a pretty scary change. And obviously, I guess we’ll come to it, but the time it takes to fully liquidate investments is getting longer and longer. In the old days, we used to talk about VC funds having a 10-year life, maybe a +1/+1 in terms of extension of the fund life. But it looks like it’s taking 16 to 18 years actually to get full liquidity from a fund investment.   Nuno LP Fatigue and VC Differentiation And I think that’s the scariest piece. I mean, just to share some numbers, we in venture capital talk about vintages, right? Which year did your fund start in? Normally when you did your first close onto the fund, as we were saying before, close is when you get all your investors at that moment in time to come in and you do your first close so the next fund starts running. 2018 vintage funds, right? This is now almost 7 years ago. So you should start having— actually 8 years ago almost at this point in time. You should start already getting distributions or you start getting cash back if you’re a limited partner and investor in those funds, you should start getting cash back. Half of all 2018 vintage funds have returned $0 to their LPs. So they’ve had no distributions to their LPs. 2020 vintage, which was a very hot vintage, only 42% have begun any distribution. So 58% have distributed $0, right? 2021, only 25% have done any distributions. Now, I happen to have a 2018 vintage fund and a 2021 fund. My 2018 fund has already distributed over 3x net of fees in distributions, and my 2021 fund’s already over 10% distributed back in distribution. So we’re very proud of that. But in general, the numbers are awful. There’s no liquidity back to LPs. And to your point, that’s kind of a big deal because some of these funds have been going on for 7, 8 years, and where’s the liquidity going to come from? On the other hand, if you look at TVPI, so DPI is distributions to paid-ins cash on cash. But if you look at TVPI, which is total value to paid-in, which also includes the book value or the value that you’re marking it on your books, basically the paper value as we call it for the company, even on that, the median 2017 fund, so 2017 vintage fund has a TVPI, total value to paid-in, of only around 1.76x, which is well below what should be, which is sort of the 2 to 3x benchmark of a really good performing fund. So the median funds are doing very, very poorly overall. So if you add that to the fact of what’s happening and distributions are taking a long time, back to your point, Bertrand, it’s taking like— this should be a 10-year asset class, maybe 11, 12 years, and now it’s looking a little bit like a 15, to 18-year asset class, which is not what most limited partners sign up for. Part of this dynamic, I think, is that we’ve had tremendously overvalued private companies over the last few years, right? Secondly, these companies have just stayed private longer. And I was having a discussion recently with a friend of mine, it’s like, hey, what’s this thing about companies are staying private much longer? Is there some dynamic around secondaries? And the reality is there is a dynamic around secondaries, right? Because if I’m a very large fund and I can get away with doing secondaries on my portfolio, I will get liquidity at some point, right? But someone else is stuck with private stock, which hopefully will IPO, but who knows, right? And so there’s this funny dynamic right now of because of secondaries, because of a couple of other things that are happening in the market, actually a lot of these startups are staying private for tremendous amounts of times, and some of them will IPO and they’ll be huge deals. Some of them might not and might not warrant the latest private valuations that they’ve exercised. And so there’s this tremendous noise that we’re seeing in the mid to late funnel of privately held companies where some are just waiting to be public. Some of them might not be able to go public at anything that is an up round versus private valuations that they’ve had in previous moments and in previous rounds.   Bertrand And obviously the 2 to 3x returns that funds are targeting, and obviously more 3x than 2x, I mean, that was good and nice if it’s a 10-year fund, but if it’s the same 3x for 15 to 18 years, it’s not at all the same rate of return annualized. So it’s a really, really, really big issue if you keep the return the same, but you extend the duration of the fund. Concerning going IPO, there is a lot of complexity going public, the IPO process itself, but also after that when you’re a public company. It changed how you can run the business. Some would argue that we have had an issue with more companies delisting than companies listing on the public market. So I think there might be also separate issues about the efficiency of the public market and maybe a need for change. We went very strongly in one direction for the public market, have post and run, but was it really ultimately the right thing to do? I’m actually not so sure.   Nuno Yeah, I mean, just to be clear, this is anecdotal, but when we tell prospective LPs at Chameleon about our returns, the last few funds, 2018, 2021, the first reaction is, “You must be lying, right? Surely you can’t have distributions already for 2021,” et cetera, et cetera. So clearly there’s almost a state of disbelief right now from limited partners. And liquidity does matter. So clearly you have to move forward. So how did we get to this point where we had this bubble 2021 all around that time space and now things don’t look so good. Well, the macro conditions have changed dramatically. I mean, rates when they were near zero, safer assets yield nothing or yield nothing. So basically you had to push capital into longer duration risk assets like venture capital. And so you had to push it. So the opportunity cost of capital also has fundamentally shifted. Obviously a 3x VC return in 15 years over 10 actually competes very poorly against 5% annual credit returns over several years. So there’s been a readjustment of stuff. And then the public equities in particular, the tech public equities have had a lot of volatility, but some of them have done extremely well, right? Chipsets, things like NVIDIA, the Amazons of the world, Alphabets, et cetera, et cetera. They’ve done very, very well. So why would I invest in a long-term illiquid asset that takes now longer to give me money back, and in some case doesn’t give me back, if I can invest just in public equities, and a variety of other things. The venture debt costs have increased dramatically. The burn rates that were sustainable back in the day with sort of the addition of venture debt, private credit, et cetera, now are overblown at this moment in time. At the end of the day, there’s been a lot of movements also overall in the pipeline in terms of valuations, et cetera, et cetera. Now, I would put a grain of salt into all the numbers I just told you. There still is a little bit of the haves and have-nots in startup land. Certainly in early stage where if you’re a hot AI company, you can get away with raising a Series C or $480 million. This is actually a true story. Series C, right? Not Series C, a $480 million at $4 billion pre-money valuation. Whereas if you are maybe in a space that’s less hot, you’ll have more difficulty in raising money at this point in time, might not be able to even raise a Series C, right? So there’s a little bit of the haves and have-nots happening on the VC side in early stage that has been really amplified by the macro regime and where we’re at, which is actively zero-rate era is done and now the new regime is quite different. And so I can get better returns by doing something else.   Bertrand Kind of makes sense. I mean, if you have some ways the SaaSpocalypse in the public market because there is that fear that AI is going to completely change the game for especially for the more typical software companies. Good luck raising private money to quote unquote just build traditional software companies. You cannot expect a warm embrace from the private market if the public markets are completely destroying that category. I’m not saying that this is there forever, uh, things might change over time, but for sure what’s happening on the public markets always have a very strong impact on the private market.   Nuno Indeed. So what’s happening in this relationship between limited partners and VCs, the general partners? Again, limited partners are the people that give venture capital firms and venture capital funds their capital to actually deploy. And they are a variety of different players, right? Could be endowments, like university endowments, pension funds, family offices, very high net worth individuals, fund of funds, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, in particular, if you look at the institutional investors, the endowments, the pension funds, the fund of funds, they have allocations that they do to different asset classes typically. And the feedback that we’ve received from the market is they are increasingly frustrated with what’s happening in terms of distributions. They’re not getting capital back. It’s like, I gave you capital 8 years ago, 9 years ago, 2017, 2018 vintages, and I’m not getting any capital back. So what the hell’s happening? On paper, it looks maybe the fund’s doing okay or it’s doing great in some cases, but where’s my money? And so that creates a little bit of wait-and-see kind of game on portfolio allocation. As we’re thinking through their re-ups, putting more capital into funds that they’re already actually put capital or putting in capital into new slots, into new fund managers that they want to put money into. They’re like, well, let’s wait and see. I want to get my money back or get some money back first before I redeploy it. Again, this is a little bit the haves and have-nots because we’ve seen, for example, a couple of top-end LPs in terms of returns that have a little bit the opposite problem, right? Because they are into funds that are performing extremely well. They actually are over that period and they want to actually redeploy. But to be honest, the average in the industry right now is a wait-and-see game. It’s like, I want to wait and see, which leads to what can only be characterized— I was hearing someone the other day, one of the top advisors in the LP community, saying this is the worst fundraising environment ever for venture capital. Not the last 20 years, 30 years, like ever, right? Since this became an asset class more institutionally in the late ’60s, early ’70s, Pulse Robo 2 as it was created, this is the worst fundraising environment ever. Oh, wow.   Bertrand And concerning TVPI, let’s not forget that typically it’s not mark-to-market. So the metrics in terms of TVPI, correct me if I’m wrong, you know, but the metrics in TVPI are based on typically the last fundraise. So if the valuation went down but there was no additional fundraise, we wouldn’t know by looking at the TVPI metrics. It will only be updated if there is a new Financing, equity financing, or an exit.   Nuno Yeah, normally most funds act like that. Some funds are a little bit more aggressive and do do mark-to-market, but normally funds would be conservative and say, hey, I’m being conservative, it’s whatever is the last known valuation of the company. And if there wasn’t a priced round, it’s a little bit more obscure than that, right, Bertrand? Because it might actually be the company has raised money on a note, or either convertible note or a SAFE note, and that wouldn’t count as a priced round. So I would say actually, even if it was a cap that’s below with a significant discount, I won’t recognize the assets as a down round. I won’t recognize the asset with a lower valuation because formally it wasn’t a price round. So it’s on the one hand conservative, on the other hand, it’s only relating to price rounds or exits to your point. So it’s sort of, you can be like, hmm, well, we opt to do that because we think it’s actually the most conservative route. Mark-to-market is extremely difficult to do. And who would do the mark-to-market for you, right? It’s like it’s some valuation firm, et cetera.   Bertrand I’m not saying a mark-to-market is easy, but I’m not sure I would call using the last valuation something conservative in the context that most startups will fail. So it’s not clear.   Nuno Well, in some cases it is, some cases it’s not, right? Depends on the startup situation, to be honest. Yeah, yeah.   Bertrand But yeah, at least that’s how it’s done. So for instance, to evaluate the impact of the SaaS apocalypse, it’s tough to know. We will have on the private market. I mean, we will see that in a few quarters. Because if companies still exist in that environment, if they still do additional truly price rounds after that, that’s when I will start to know.   Nuno I mean, just to share a little bit more data, like VC fund close time stretched to 15 months. Basically, it’s just taking a long time to raise money. It’s taking a long time to do your first close, get your fund running. When entrepreneurs complain to me that their fundraising is difficult, I always say, you have no clue how difficult it is compared to ours. First-time funds have collapsed. We had some numbers that only 77 first-time funds actually closed. I assume this is in 2025 versus 215 in 2023. So that’s a huge number. We did some internal analysis on our side and we did some analysis that emerging fund managers, emerging fund managers are normally people that are in their first one or two funds. Basically emerging fund managers gained some ground until 2017. Reaching by then a slice that was 63.7% of all capital raised in 2017. But since then, the capital deployed to emerging managers has been largely reduced to actually 24.2%, right? So it’s gone from 63.7% in 2017 to 24.2%. So this has been a culling of sorts on emerging managers and almost like a slaughterhouse of emerging managers. Compared to previous situations, which is obviously incredibly concerning if you’re an emerging manager starting your VC firm, et cetera, et cetera. So really tremendously problematic for those. We think capital’s not leaving VC. I think we see a lot of the institutionals saying— there’s some numbers as high as 33% of institutional investors plan to invest more in venture in the next 12 months. So I don’t think capital’s leaving VC. I think it’s really concentrating. We’ll come back to the concentration issue later in the episode. And part of that concentration comes from a topic that has been widely spoken in venture capital recently, which is differentiation. How do you differentiate in venture capital if you’re talking to a limited partner, right? How does my firm differentiate versus the firm next to mine? And that’s incredibly, incredibly challenging. Bertrand, what are your thoughts on that?   Bertrand Differentiation is always a question. I mean, if you’re an entrepreneur, Typically, you think fully about the best possible partner for your stage and for your type of business model. You want a VC who understands fully your business model, because if they don’t, then it’s going to be troubled down the line. But that’s true that another piece of the puzzle is that the best VCs help you get more visibility in terms of achieving potential customer deals, in terms of attracting the best talent. And that’s where VCs’ brand names can help. If you can say you have backing by some of the top, most visible names in the industry, and usually these are the mega funds because others have trouble to be as visible, then they have some sort of unfair advantage compared to others. So I can see that there is some level of concentration happening naturally, especially in the later stage from Series B onwards.   Nuno What Really Matters: Performance… Returns Yeah, I mean, we did some analysis internally about What are the top funds that invested in the top performing companies in early stage, Series C, Series A? And we looked at it by size of fund and the top performing normally are funds below $100 million, but in some cases very closely followed by funds between $100 and $500 million. And actually funds above $500 million, so $500 million to $1 billion and then $1 billion and above are actually tremendously underperforming. So this notion of the industry that says, well, the mega funds still see The top investments early on, because they still deploy in Series C and Series A opportunistically, in some cases even spray and pray if they have their own incubation and acceleration programs, is not true. Actually, we verified that over the last 12 to 13 years. It is not 12 to 13 years in vintage, right? So up to a 2021 vintage fund. So we went basically 12, 13 years back from there. And it’s not true. Actually, the most performing are 0 to 100 and then 100 to 500. And as I said, there’s 100 to 500 in a couple of years actually are a little bit better. Than the $0 to $100 million ones. So that’s the first thing that’s a conclusion. And actually, that’s not shocking. If we remember back in the day, Kleiner Perkins used to raise funds up to $600 million, Benchmark raised their $425 million funds. It seems like the sweet spot for a VC fund would be around $500 million at the top end, like maximum. And now somehow people are saying, well, I’m raising a $3 billion VC fund. It’s like, well, it can’t be a VC fund. The return profile is totally different, right? You can’t deploy that capital just based on early stage investing. And by the way, you’re not seeing the guys at early stage, all that you’re seeing, you’re going to make your returns in mid to late stage, right? Back to what we said at the beginning of the episode. So there’s a little bit of the haves and have-nots there. The big guys are raising more and more money, but they’re no longer venture capital. And I think limited partners that are a little bit more evolved, that are a little bit more conscious of this, that have been in the market longer, are realizing that shift. So it’s like if they want to have the alpha of venture capital, they need to deploy to the sub-$100 million funds or the sub-$500 million funds, right? That’s where they need to actually focus their VC capital. They can still deploy to mega funds, but they’re deploying to a different asset class. They’re deploying to a private equity, mid to late stage asset class, which looks maybe a little bit more like a growth fund or something like that. The second part of differentiation is the honest truth is most VC funds are like, I have proprietary network access, right? I’m ex-Stripe or I’m ex-Google or I’m ex-Facebook or whatever, and I have access to that. I mean, we know proprietary networks from that standpoint are no longer true. The whole thing that created Silicon Valley back in the ’70s of what I used to call the country club deals where there were a few people coming out of the big companies, the Fairchilds of the world, later on the Intels of the world, et cetera, et cetera, that made some money along the way that sort of bootstrapped their next companies, were well-known quantity to the existing VCs and raised money relatively easy on ideas, that doesn’t work anymore. Someone was telling me the other day one interesting thing that I wasn’t quite aware of, a lot of it had to do with the NDAs. I don’t know if you knew this, Bertrand, but like the fact that in California, it was sort of the Silicon Valley community sort of imposed this, we don’t sign NDAs thing and Boston continued signing it. And this whole NDA enforcement issue and non-compete, actually not the NDA thing, but more strongly that California did not enforce non-competes. I could leave Fairchild and start a company that magically was doing something that could be considered competitive to Fairchild. And that was sort of part of the acceleration actually of venture capital in California versus, for example, Boston, which was sort of hand in hand at the beginning.   Bertrand Yeah, I mean, I’m a big, big believer in California success coming from not enforcing or banning non-compete agreements. I think it’s a key part of the game. If you lock people into not doing something similar in the next 6 months to 24 months. And the industry has always been moving fast. So this is a significant time where you are blocked to do something very similar. I think it was really an issue. So I think it’s a key part of the game and it has been there. I don’t know how it started, but I think that non-enforcement of non-compete has been a key part of the success of California. I’m actually pleased to say that Washington State is going in the same direction. They are just signing a non-compete ban. And you might remember that at the federal level, I think in 2024, there was also a ban that was put in place to ban non-compete, but this has been reversed by the courts. So this is not there anymore. So that’s why we see a state like Washington State putting their own ban, and we might see more state by state moving in that direction. I think it was not helping at all, this non-compete. I mean, there is obviously stuff that needs to be done, like you cannot steal secrets, you cannot steal IP.   Nuno Yeah.   Bertrand Even stealing employees, there should be some restraints. We need to find the right balance, but you have to be careful there. That was key for the success of California, and I’m glad to see that this is a trend that’s going to go beyond California. And I hope most states will have a ban on non-compete.   Nuno Maybe just to close on the differentiation process, two things. One, I think there’s this notion When you talk to some LPs, that seems to be a little bit ingrained, some LPs that prefer specialized funds. We’ve also done some significant analysis internally and have talked to a couple of datasets other than our own, or people that own datasets other than our own, and the feedback has actually been not so fast. Actually, generalist funds over time cannot perform specialist funds. There seems to be a little bit of a sweet spot around generalist funds. We like to call ourselves multi-specialized at Chameleon, but ultimately from the perspective of specialized versus Generalist funds, the picture’s not as clear as specialized funds outperform generalists or generalists outperform specialized. We’ve seen there are pockets where actually generalists outperform specialized, in other pockets where specialized of a certain size can outperform generalists. So that’s one topic on differentiation that is a little bit broader. And then the final topic on differentiation, it’s really an industry that hasn’t innovated dramatically on where it creates the most value, which is really the picking stage, right? So it’s having great deal flow, very optimal, productive, efficient due diligence with very few resources and the ability to then get into those deals. That’s where most of the value is created. And then hopefully liquidating the asset if there’s an opportunity to do so at the right time, either through secondary trade sales or an IPO or something else. And what we’ve seen is the industry has innovated very little. I mean, the only thing I could point out in terms of core innovation at the top of the funnel has been the creation of the mega funds, the well-known funds, right? Like a16z, Union Square Ventures, et cetera, et cetera. But there needs to be more innovation on that cycle. And that’s why we certainly at Chameleon believe that the future is to have quant and AI-native VC firms that develop their own tooling, their own platforms. We have Mantis in our case that allow you to have this unfair advantage in how you source deals and how you do due diligence, how you get into the deals, et cetera, and how you take it to the next level. And we think that’s the beginning of the next stage is that the industry becomes more tech-enabled, shockingly enough, an industry that has made all its returns on tech or almost all of its returns on tech. That we need to be more tech-enabled ourselves. But I think the writing is on the wall there, and that will be a source of differentiation certainly over the next 3 to 5 years.   Bertrand One thing the industry has innovated somewhat and maybe could innovate even more is providing liquidity beyond trade sale and an IPO, because it’s clear that if VCs want more liquidity without waiting 18 years, you need that liquidity at different stage, not just when it’s time to do an exit, a full exit for the business. And for employees as well. I mean, it’s one thing to stay for a company for 4 years, which is your typical vesting. Maybe you extend that to 6 years, to 8 years, you have a great time at the company. But to think that maybe you have to stick around for 15 to 20 years in order to get liquidity on your stock options. I mean, that’s too much to ask for most people. I mean, people have a life, they have other things to do, other plans, they might want to move, they come at a different stage of life. So you need to provide them liquidity. The new game is we are not going to exit until 15 to 20 years, else it’s truly unfair. It’s not just unfair, but people will say, you know what, I’m going to go across the street, go work for Amazon or Google. I will have RSUs at best regularly that are liquid, and why bother? I mean, we need to find pathways to liquidity for both investors but also employees. There has been a change in that direction, but I think we need more of this change, and maybe not just reserved for the absolute biggest, most successful companies like OpenAI or SpaceX, but also us as well. Hopefully we can find a way.   Nuno Well, now we have these AI companies that actually grow so fast that they will IPO in one year. Now, isn’t that what’s going to happen? They raise They raised $500 million in Series C or $1.4 billion in Series C, and they’re going to IPO in 2 years. No? Is that not the new reality? I’m being facetious.   Bertrand At the same time, I mean, there are rumors that some of them are going to IPO this year. I mean, we talk about OpenAI, about Anthropic. I mean, OpenAI is quite old, but Anthropic is a relatively new business, quote unquote. So I think it’s a good time.   Nuno The Mega Fund Question So maybe it will be true after all. Moving to the next section, are mega funds still venture capital, Bertrand? Are they still venture capital funds?   Bertrand Yeah, I guess venture capital is a term that can encompass from small to very big funds. I truly don’t know. I mean, once you reach a growth stage, are you truly a VC fund? I don’t know. I think some of these definitions are kind of arbitrary from my perspective. What is clear is that you as a business need different providers of capital. And as we just discussed, you as a business, probably need to keep going and stay private for longer. One reason being, again, there is a tremendous cost to being a public company. There are some true strategic disadvantages. And at the same time, just practically, I mean, you need to get bigger and bigger in order to have a chance of a successful IPO. So you cannot just go IPO at a $500 million valuation. I mean, that’s like committing suicide, at least in the US market on NASDAQ. So my point is, you truly have no choice. You need to extend and If you need to extend, then you need to have capital providers that are there at later stage and therefore have more money. Is it still true venture capital? Is it true venture? I don’t know. At some point, it makes sense that from the startups to the capital providers, everyone adjusts to a reality where the life cycle is getting longer.   Nuno We don’t think it is. We don’t think mega funds are venture capital. We have actually some data that shows that they’re not in terms of actual returns. The alphas you can generate, the IRR that you can generate is actually not comparable. We did some analysis again with some of our datasets and from 2012 to 2022, so that’s the datasets that we used so that we had actual distributions and stuff we could take into account and so on and so forth. And looking at IRR, just to share some numbers in terms of IRR over those 10 years on sub-$100 million funds versus above $1 billion funds, the differences are incredibly stark. And this is true for global and US IRR, right? So just to quote some numbers in terms of average, sub-$100 million funds, global IRR of 22.9%, US IRR of 21.6% versus above $1 billion, 9.1% and 9.0%. Median IRR, if we just looked at median, 7.3% and 16.6% for sub-$100 million funds, 7.5% and 8.1% above $1 billion. Top quartile IRR, sub-$100 million, 31% versus 30.4% US IRR. And then above $1 billion funds, 14.7%, 15.5%. So it’s very clear if you sort of cut this in different ways, averages, medians, top quartiles, et cetera, over all these years that sub-$100 million funds are in a very different asset class than above $1 billion funds. They’re in different alpha that you can generate and so on and so forth. Now to the point you made, Bertrand, I don’t fully disagree with the point you made of the bigger funds should become bigger. I just think they’re becoming different things. Now, again, some of these funds will hide under the facts like, well, wait a second, we have all these assets under management, but they’re over different funds. Sequoia, we’re still raising small early-stage funds, $500, $600 million funds. And then we have larger funds for growth, et cetera, et cetera. Andreessen Horowitz, a little bit less clear what they’re actually doing. We heard that they’ve raised $15 billion across funds. I’m not sure if that’s the exact number at the end of the day. But the point is, if I’m a multi-asset class manager, like early growth, et cetera, et cetera, then it still applies what Nunu is saying. I’m still going after the $500 million, $600 million early-stage funds. Well, not so fast, right? Because you still have all this capital with managing general partners that are maybe across funds for which their incentives in particular, both carry and management fees are coming from the larger funds. Et cetera, et cetera. So there’s necessarily conflicts of interest. In many cases, the funds are just straight up big, right? And so they are above a billion. And so I don’t think a lot of these guys are in early-stage investing anymore, right? It may appear that they are, but I don’t think that’s where the returns necessarily are going to come from. And so if you are a limited partner, if you’re looking at your asset class allocation, again, you’re absolutely free to put money into mega funds because that’s the kind of asset class you want to play in. In terms of a blended private equity asset class that has a little bit of growth, a little bit of whatever, or actually a lot of growth, a lot of late stage, and maybe a little bit of early stage. And I want something that’s a little bit more blended, right? But if I still want the alpha venture capital, I need to deploy to funds that are early stage, right? And that’s like up to $100 million, up to $500 million. I think that’s my two cents on that topic. We see crossover things coming around, like guys who do both public and private markets. Again, that starts feeling a bit like a hedge fund. A lot of these funds have also become RAs, as we discussed earlier. So I feel the writing’s on the wall. The mega funds are going more and more after either some mechanism of edging or a mechanism that’s a little bit more blended in terms of private equity than classic venture capital.   Bertrand Yes, I think a few things. One, if you’re an LP, I can imagine that dealing with multiple $100 million funds might be more difficult. You, you need to know the partners, you need to have some background, uh, visibility. You need potentially to change regularly of VC investments. So I can see some level of simplicity if you just focus on the bigger ones, especially if you have a lot of assets you have to put to work. Another piece of the puzzle, I would guess that the bigger funds are able to return money faster because they are at later stage of the cycle. So instead of that 15 to 18 years, maybe they are more in a 5 to 10 year range, while the smaller funds being there more early might be the one who are taking longer to deliver. So I can see that Yes, there is an IRR picture, but there is also time to liquidity that is not the same. So that can probably also influence. And in terms of crossover PE hybrid model, I mean, for sure we have seen some of the public equity investors doing crossover, meaning going into private equity firms like Coatue, like Tiger Global and others. And for companies that are preparing for IPO, there is a lot of value to work with these firms because they have very good visibility and understanding of the public markets. And their presence in the cap table is also a sign of quality, typically for public market investors. So there is a lot of value and logic for them to be there on both sides of the puzzle. But again, the fact that firms keep delaying IPOs, that the market is not so much startup-friendly, makes this model a bit more difficult. But personally, I think there is value there.   Nuno Yeah, I think on the mega fund, just so that I’m not boo-booing everything, I mean, but there’s definitely angles in terms of the asset class that make a lot of sense. And there’s the scalability of the model. The ability to go after Series B, Series C, as well as mid-stage, as well as late-stage, even secondaries over time, to your point, in some cases even public equities. And that level of skill I think matters. We’ve also seen, as we’ve known, we won’t mention any brands, but people will know who they are, that late-stage hedge funds and investors, even if they’ve done okay-ish in growth in private equity, don’t necessarily do well in venture. So it’s clearly a very different asset class, right? So once you start getting venture teams together, The returns are not quite the same. Actually, sometimes they’re not even quite the same as the growth investments. So clearly they’re very good at the growth side, but not so good in early stage. But definitely there is a case for it. The Case for Smaller…Rightsized Funds But if we switch gears maybe to the small, or I would call right-sized funds, maybe just to quote a couple of numbers and then open up the discussion. Small funds do seem to outperform larger funds. There’s a lot of data in the market that shows some of that dynamic outperformance frequency. All the Very historical numbers from Cambridge Associates from 1981 to 2010. 19 out of 30 vintages were won by sub-$150 million funds. We did our own analysis as I was sharing before. Funds between $0 and $100 won most years between around 2010 and 2021. And the years that they didn’t outperform in terms of investing in the top-performing companies in early-stage Series C, Series A, they were outperformed by the $100 to $500 million funds. The $500 to $1 billion funds and $1 billion or above were never even in the same league in terms of performance, of having identified those top performers in terms of quantity over those early-stage investments. Top 10 funds by vintage, 2004 to 2006, 2016 numbers. Top 10 funds, 73% were sub-$100 million. 2004 to 2016, top 10 funds by vintage, 73% of those were sub-$100 million. So there seems to be a little bit of a case that actually smaller funds, sub-$100 million, sub-$500 million in some cases, are outperforming the larger funds over time. Now, these funds are complex in and of itself. The positive of it is small fund GPs like myself, we are deeply invested in our own funds. We’re not there to just make management fee monies. I mean, we’re not making $1 million, $2 million a year in management fees of salary ourselves, like some of the larger funds. So we are there to really get the carry and be less focused on management fees. And so I think there’s a little bit of alignment around that and really taking that kind of perspective on portfolio construction and liquidation, being also more aggressive on the individual time that we spend with our startups. On the negative side, obviously a lot of these smaller funds, not the case of Chameleon, but others out there are single GPs, very little teams or very small teams. And so it’s sometimes difficult to actually do a lot for portfolio companies as well. And this is where the mega funds, for example, a16z notably would say, hey, we have 600+ people that can support you, right? On market development, business development, communications, talent recruiting, all this stuff. Question mark whether that’s the right way to do it in terms of operating model, if technology is not a better way of supplying that value back to your portfolio companies, or if there’s no better way of doing it. But still, that’s one of the appeals of actually dealing with a larger mega fund if you’re a startup, right? That they will have the resources, also the financial resources to put more capital in you. But also, again, if there’s entrepreneurs listening to this right now, and hopefully there are, it’s a two-edged sword, right? Because if you have Andreessen Horowitz putting money in you, or NEA, or General Catalyst, or whatever, putting money in you on a Series C and then not doubling down on the Series A or the Series B, there will be questions, right? Because like they have the capital, they have other funds, so why the hell are they not putting more money in? Um, so, so it’s a little bit of a two-edged sword.   Bertrand Yeah, I think that one is a pretty big one. And on top of it, as we discussed, some of these big firms have multiple funds managed technically by different teams. So you might have convinced the early-stage teams, they have investors, they’re happy, but you don’t convince the growth-stage firm. As you say, it might raise questions because people might think that there is some communication between the early-stage team and the growth-stage team. So why the heck are they not deciding to invest? And as we also discussed, even worse possible situation, what happens if the growth-stage team has invested in your competitor? It’s even more trouble. So I think trying to understand how firms behave, what’s the reputation of the firm, what’s the reputation of the partner you are working with, I mean, can have tremendous importance and impact. When it’s time for you to work with a firm.   Nuno Indeed. I mean, at the end of the day, we still believe that the smaller fund— we at Chameleon discuss the notion that our limit should be $500 million per fund, right? And that’s the logic of it. We think that model is the model that works well in venture capital. We do recognize, as I said before, why mega funds keep raising more and more money, right? It becomes a harm’s race at that end of the market. As I said, probably a slightly different asset class, or if not a significantly different asset class as well. So seeing a little bit both sides of the market, I mean, we often compete with the mega funds, but honestly, a lot of the mega funds are kind to us and they let us in. And this whole notion of elbows out, we haven’t felt it that much in the market. And people see our value at the table. And in many cases, I, I do see the larger funds more and more seeing the value of smaller funds coming in on the same rounds and even in some cases co-leading early stage rounds like Series C. So it’s not like elbows are out everywhere across the board. So I don’t mean to say this is like an all-out war between small funds and big funds and the small funds need to win or the big funds need to win. I think actually there’s a lot of potential for coexistence. My point is more that the asset classes and the returns are quite different over time, and that’s how I would think through it. And if you’re an entrepreneur, you should think about that as well, right? What are the implications of taking money from certain funds versus others in terms of the expected returns, expected time allocated to you? For example, if you’re not doing very well as a as a company, right? Will the big funds spend the same amount of energy on you if you’re not doing great and all of that? So it’s a little bit sort of a beware, open your eyes, both for limited partners and for startups. What do you actually want, right? What do you want from your VC firm if you’re a startup? And what do you want from your VC firm if you’re an LP?   Bertrand I must say, as an entrepreneur, uh, a board member, I have seen some situations where the bigger funds are actually trying sometimes to elbow out the existing investors. Like, uh, we have that much money to put to work, we cannot do less. And you’re like, yeah, but I don’t need that much money. And then they’re like, okay, just don’t let your existing investors do their pro rata. I don’t think it’s great because an entrepreneur, if your investors, your VCs, trusted you earlier stage when it’s more risky, and when it’s becoming less risky, you don’t give them the right to their pro rata because you have to let this big guy come in. That’s not great. Or even if there is not this pro rata issue, when an investor tries to put more money to work than it’s really necessary, it’s also not a good idea as an entrepreneur to take more capital than you could use. It will dilute you more, it will set higher expectations in terms of valuation, it will push you to use that capital faster than maybe would be reasonable. So I think that’s something you want to be careful with the bigger funds. So don’t talk to funds that are in some ways beyond your stage and try to make it work in that context. Or don’t accept to have your strategy change dramatically for no good reason by funds that just want to put too much money to work in your business. And that for me is surprising because it should also be in their best interest not to invest in businesses that are not ready to accept that much capital. But as we have seen, there were in the past some funds that believe that capital is a moat. Was a good idea. So hopefully, I guess we’re a bit behind that. But yeah, I would say entrepreneurs, be careful, find partners that are the right partners for you at your current stage. Sometimes some big names look great, but at the same time, if it comes with a lot of issues, from too much capital to also taking the risk that these partners don’t understand the stage of the business you are in or your industry, Just be careful. There is a lot of value to have firms that are very focused on your stage, on your industry, are finely attuned to that situation.   Nuno What Comes Next? Maybe to end in terms of sections, what comes next? And maybe we can come up with some predictions that are a little bit provocative on what’s going to happen to the market. You, if you’re listening to us, feel free to interact with us on LinkedIn, on X. If you have our email address, shoot us an email as well. We’d love to hear from you if you think these are the right predictions or if we’re totally off. Maybe I’ll throw in the first one, Bertrand, and we’ll go one by one. So we’ll each put one at the table and see where we head. My first one is that we’ll have a huge culling of VC investors. We had this rapid expansion of the VC asset class with arguably at least tens of thousands of firms globally, maybe even over 10,000 in the US. I think we’ll have a culling and the culling will continue and we’ll have several firms sort of getting eliminated over the next couple of years that will have either because they’re having tremendous difficulty doing their first close in their next fund, or the returns are not there, or it’s a firm that has done 3, 4 funds, but for some reason the returns have just gone out of whack in the last few years during the bull years. And so therefore, actually they can’t justify to raise more funds out there. So I predict there will be a significant elimination of active firms in the next at least 2 to 3 years. So maybe by 2028, and we’ll be below, I don’t know, 30% of number of active firms that we are today. The other side of it is I do think if we look beyond that, 2029, 2030, and so on, we’ll have the reemergence of not micro funds, but nano funds where people will start deploying capital very, very early and writing small angel checks, but doing it in a way that it’s sort of not this cottage industry that we’ve had of angel investors. So I think angel investment will be disrupted by people that will use more and more of the AI toolification out there to actually manage their portfolios of 10, 15, 5K investments in a way that is a lot more professional, creating sort of an advent of nano funds.   Bertrand Yeah, makes sense. On my side, in terms of prediction, I think there is a possibility that the mega fund model keeps expanding and looks more similar over time to some PE models. So do we have the top 10 VC firms that look more like a Blackstone than a Kleiner Perkins or Sequoia used to be? That for me will be an interesting question and development. I think that there is some possibility that it keeps going in that direction. A lot of incentives are pushing things that way.   Nuno My next prediction is that DPI, distributions to paid-in cash on cash, just cash back, will become essential for limited partners. I think TVPI, total value to paid-in, that also has in there, as we just said, paper valuations. There’s a lot of disbelief now around the TVPI metric if there isn’t distributions going alongside it. For those who, again, don’t know what TVPI is, it’s total value paid in, but it also includes DPI. So it’s cash on cash component plus a remaining valuation to paid in, an RVPI. And the problem is the RVPI really, in reality, it’s that kind of on-paper valuation that never gets attributed. I think LPs, they’ve seen the writing on the wall and they’re like, dude, just show me your DPI numbers. I don’t care about TVPI. Some LPs will still ask about TVPI just to make sure that the rest is sort of looking in order. Like, show me the money, show me the cash. Actually, it’s not money, show me the cash, right? I want money back.   Bertrand But that’s an issue. I mean, if you’re supposed to raise financing every 3 or 4 years, good luck getting DPI to show for that. So you need to be at least on your third fund in order to be able to show DPI, I guess.   Nuno I mean, my corollary to that, Bertrand, is if you allow me just to have a corollary kind of prediction, is that we’ll see certainly for funds like $50 million and above, $100 million, $200 million, et cetera, even increased concentration, right? I really need to have anchors that believe in me over time. And we might start having, again, the advent— we had it some decades ago, the advent of cap table kind of VCs, right? Like Sutter Hill Ventures, right? Where they’re not really raising funds anymore. And so we might have the advent of that, that we’ll have structures that are created that have more permanent capital allocated to them, or at the very least more concentrated capital by very few players.   Bertrand Interesting. Me on my side, as I shared before, I believe secondaries are, are important and here to stay. Um, in the past, some could argue, is it a distress signal or something? I, I don’t think it’s true anymore. In a world where your average startup might take 15 to 18 years to exit through M&A or IPO, we need to have other options. For funds, for employees, they cannot be expected to stick around for so long and have no liquidity. I mean, it’s just pure madness. It’s just bad alignment at some point to do that. So I think secondaries are becoming the third liquidity pathway for VCs, for employees, and it should be more and more a key part of the game, a key infrastructure in the VC/startups tech industry.   Nuno I mean, on specialized versus generalist funds, I believe we’ll continue seeing the coexistence of those two models where the specialized funds will in many pockets actually outperform generalist funds, but where we’ll continue seeing that the large franchises, the tier one franchises will likely be generalist funds. I mean, we just saw it in the cycle. The AI cycle went upon us. We had a 2021 fund. We could easily adapt and go into AI and figure out that AI was growing very fast. I mean, if you have an ultra-specialized fund and that’s your remit and that’s the only thing you can invest on, very difficult to change even during our investment period. I will put a caveat on that. We don’t call, for example, ourselves at Chameleon generalist. We call ourselves multi-specialized because our scoring models for the verticals that we track are specialized within Mantis. Because the partnership is specialized, we all focus on different areas. And because we have the Kin network that allows us to tap into that level of expertise, Again, I think the world will be specialized coexistence. Some pockets specialized will do very well, certainly on the smaller fund size, but the big franchises will likely look a little bit more generalist. And as I said, multi-specialized from our perspective is the future. We’ll start seeing more and more funds that are multi-specialized like ourselves. Do you want to talk about AI and how it’ll distort the metrics? No.   Bertrand Yes. I think AI is an exciting moment in the tech industry. It feels in some ways that the same way we had a big distortion coming with COVID and work from home in 2020, 2021. 2021, where suddenly everyone and their mother will build a SaaS company or invest in a SaaS company. AI feels a bit of the same. I mean, to be clear, I truly believe it’s deserved. I mean, we are facing a dramatic shift in how computing is being done in terms of value you can get from software. So at the same time, AI will probably distort this matrix for a long time. We clearly see a split where investments are going, in what startups are being created. So I think, yeah, we will see some distortion. And we know that maybe 50% of all deal value is going to AI in 2025. We have seen single rounds reaching 40 billion, like to OpenAI. We have seen, as you discussed, some seed stage investment of 400 million. So AI investing and AI startups are definitely a beast on their own. And will distort VC metrics for a long time. And we might need two sets of metrics in parallel, you know, AI versus everything else. So that would be an interesting bifurcation in the industry in some ways. I would say it’s fair to separate AI versus non-AI. We reach a point where it’s two different beasts.   Nuno Conclusion So in conclusion, AI has changed the world and it’s changing VC as well, as we discussed earlier in the episode. We have a tremendous momentous occasion for the asset class where venture capital is really bifurcating into very large funds, which no longer are in venture capital or seemingly may be distributed between different asset classes, and the smaller funds, sub-$500 million and sub-$100 million, that keep having the better returns, but also with much smaller scale. We’re seeing a culling of the industry where the industry is definitely getting smaller and smaller and more concentrated at both ends, number of VC firms, as well as a number of limited partners per fund and the interest that some of these limited partners have of being more and more concentrated in their own portfolio allocations. And last but not the least, the discussion around specialized versus generalist, where it seems like there’s some clear winners on some asset classes, on some sizes, in some industries, but on others, there’s other kinds of winners. And so maybe the future is multi-specialized, as I framed at the end. Thank you so much for listening. If you want to check us out and if you want to comment, feel free to send us messages on X, LinkedIn, to both myself and Bertrand, as well as send us an email. Thank you so much, Bertrand.   Bertrand Thank you, Nuno.

In the latest episode of “Tax Stuff You Should Know,” hosts Bob Pluth and Gene Magidenko unpack the complexities of federal self-employment tax through the lens of the Fifth Circuit's decision in Sirius Solutions. The discussion centers on how self-employment taxes apply to limited partners, how limited partners are defined for this purpose, and where the Fifth Circuit's approach in Sirius Solutions diverges from the US Tax Court's functional analysis. They also explore the historical evolution of the limited partner concept, the lack of clear Internal Revenue Service (IRS) guidance, and what these ongoing interpretive tensions could mean for taxpayers going forward. Key Takeaways - Self-employment taxes can materially increase an individual's overall tax liability from investments into pass-through entities. - Active management roles can jeopardize limited partner status. - The lack of IRS guidance has resulted in considerable uncertainty and court challenges in this area. - While most recent cases are not favorable for taxpayers seeking to limit their self-employment tax exposure, the Fifth Circuit's decision in Sirius Solutions and pending cases in other federal appellate courts may change the landscape. - Congressional action would provide much-needed clarity in this area of tax law, but the likelihood of such action is uncertain.

In this engaging interview, Chad Ackerman shares his journey from HR professional to real estate investor and coach. Discover how he identified gaps in the passive investing space, built a community, and now aims to educate others on becoming successful limited partners in real estate.   Professional Real Estate Investors - How we can help you: Investor Fuel Mastermind:  Learn more about the Investor Fuel Mastermind, including 100% deal financing, massive discounts from vendors and sponsors you're already using, our world class community of over 150 members, and SO much more here: http://www.investorfuel.com/apply   Investor Machine Marketing Partnership:  Are you looking for consistent, high quality lead generation? Investor Machine is America's #1 lead generation service professional investors. Investor Machine provides true 'white glove' support to help you build the perfect marketing plan, then we'll execute it for you…talking and working together on an ongoing basis to help you hit YOUR goals! Learn more here: http://www.investormachine.com   Coaching with Mike Hambright:  Interested in 1 on 1 coaching with Mike Hambright? Mike coaches entrepreneurs looking to level up, build coaching or service based businesses (Mike runs multiple 7 and 8 figure a year businesses), building a coaching program and more. Learn more here: https://investorfuel.com/coachingwithmike   Attend a Vacation/Mastermind Retreat with Mike Hambright: Interested in joining a "mini-mastermind" with Mike and his private clients on an upcoming "Retreat", either at locations like Cabo San Lucas, Napa, Park City ski trip, Yellowstone, or even at Mike's East Texas "Big H Ranch"? Learn more here: http://www.investorfuel.com/retreat   Property Insurance: Join the largest and most investor friendly property insurance provider in 2 minutes. Free to join, and insure all your flips and rentals within minutes! There is NO easier insurance provider on the planet (turn insurance on or off in 1 minute without talking to anyone!), and there's no 15-30% agent mark up through this platform!  Register here: https://myinvestorinsurance.com/   New Real Estate Investors - How we can work together: Investor Fuel Club (Coaching and Deal Partner Community): Looking to kickstart your real estate investing career? Join our one of a kind Coaching Community, Investor Fuel Club, where you'll get trained by some of the best real estate investors in America, and partner with them on deals! You don't need $ for deals…we'll partner with you and hold your hand along the way! Learn More here: http://www.investorfuel.com/club   —--------------------

Over the last few years, many real estate investors learned a painful lesson: a polished pitch deck and impressive projections don't guarantee a “safe” investment. Deals went south, capital got stuck, and naturally, passive investors are now far more cautious about where they deploy their hard-earned money. Sarah Miskelly, founder of Hylee Capital, has witnessed this shift firsthand. Today, smart limited partners are no longer chasing flashy pro formas. They want risk-mitigated, institutional-grade opportunities that once felt out of reach for everyday investors. At the same time, there's been a growing shift toward debt investments, many of which Sarah believes aren't nearly as safe as they appear. Sarah shares how she evaluates sponsors and syndication deals through both the “hard” and “soft” sides of due diligence, along with the red flags she watches for—mistakes that have burned countless LPs in the past. She also breaks down the return metrics that matter most to hands-off investors and highlights the most compelling opportunities emerging in today's housing market—from multifamily apartments to mobile home parks. Insights from today's episode: Sarah's step-by-step process for vetting operators and syndication deals The return metrics that matter most to passive investors in today's market Why many LPs are moving toward debt investments (that aren't as safe as advertised) How to build a resilient portfolio by blending high-IRR deals and steady cash flow How building multiple cash flow streams can lead to greater lifestyle freedom — Connect with Sarah on LinkedIn Hylee Capital Recommended Resources: Accredited Investors, you're invited to Join the Cashflow Investor Club to learn how you can partner with Kevin Bupp on current and upcoming opportunities to create passive cash flow and build wealth. Join the Club! If you're a high-net-worth investor with capital to deploy in the next 12 months and you want to build passive income and wealth with a trusted partner, go to InvestWithKB.com for opportunities to invest in real estate projects alongside Kevin and his team.  Looking for the ultimate guide to passive investing? Grab a copy of my latest book, The Cash Flow Investor at KevinBupp.com.  Tap into a wealth of free information on Commercial Real Estate Investing by listening to past podcast episodes at KevinBupp.com/Podcast. 0:00 Intro 0:49 Total Lifestyle Freedom 9:02 Better "Hands-Off" Investments 10:54 Operator Red Flags 18:54 What Has Changed? 22:39 LPs Are Being "Cautious" 28:44 Playing "the Long Game" 37:00 2026's Biggest Opportunities 40:49 Connect with Sarah!

This week we interview Christopher J. Millerick. Christopher is a revenue architect, go-to-market strategist, and expert in partner eco-systems leadership who has spent more than fifteen years engineering the systems that translate Private Equity and Venture Capital investment theses into predictable, capital-efficient revenue growth for enterprise SaaS and cybersecurity companies. As Global Vice President of Worldwide Partner Sales, Alliances & Hyperscalers at Infoblox—a Vista Equity Partners and Warburg Pincus portfolio company—Chris led the structural transformation of a stagnant $450M transactional channel into a strategic growth ecosystem that now executes 97% of total company revenue. Under his leadership, partner-sourced revenue grew from 38% to 73% of new customer bookings, new customer acquisition increased 43%, and the organization scaled steadily toward $1B in annual recurring revenue—all while meeting the board's rigorous "Rule of 60" profitability and growth mandates. Chris brought expertise that in collaboration with Infoblox's previous CRO led to the adoption of the "3 WHYs" qualifying framework — a buyer-centric methodology that aligns direct sales, marketing, and partner engagement around the three questions every enterprise buyer must answer before committing: Why now? (Urgency drivers) What happens if I do nothing? (Cost of inaction) Why this solution? (Value clarity) The framework has been deployed across global organizations to compress complex sales cycles and systematically improve capital efficiency. His operating experience spans the full PE value creation lifecycle. He built a greenfield enterprise region at Nutanix from zero to a top-producing region in North America within 24 months, led global revenue responsibility through the successful acquisition of Unitrends by Kaseya and co-led the Plexxi go-to-market turn-around through to acquisition by Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Chris led global channel sales for EMC Corporation's flagship storage business and held a variety of sales and GTM roles with progressive financial impact across a twelve-year tenure. A 5-time CRN Channel Chief honoree, Executive Revenue Growth Advisor in the Hubble network, and Limited Partner at Stage 2 Capital, Chris holds a BA from the College of the Holy Cross, an MBA from Babson College and Chief Revenue Officer Leadership Program Certificate from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. He speaks on partner ecosystem transformation, PE/VC value creation through GTM architecture, leveraging AI in GTM and building revenue engines that deliver both growth and profitability at scale.

In this episode of Millionaire Mindcast, Matty A interviews Aleksey Chernobelskiy, founder of The LP Analyst, to discuss the evolving capital landscape in commercial real estate and how Limited Partners should evaluate syndication opportunities in today's market.With rising interest rates, tighter liquidity, and increased scrutiny from investors, the game has changed for both LPs and GPs. Aleksey breaks down what LPs should prioritize—downside protection, debt structure, realistic underwriting, and sponsor alignment—while explaining why projected returns alone are no longer enough.They also discuss:How capital raising has shifted post-rate hikesWhy LPs must stress-test assumptions and analyze risk firstThe importance of sponsor transparency and communicationWhat strong operators are doing differently in 2026How to think about leverage and capital stacks in today's marketWhy long-term relationships outperform chasing the highest IRRThis episode is a must-listen for passive investors, syndicators, and anyone raising capital in commercial real estate.Connect with Aleksey:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chernobelskiyX: http://x.com/chernobelskiyEpisode Sponsored By:Discover Financial Millionaire Mindcast Shop: Buy the Rich Life Planner and Get the Wealth-Building Bundle for FREE! Visit: https://shop.millionairemindcast.com/CRE MASTERMIND: Visit myfirst50k.com and submit your application to join!FREE CRE Crash Course: Text “FREE” to 844-447-1555FREE Financial X-Ray: Text  "XRAY" to 844-447-1555

Welcome to Building Passive Income with CREI Collin Most passive investors never read the operating agreement—and that's a mistake. The operating agreement is the rulebook for how the syndication operates. It defines your rights, the sponsor's powers, how profits are distributed, when you get paid, and what happens if things go wrong. In this episode, CREI Collin decodes the operating agreement, breaking down the 10 key sections every investor must understand. You'll learn what rights you have as a limited partner or non-managing member, what red flags to watch for, and what questions to ask before you sign. Learn how to read an operating agreement with confidence. CREI Collin decodes the 10 key sections that define your rights as a passive investor. Key Topics Covered: What is an operating agreement (and limited partnership agreement)? The 10 key sections of an operating agreement Your rights as a limited partner or non-managing member What you can and can't do as a passive investor Red flags to watch for in an operating agreement Questions to ask sponsors about the operating agreement How to protect yourself when reviewing an operating agreement Timestamps: [00:00] Introduction: Why most investors don't read the operating agreement [02:30] What is an operating agreement and why it matters [04:45] Section 1: Definitions [05:30] Section 2: Capital Contributions [06:15] Section 3: Allocations of Profits and Losses [07:00] Section 4: Distributions [08:15] Section 5: Management and Control [09:30] Section 6: Voting Rights [10:45] Section 7: Transfer Restrictions [11:45] Section 8: Capital Calls [12:45] Section 9: Sponsor Removal [13:45] Section 10: Dissolution and Liquidation [14:45] Your rights as a limited partner or non-managing member [16:30] Red flags to watch for [18:15] Questions to ask sponsors [20:00] Recap and action steps Key Takeaways: The operating agreement (for LLCs) or limited partnership agreement (for LPs) is the governing document that defines your rights, the sponsor's powers, and the rules for how the deal operates. Focus on 10 key sections: Definitions, Capital Contributions, Allocations, Distributions, Management and Control, Voting Rights, Transfer Restrictions, Capital Calls, Sponsor Removal, and Dissolution. As a limited partner or non-managing member, you have the right to receive distributions, financial information, and a K-1, and you may have limited voting or consent rights. You generally don't have day-to-day control or the right to easily exit. Red flags include unclear governance, broad discretion without guardrails, mandatory capital calls with severe penalties (dilution, loss of rights, reduced distributions, or forfeiture), vague distribution language, difficult or impossible sponsor removal, severe transfer restrictions, and overly broad indemnification clauses. Ask detailed questions about control, distributions, capital calls, voting or consent rights, transfers, and exit strategy. Read the operating agreement carefully, consult with an attorney if investing significant capital, and evaluate calmly if something feels off. Resources Mentioned: Chapters (00:00:01) - Building Passive Income(00:01:46) - What Am I Signing?(00:02:44) - Subscription Agreement and Investor Questionnaire(00:05:21) - Representations and Warranties(00:07:43) - Accredited Investors: Final Checks and Red flags(00:12:53) - The subscription agreement and investor questionnaire are the final legal documents you sign

Most of the problems in multifamily over the past few years have been related to debt. Many operators are now in their second extension phase and not making payments or keeping up with their properties. Several of these have been taken back by the lenders. Lenders are identifying experienced, local operators to take over these properties.  James Eng, “The Professor” of multifamily financing, is the National Director at Old Capital in Dallas. James has helped hundreds of multifamily investors strategize the right debt to obtain and acquire over $1 Billion dollars of properties. James has also been a Limited Partner in 45 multifamily deals in Texas. 

Key Factors in Raising a VC Fund Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing. In raising a VC fund, there are key factors that will lead to a successful outcome. Here's a list of key success factors: Providing value add to the relationship. For example, make introductions between two Limited Partners who may benefit from knowing each other. Educate the LPs so they understand the industry better. Investors love to learn insights about a sector they are investing in. Fast follow-up shows you value the relationship. Return calls quickly to show how important the relationship is. Gain endorsement from LPs, founders, and other VC funds. A good standing in the industry helps burnish the reputation. Build a robust program with well-defined processes. LPs will appreciate a strong operational team in place. Finally, build a relationship with the Limited partner. An authentic relationship will bring many benefits throughout the life of the fund. Consider these factors in raising a VC fund. Thank you for joining us for the Startup Funding Espresso where we help startups and investors connect for funding. Let's go startup something today. _________________________________________________________ For more episodes from Investor Connect, please visit the site at: http://investorconnect.org Check out our other podcasts here: https://investorconnect.org/ For Investors check out: https://tencapital.group/investor-landing/ For Startups check out: https://tencapital.group/company-landing/ For eGuides check out: https://tencapital.group/education/ For upcoming Events, check out https://tencapital.group/events/ For Feedback please contact info@tencapital.group Please follow, share, and leave a review. Music courtesy of Bensound.

How To Create Momentum in Your VC Fundraise Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing. In raising a VC fund, it's important to create momentum in the fundraise. This helps carry the campaign through the ups and downs that come with fundraising. Here are a few steps to create momentum: Before launching the fundraise, obtain commitments from one or two Limited Partners. LPs with a brand name or reputation work best. This motivates other LPs to consider the fund. Show progress through the fundraising process with updates to the prospective Limited Partners. Demonstrating traction helps build momentum. Use content to show how the investment thesis of the fund stands out from the crowd. Highlight trends and inflection points that indicate how the position of the fund is gaining momentum. Offer informational sessions to educate the investor about the fund. This creates a deeper understanding of how it will work. Gain endorsements from leading figures in the industry. Investors look for momentum in the deals they fund. Consider how to use these tools to build momentum into your VC fundraise. Thank you for joining us for the Startup Funding Espresso where we help startups and investors connect for funding. Let's go startup something today. _________________________________________________________ For more episodes from Investor Connect, please visit the site at: http://investorconnect.org Check out our other podcasts here: https://investorconnect.org/ For Investors check out: https://tencapital.group/investor-landing/ For Startups check out: https://tencapital.group/company-landing/ For eGuides check out: https://tencapital.group/education/ For upcoming Events, check out https://tencapital.group/events/ For Feedback please contact info@tencapital.group Please follow, share, and leave a review. Music courtesy of Bensound.

Closing a Limited Partner Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing. In raising funds, the VC fund manager needs the ability to close Limited Partners. Here are some closing techniques to consider: FOMO The Fear of Missing Out is one of the most often used techniques for closing. To use this, the fund manager must demonstrate how other investors are coming into the fund. It's best to create some scarcity by showing the current capacity left in the fund and then comparing it to the interest from the investors. To do so, calculate the interest and committed funds to show the fund is potentially oversubscribed. For example, the fund is raising $50M, and has $40M invested so far. Show the interested and committed funds at $25M. This shows there's more interest than fund capacity. Deadlines Break the raise into rounds or tranches and run deadline campaigns. When the fund reaches two-thirds of the capacity of the round, then declare a deadline in six to eight weeks. This forces investors to make decisions or risk missing that round. Incentives Offer incentives to investors who come in by a certain date. This could be warrants, advisor shares, fee discounts, preferred returns, or follow-on investment opportunities. Consider these techniques to help close the fund round. Thank you for joining us for the Startup Funding Espresso where we help startups and investors connect for funding. Let's go startup something today. _________________________________________________________ For more episodes from Investor Connect, please visit the site at: http://investorconnect.org Check out our other podcasts here: https://investorconnect.org/ For Investors check out: https://tencapital.group/investor-landing/ For Startups check out: https://tencapital.group/company-landing/ For eGuides check out: https://tencapital.group/education/ For upcoming Events, check out https://tencapital.group/events/ For Feedback please contact info@tencapital.group Please follow, share, and leave a review. Music courtesy of Bensound.

Marketing documents for a VC fund Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing. In raising funds from Limited Partners, make sure to prepare the following marketing materials: Website. The website should reflect the values of the general partners and details about the fund. This is the first place investors go to learn more. Pitchdeck. Just as startups use a pitchdeck to communicate their deal, a VC fund needs a pitchdeck to present to Limited Partners. One pager. A one-pager describes the overview of the fund, including investment thesis, track record, and bios of the general partners. Due diligence questionnaire. It's a summary of the fund and how it compares to others, such as ESG funds. Data room. The basic documents and records of the fund should be in one place that LPs can access. Track record. A spreadsheet showing the track record of the fund with all the basic metrics, including TVPI, DPI, and IRR. Limited Partnership Agreement. This document lays out the details of the fund, including investment thesis, capital calls, management fees, and distributions. Private Placement Memorandum. This document highlights the financial characteristics of the fund and the risks associated with the investment. Make sure you have these documents ready for your fundraise. Thank you for joining us for the Startup Funding Espresso where we help startups and investors connect for funding. Let's go startup something today. _________________________________________________________ For more episodes from Investor Connect, please visit the site at: http://investorconnect.org Check out our other podcasts here: https://investorconnect.org/ For Investors check out: https://tencapital.group/investor-landing/ For Startups check out: https://tencapital.group/company-landing/ For eGuides check out: https://tencapital.group/education/ For upcoming Events, check out https://tencapital.group/events/ For Feedback please contact info@tencapital.group Please follow, share, and leave a review. Music courtesy of Bensound.

The Ideal Investor Profile of a VC Fund Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing. To find the ideal investors for your VC fund, consider the following: Value proposition What is the value proposition of the fund? Answering this question will narrow the field of investors dramatically. What is the solution your fund offers? This could be funding women-led businesses, startups using the latest technology or others. What community do you have? Investors that fit your fund are looking to join a like-minded community. Return expectations The fund's return will determine which type of investor will consider it. Competitive advantage What advantage does your fund have over other funds in the space? Uniqueness Does your fund stand out or does it get lost in the crowd of many others? Consider how to communicate these characteristics of your fund to prospective investors. Use this criteria to guide your search for Limited Partners for your VC fund Thank you for joining us for the Startup Funding Espresso where we help startups and investors connect for funding. Let's go startup something today. _________________________________________________________ For more episodes from Investor Connect, please visit the site at: http://investorconnect.org Check out our other podcasts here: https://investorconnect.org/ For Investors check out: https://tencapital.group/investor-landing/ For Startups check out: https://tencapital.group/company-landing/ For eGuides check out: https://tencapital.group/education/ For upcoming Events, check out https://tencapital.group/events/ For Feedback please contact info@tencapital.group Please follow, share, and leave a review. Music courtesy of Bensound.

VC Fund Track Record Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing. Limited Partners in VC funds look at the team's track record and also that of previous funds. Here's a list of key metrics to disclose about your track record: Total Value to Paid in (TVPI) Compares the value of realized gains and the estimated value of remaining assets to the total amount of capital raised. Net IRR. Calculates the Internal Rate of Return on the funds distributed, which is the net present value of all cash flows. Graduation rate. The number of investments that raised a follow-on round of funding. Follow on investors. The existence of investors who followed up with additional funding. Key investments. A list of standout investments showcasing the strength of the investment thesis. Write-offs. The number of investments that have been written off. The fewer, the better Value distribution. The number of investments making a return for the fund. The more the better. Include these numbers in your VC fundraise. Thank you for joining us for the Startup Funding Espresso where we help startups and investors connect for funding. Let's go startup something today. _________________________________________________________ For more episodes from Investor Connect, please visit the site at: http://investorconnect.org Check out our other podcasts here: https://investorconnect.org/ For Investors check out: https://tencapital.group/investor-landing/ For Startups check out: https://tencapital.group/company-landing/ For eGuides check out: https://tencapital.group/education/ For upcoming Events, check out https://tencapital.group/events/ For Feedback please contact info@tencapital.group Please follow, share, and leave a review. Music courtesy of Bensound.

How LPs Test the VC Fund Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing. Limited Partners test VC funds before investing. Here's a list of the criteria LPs use to test the fund: Does the fund have a track record that is compelling? Does the fund fit an open slot in the LPs asset allocation? Does the fund manager have access to deals the LP does not? Does the fund manager have the ability to construct a better portfolio than the LP? Can the fund manager better support the startup than the LP? Does the fund bring access to other LPs who can provide value to the portfolio? Does the fund have LPs that bring credibility to the fund itself? Does the fund require a high minimum investment? Does the fund's minimum investment require the LP to take on debt? Does the fund charge below, above, or standard fees? There are many funds available to the Limited Partner. Consider these points in preparing a pitch to an LP for your fund. Thank you for joining us for the Startup Funding Espresso where we help startups and investors connect for funding. Let's go startup something today. _________________________________________________________ For more episodes from Investor Connect, please visit the site at: http://investorconnect.org Check out our other podcasts here: https://investorconnect.org/ For Investors check out: https://tencapital.group/investor-landing/ For Startups check out: https://tencapital.group/company-landing/ For eGuides check out: https://tencapital.group/education/ For upcoming Events, check out https://tencapital.group/events/ For Feedback please contact info@tencapital.group Please follow, share, and leave a review. Music courtesy of Bensound.

Types of Limited Partners for a VC Fund Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing. In raising a VC fund, there are several types of limited partners. Here's a list to consider: High networth individual This is a person who has a net worth of over a million dollars available for investment. They often participate as an active investor. Ultra high net worth individual. This is a person who has a net worth of over $5M available for investment. They can make higher levels of investment and often want a controlling position in the management of the fund. Single-family office. This is a family office entity representing one family. They invest along a more specific investment thesis, but can be patient money. Multi-family office. This is a family office entity that represents several families. They invest in a more risk-averse manner. Corporate This is a larger company that makes investments for strategic purposes. They invest to gain access to new technologies and industries. Institutions. These are pension funds, endowments, and foundations. They invest along a more strict governance structure. Consider these types of limited partners for your VC fund. Thank you for joining us for the Startup Funding Espresso where we help startups and investors connect for funding. Let's go startup something today. _________________________________________________________ For more episodes from Investor Connect, please visit the site at: http://investorconnect.org Check out our other podcasts here: https://investorconnect.org/ For Investors check out: https://tencapital.group/investor-landing/ For Startups check out: https://tencapital.group/company-landing/ For eGuides check out: https://tencapital.group/education/ For upcoming Events, check out https://tencapital.group/events/ For Feedback please contact info@tencapital.group Please follow, share, and leave a review. Music courtesy of Bensound.

https://vimeo.com/1155580268?share=copy&fl=sv&fe=ci https://www.currentfederaltaxdevelopments.com/podcasts/2026/1/18/2026-01-19-fifth-circuit-reverses-tax-court-on-se-income-for-state-law-limited-partners This week we look at: SE Tax Liability for Limited Partners (Sirius Solutions) Whistleblower Awards and "Collected Proceeds" Statutory Construction of Section 168(k) Amendments Updated Safe Harbor Explanations for Section 402(f) Modernized Group Tax Exemption Framework Tax-Exempt Status of Supplemental Military Housing Allowances

Fifth Circuit throws out functional test on self-employment income for a limited partner, IRS restarts group tax exemption process and more.

This week we look at: SE Tax Liability for Limited Partners (Sirius Solutions) Whistleblower Awards and "Collected Proceeds" Statutory Construction of Section 168(k) Amendments Updated Safe Harbor Explanations for Section 402(f) Modernized Group Tax Exemption Framework Tax-Exempt Status of Supplemental Military Housing Allowances

The Downside of VC Funding Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing. Venture capital can enable a startup to reach the next level through funding. There are downsides to VC funding. Here's a list: The founders' ownership goes down by 20-25% on each fundraising round. The VC model promotes growth over all other strategies. Taking VC money means taking the VC's business model, which is to give the Limited Partner a return in 3 to 7 years. VCs will want the founders to take a minimal salary so as to apply as much capital as possible to growing the business. The VC is concerned primarily with paying back the Limited Partners in their fund. This means the VC is less likely to support initiatives that are impact-related or others that are important to the founder. Some VCs provide funding but little else, such as coaching or a network. The VC will bring their view of how to grow the business, which may not align with the founder's vision. VCs take board seats, which come with a certain level of control. For some startups, angel money may be a better option. Consider these points before taking VC funding. Thank you for joining us for the Startup Funding Espresso where we help startups and investors connect for funding. Let's go startup something today. _________________________________________________________ For more episodes from Investor Connect, please visit the site at: http://investorconnect.org Check out our other podcasts here: https://investorconnect.org/ For Investors check out: https://tencapital.group/investor-landing/ For Startups check out: https://tencapital.group/company-landing/ For eGuides check out: https://tencapital.group/education/ For upcoming Events, check out https://tencapital.group/events/ For Feedback please contact info@tencapital.group Please follow, share, and leave a review. Music courtesy of Bensound.

Star Tribune Twins writer Bobby Nightengale joins Adam.

Minnesota Twins ownership update! Dan Hayes of The Athletic reports a third limited partner is joining the Twins; What does this mean for a future Twins sale; Is this good or bad news for Twins; Plus, the Twins signed free agent Josh Bell and more on the SKOR North Twins Show.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Minnesota Twins ownership update! Dan Hayes of The Athletic reports a third limited partner is joining the Twins; What does this mean for a future Twins sale; Is this good or bad news for Twins; Plus, the Twins signed free agent Josh Bell and more on the SKOR North Twins Show.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

António Caçorino, the CEO and cofounder of Apex, sat down with Forbes to detail how Apex leverages its unique community of over 100 athlete investors—who act as active Limited Partners providing network and industry insights—to strategically deploy capital.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

How Limited Partners Select VC Funds Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing. Limited partners consist of pension funds, university endowments, family offices, and high-net-worth individuals. Here's how LPs select VC funds for investment. Track record. The VC must have a track record in the form of an IRR, TVPI, or MOIC metric. Ability to deploy capital. The VC must be able to allocate capital fairly quickly, as it takes time for the investment to mature. Ability to source deals. The VC must be able to find quality deals on a consistent basis. This often means running an accelerator program, venture studio model, or other activity to bring startups into their sphere of influence. Ability to win deals. There's competition for the good deals. The VC fund must be able to compete against other funds for the best ones. A fund model that is viable. This means the fund invests the right amount into each deal to create a strong portfolio, but it is also manageable in number. Consider these criteria for your VC fund. Thank you for joining us for the Startup Funding Espresso where we help startups and investors connect for funding. Let's go startup something today. _________________________________________________________ For more episodes from Investor Connect, please visit the site at: http://investorconnect.org Check out our other podcasts here: https://investorconnect.org/ For Investors check out: https://tencapital.group/investor-landing/ For Startups check out: https://tencapital.group/company-landing/ For eGuides check out: https://tencapital.group/education/ For upcoming Events, check out https://tencapital.group/events/ For Feedback please contact info@tencapital.group Please follow, share, and leave a review. Music courtesy of Bensound.

Join an active community of RE investors here: https://linktr.ee/gabepetersenBECOME A SUCCESSFUL LIMITED PARTNER IN REAL ESTATE

David Banks joins me to share how he built a $2M+ real estate portfolio as a full-time Limited Partner—without owning a single rental or dealing with tenants. We talk about his shift from private lending to LP investing, lessons learned in multifamily and mobile home parks, and tips for evaluating deals and sponsors. If you're considering passive investing, this episode is packed with real-world insight. - Get Interviewed on the Show! - ================================== Are you a real estate investor with some 'tales from the trenches' you'd like to share with our audience?   Want to get great exposure and be seen as a bonafide real estate pro by your friends?  Would you like to inspire other people to take action with real estate investing?  Then we'd love to interview you!  Find out more and pick the date here:   http://daveinterviewsyou.com/ #PassiveInvesting #RealEstateInvesting #Multifamily #LPInvestor #PropertyProfitsPodcast

Send us a textA seasoned investor explains how he pivoted from operations into multifamily, self-storage, and private lending.His advice: ignore flashy IRRs — invest in certainty, not promises.https://familyoffices.com/

About Harpaul Sambhi:Harpaul Sambhi is a serial entrepreneur and the founder of Magical, where he's building Agentic AI for healthcare to transform how people and systems interact in one of the world's most vital industries. Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, Harpaul combines a deep technical background with a passion for human-centered innovation. Before founding Magical in 2020, he built and sold Careerify to LinkedIn, where he later led product initiatives within LinkedIn Talent Solutions and Microsoft, helping shape the future of talent acquisition and HR technology.Alongside building companies, Harpaul has served as Entrepreneur in Residence at Bain Capital Ventures, Advisor at On Deck, and a Limited Partner in leading VC funds, including Bain Capital Ventures, iNovia Capital, and OnDeck. Earlier in his career, he authored Social HR (published by Thomson-Reuters) and lectured at the Schulich Executive Education Centre on innovation, technology, and the evolving workplace.At his core, Harpaul is guided by simple principles—striving to be a good human and a dedicated father, husband, son, brother, and friend—while working with great people to build great products that make a difference. A graduate of the University of Waterloo with a degree in electrical engineering, he continues to live by curiosity, humility, and the drive to create technology that serves people, not the other way around.About Doug Hires:Douglas Hires is a seasoned healthcare executive, consultant, and entrepreneur with over 35 years of leadership experience across the healthcare and information technology sectors. Based in Dallas, Texas, Douglas has built a distinguished career driving operational excellence, business transformation, and financial performance for some of the nation's leading healthcare organizations. His expertise spans providers, payers, government, and life sciences, and his track record includes accelerating growth, restructuring operations, and guiding organizations through strategic reinvention.Currently, Douglas serves as Executive Advisor at Magical, Managing Partner at JD Hires Advisory Group, and Founder & President of New World Wine Designs, where he combines his business acumen with his passion for fine wine and craftsmanship through bespoke wine cellar design and building. He also advises healthcare and sales organizations through roles with Healthcare IT Leaders and SalesSparx LLC, lending his strategic insight to help teams scale with precision and purpose.Previously, Douglas held multiple senior leadership roles at Optum, including Chief Operating Officer for OptumInsight Provider and COO of the Hospital Services Division, overseeing end-to-end revenue cycle operations for Dignity Health's 36 hospitals. His earlier career includes executive roles at Santa Rosa Consulting, 3M Health Information Systems, SoftMed Systems, and First Consulting Group, where he earned recognition as a respected thought leader and sought-after industry speaker.Things You'll Learn:Agentic AI surpasses automation by reasoning, adapting, and executing end-to-end workflows, thereby freeing healthcare workers from repetitive tasks.Healthcare organizations are already seeing results, such as doubling prior authorization volume while cutting staff needs and decision times in half.The shift from RPA to agentic AI mirrors the evolution from MapQuest to autonomous vehicles, smarter, smoother, and self-correcting.Successful AI adoption requires attention to change management and staff reallocation, not just technology deployment.Evaluating AI vendors using six key pillars (reasoning, adaptability, interoperability, agility, scalability, and fault tolerance) helps cut through the hype and identify real solutions.Resources:Connect with and follow Harpaul Sambhi on LinkedIn.Connect with and follow Doug Hires on LinkedIn.Follow Magical on LinkedIn.Visit Magical's website.

In this episode, we're joined by Rav Dhaliwal, recovering software exec turned early-stage VC at Crane. A longtime CS leader and board-level advisor, Rav breaks down how AI is reshaping Customer Success, from onboarding and telemetry-driven predictions to agentic workflows, while pushing CS to converge with account management and get far more revenue-centric. We spoke with Rav about what AI should (and shouldn't) automate, how to keep relationships authentic, and how leaders actually drive adoption, treating AI not as a tool drop but a behavioral change program.  Here are some of the key questions we address: Will AI compress or redefine CS, and where does it create leverage vs. require human expertise? What does the CS–Account Management convergence look like in practice (discovery, multi-threading, commercial acumen)? Which AI use cases move the needle now: telemetry-based churn/upsell prediction, voice sentiment, and agentic next-best-action? How do you avoid the “AI for efficiency only” trap and tie it to revenue, cost, and risk outcomes that customers actually buy? What's the playbook for AI adoption in GTM/CS? How do leaders run a change program (not a tool rollout) and measure progress? Where are the authenticity risks and how do you keep the customer relationship human? How far can we push AI-led onboarding and what's the 90% automated vs. 10% bespoke split likely to be?

In this episode, I break down what it means to be a limited partner in real estate investing and why this strategy works well for people who have more money than time. I explain how limited partners can earn passive income without dealing with the headaches of tenants, property management, or day-to-day decisions. You'll learn how syndications work, how limited partners differ from general partners, and why preferred returns help align everyone's interests.   Timestamps (00:00) What is a limited partner (01:10) Passive investing explained clearly (02:20) Benefits of limited partnership investing (03:45) Risks and common LP mistakes (05:30) Understanding preferred returns structure About the Show On the Military Millionaire Podcast, I share real conversations with service members, veterans, and their families. Each week, we explore how to build wealth through personal finance, entrepreneurship, and real estate investing. Resources & Links Download a free copy of my book: https://www.frommilitarytomillionaire.com/free-book Sign up for free webinar trainings: https://www.frommilitarytomillionaire.com/register Join our investor list: https://www.frommilitarytomillionaire.com/investors Apply for The War Room Mastermind: https://www.frommilitarytomillionaire.com/mastermind-application Get an intro to recommended VA agents/lenders: https://www.frommilitarytomillionaire.com/va-realtor Guide to raising capital: https://www.frommilitarytomillionaire.com/capital-raising-guide   Connect with David Pere Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/militarymillionaire YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@Frommilitarytomillionaire?sub_confirmation=1 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/frommilitarytomillionaire/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-pere/ X (Twitter): https://x.com/militaryrei TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@militarymillionaire

Most people think real estate means fixing toilets, chasing tenants, or giving up your weekends.But what if you could earn cash flow, appreciation, and tax benefits… without ever becoming a landlord? In this episode, we sit down with Shawn Winslow of Greenbriar Capital to break down how busy professionals and high earners can build wealth passively by investing in large multifamily deals as Limited Partners. Shawn manages tens of millions in assets and shares how syndications work, why he targets high-demand markets in New England, and how he helps everyday investors earn 18–20% IRRs without doing any of the dirty work. Together we walk through two deals that we recently executed as a team detailing how we boosted rents using Section 8 in New Hampshire and how we're attracting high-paying travel nurses in Vermont. You'll hear our exact strategy behind forcing appreciation and protecting investor capital. If you have capital but no time, this is the blueprint. No tenants. No headaches. Just passive income and equity upside. Additionally, if you'd like to join our investor list to stay up to date on upcoming projects, please fill out the form below. https://api.leadconnectorhq.com/widget/form/9uNTUCcH8zv1IZRZN9UI   RESOURCES

Maryam Haque, Founding Executive Director of Venture Forward, discusses how she is helping to open doors to venture capital for people from all backgrounds. She traces her journey from Mississippi to Silicon Valley and highlights the structural barriers that kept venture capital concentrated for decades. Maryam offers a grounded view of the current market dynamics, the growing importance of education and mentorship for emerging managers, and how programs like VC University and the GP Masterclass help build a stronger, more inclusive industry.In this episode, you'll learn:[01:55] From Mississippi to Silicon Valley: Maryam's unexpected path into venture capital[04:18] The origins of Venture Forward and its mission to democratize access to VC[07:13] Why venture capital lacked diversity for so long[09:17] The champions who sparked change and why progress takes time[12:46] How Venture Forward educates and supports emerging managers[15:16] The scale of Venture Forward's programs and the launch of the GP Masterclass[18:00] The story of Chingona Ventures and how early support creates lasting impact[20:54] What successful emerging managers do differently[24:43] Why starting a fund is harder than it looks—and what most underestimate[25:47] The future of venture: specialization, innovation, and realistic optimismThe nonprofit organization Maryam is passionate about: PBSAbout Maryam HaqueMaryam Haque is the Founding Executive Director of Venture Forward, a nonprofit organization dedicated to democratizing access to venture capital. She has over 15 years of experience in the venture ecosystem, including leadership roles at the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) and Dow Jones VentureSource. Maryam is passionate about broadening participation in venture capital, supporting emerging fund managers, and advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion across the industry.About Venture ForwardVenture Forward is a Silicon Valley-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit launched under the NVCA to foster a more accessible, inclusive, and sustainable venture capital ecosystem. The organization supports individuals from all backgrounds through education, mentorship, and community programs such as VC University, Emerging Manager Office Hours, and the GP Masterclass. Its mission is to empower the next generation of investors, strengthen venture firms, and drive lasting change in the innovation economy.Subscribe to our podcast and stay tuned for our next episode.

The B2B SaaS market is experiencing a significant slowdown with growth rates dropping, while traditional marketing channels deliver diminishing returns in an increasingly saturated landscape.• Marketing benchmarks show companies growing faster than 20% spend 10-15% of revenue on marketing, while slower-growing firms spend only 7-9%• Digital channels like SEO (search engine optimization), PPC (pay per click), and email are seeing declining performance metrics despite increased spending• Today's B2B buyer completes 80% of their journey independently, yet companies still allocate 70% of go-to-market resources to sales• "What's old is new again" – smaller, intimate events and personalized interactions are outperforming scalable digital tactics• Successful companies balance brand marketing (awareness) and demand generation (conversion) equally• Effective positioning requires elevating problems to the executive level by articulating significant business impact• AI isn't changing what we should measure but enables better personalization at scale across industries and personas• The brand versus demand debate represents a false dichotomy – both work synergistically to drive growthThe rules of B2B marketing are being rewritten before our eyes. In this revealing conversation with marketing benchmark expert Omar Akhtar and go-to-market guru AJ Gandhi, we unpack the surprising reality that most B2B SaaS companies are facing: we're effectively in a recession. Growth rates have plummeted from over 30% to just 11-20%, while traditional digital channels deliver diminishing returns despite increased spending.What's behind this troubling trend? Market saturation, poor tool integration, rapid commoditization, and fundamental shifts in buyer behavior all play a role.The most compelling insight? Companies growing faster than 20% annually are investing 10-15% of revenue in marketing, with a balanced approach between brand awareness and demand generation.Whether you're managing a marketing team, leading sales, or driving overall growth strategy, this episode offers critical benchmarks and tactical approaches for navigating today's challenging landscape. AJ Gandhi: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anjaigandhi/AJ Gandhi is a distinguished Go-To-Market (GTM) leader and executive community builder. He currently serves as a Board Member for Plum Acquisition Corp.  Additionally, he is a Limited Partner at Stage 2 Capital and GTMfund.  AJ is also a co-founder of the GTM Leader Society.  Just recently, AJ served as Chief Growth Officer for Marlin Equity Partners and held significant roles at Salesforce, Ring Central, Bain & and McKinsey.  AJ is an alumnus of UC Berkeley and Harvard Business School.Omar Akhtar: https://www.linkedin.com/in/omarbilalakhtar/Omar Akhtar is the Founder and Principal Analyst at Benchmarker, leading research on marketing excellence for B2B tech. Previously, he was Head of Research at Altimeter, a Prophet Company, where he advised Fortune 500 companies, including Microsoft, Salesforce, Adobe, and Netflix, on marketing, data, and content strategies. Omar got his undergraduate degree in economics from Ohio Wesleyan, and then got a Masters in Journalism from Columbia.Website: https://www.position2.com/podcast/Rajiv Parikh: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rajivparikh/Sandeep Parikh: https://www.instagram.com/sandeepparikh/Email us with any feedback for the show: sparkofages.podcast@position2.com

Benefits of Family Office Funding Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing. Family offices bring many benefits over other investor types as a funding source. Here's a list of reasons why family offices should be considered for your fundraising: Family offices have deeper pockets than angel investors. This allows them to make more follow-on investments. Family offices are not tied to a ten-year fund cycle as venture capitalists are. This allows them to be more patient for the exit.  Family offices will fund deals outside the traditional venture model. This provides capital for a wider variety of startups. Family offices typically don't have a Limited Partner base to appease. This allows them to invest at other times in the startup's life cycle. Many family offices have deep experience in business. This gives the startup another source of mentorship for growing their business. Family offices can take the role of a passive investor. This gives the startup the freedom to take the company in the direction they want. Consider these benefits of taking family office funding.   Thank you for joining us for the Startup Funding Espresso where we help startups and investors connect for funding. Let's go startup something today. _______________________________________________________ For more episodes from Investor Connect, please visit the site at:   Check out our other podcasts here:   For Investors check out:   For Startups check out:   For eGuides check out:   For upcoming Events, check out    For Feedback please contact info@tencapital.group    Please , share, and leave a review. Music courtesy of .

Joey Chan has run a successful construction company for over 20 years and began investing in real estate in 2008 with his first rental in West Orange, NJ. Since then, he and his partners have built a portfolio of 60+ JV rental units, mortgage notes, and over 60 completed transactions. Today, Joey is a General Partner in 208 units in Dallas, TX, and a Limited Partner in 76 units.   Here's some of the topics we covered:   From Immigrant Dreamer to Multifamily Deal Maker The Harsh Truth About Landlord/Tenant Laws in the Northern US How to Pivot Your Strategy and Win Big in Real Estate The Secrets to Thriving with Multiple Business Partners The Hottest Markets Every Multifamily Investor Should Know The Goal-Setting Blueprint That Turns 2023 Into Your Breakthrough Year   If you'd like to apply to the warrior program and do deals with other rockstars in this business: Text crush to 72345 and we'll be speaking soon.   For more about Rod and his real estate investing journey go to www.rodkhleif.com  

Joey Chan has run a successful construction company for over 20 years and began investing in real estate in 2008 with his first rental in West Orange, NJ. Since then, he and his partners have built a portfolio of 60+ JV rental units, mortgage notes, and over 60 completed transactions. Today, Joey is a General Partner in 208 units in Dallas, TX, and a Limited Partner in 76 units. Here's some of the topics we covered: From Immigrant Dreamer to Multifamily Deal Maker The Harsh Truth About Landlord/Tenant Laws in the Northern US How to Pivot Your Strategy and Win Big in Real Estate The Secrets to Thriving with Multiple Business Partners The Hottest Markets Every Multifamily Investor Should Know The Goal-Setting Blueprint That Turns 2023 Into Your Breakthrough Year If you'd like to apply to the warrior program and do deals with other rockstars in this business: Text crush to 72345 and we'll be speaking soon. For more about Rod and his real estate investing journey go to www.rodkhleif.com

Hilary Graves is the founder of Bright Sound Investments, a private equity firm based in York, Pennsylvania. Alongside her husband, she scaled a successful portfolio with Bilary Property Group before partnering with experienced operators to expand into larger multifamily assets. Since joining the Warrior group in April 2022, she has been involved in 251 units as a Limited Partner and 114 units as a General Partner. Beyond real estate, Hilary is a classically trained pianist, composer, and music educator with a master's degree from Lebanon Valley College.   Here's some of the topics we covered:   Hilary's Journey Into Multifamily Real Estate Success The Game-Changing Power of Household Support The Wildest, Most Unexpected Truth About Multifamily Cracking the Code on Raising Capital for Your Deals Why You're Not Selling, Instead You're Unlocking Opportunity The Single Best Piece of Advice Hilary Ever Received The One Skill Everyone Must Master Before Jumping Into Multifamily   If you'd like to apply to the warrior program and do deals with other rockstars in this business: Text crush to 72345 and we'll be speaking soon.   For more about Rod and his real estate investing journey go to www.rodkhleif.com  

Bio: Ross is a founder, engineer, and early-stage technology investor who focuses on helping significant ideas scale up. He believes in working with "amazing people who build products indistinguishable from magic." His unique strength lies in connecting people. Episode Summary: In this episode, we sit down with Ross Fubini to discuss his journey from building companies to investing in them. Ross shares how he developed the thesis for XYZ, a fund that invests in founders tackling big problems across sectors like public policy, fintech, and climate. We'll explore what it means to make "seismic shifts in society" and what sets founders who "make doing the work their unfair advantage" apart from the rest. Key Discussion Points: From Builder to Investor: What inspired Ross to transition from engineering to venture capital. The XYZ Thesis: A deep dive into the fund's investment strategy and how it differs from other early-stage firms. The "2nd Derivative of Investments": Ross explains this unique investment concept and how he applies it to his decision-making. Public Sector Impact: How the public sector ecosystem influences private sector investment decisions. LP Reporting: Ross shares insights on how to structure effective quarterly reports and what Limited Partners truly value. The Deal Review Process: A look at the critical factors Ross evaluates when deciding to invest in a founder. Founder Mindset: The non-negotiable behaviors and traits Ross looks for in an early-stage founder. Investing in Volatility: A discussion on how funds can pivot and refine their strategies in a challenging macro environment. Learn More About Ross and XYZ: Ross Fubini's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fubini/ XYZ Venture Capital Website: http://www.xyz.vc The views expressed are for informational purposes only and not financial or legal advice. Opinions are my own and do not reflect those of Finalis Inc. or Finalis Securities LLC, Member FINRA/SIPC. Consult a professional for your specific situation.

https://vimeo.com/1110565833?share=copy#t=0 https://www.currentfederaltaxdevelopments.com/podcasts/2025/8/17/2025-08-18-state-tax-credit-salt-workaround-regulation-challenge-fails This week we look at: Denham Outlines Its Criticisms of the Tax Court's Use of the Functional Analysis Test for Limited Partners with the First Circuit Court of Appeals Disguised Sales and Sham Partnerships: A Comprehensive Review of PICCIRC, LLC v. Commissioner Judicial Examination of State Charitable Tax Credit Programs and Federal Deductibility The Second Circuit Clarifies Tax Court Filing Deadlines: Implications for Practitioners Understanding New Clean Electricity Credit Termination Rules Impact of IRS Notice 2025-42 on Wind and Solar Facilities  

This week we look at: Denham Outlines Its Criticisms of the Tax Court's Use of the Functional Analysis Test for Limited Partners with the First Circuit Court of Appeals Disguised Sales and Sham Partnerships: A Comprehensive Review of PICCIRC, LLC v. Commissioner Judicial Examination of State Charitable Tax Credit Programs and Federal Deductibility The Second Circuit Clarifies Tax Court Filing Deadlines: Implications for Practitioners Understanding New Clean Electricity Credit Termination Rules Impact of IRS Notice 2025-42 on Wind and Solar Facilities  

In this episode of the Jake & Gino podcast, we sit down with Mark Khuri, co-founder of SMK Capital Management, to explore his incredible 20-year journey in real estate investing. From house-hacking and flipping foreclosures in the 2000s to managing a diversified real estate investment fund, Mark shares actionable insights for both active and passive investors.He walks us through how he transitioned from operator to capital manager, why he fell in love with mobile home parks and self-storage, and how LP investing helped him build long-term wealth. The conversation digs deep into sponsor vetting, market shifts, recession-resistant strategies, and the hidden benefits of syndication.Whether you're an investor trying to scale or just curious about diversifying your portfolio, this episode offers a front-row seat into how a seasoned pro thinks about risk, returns, and long-term planning.What You'll Learn:The mindset shift from owning 60+ properties to capital managementHow to vet sponsors and structure LP investmentsWhy mobile home parks, self-storage, and retail are in Mark's sweet spotHow to create passive income with a self-directed IRAThe evolving state of the multifamily market and deal flow in 2025 Want to invest with Mark?Visit: https://www.smkcap.comEmail: info@smkcap.com Chapters:00:00:00 - Introduction and Guest Background  00:03:03 - Mark's Journey from Finance to Real Estate  00:06:55 - Transitioning Business Models in Real Estate  00:08:38 - Investing as a Limited Partner  00:11:07 - Vetting Sponsors and Deals  00:14:15 - Current Investment Strategies and Deal Flow  00:22:06 - Team Dynamics in Real Estate Investment  00:28:00 - The Impact of Market Changes on Leasing  00:34:09 - Investment Strategies and Market Insights  00:44:13 - Future Trends in Affordable Housing 00:47:10 - Gino Wraps it Up We're here to help create multifamily entrepreneurs... Here's how: Brand New? Start Here: https://jakeandgino.mykajabi.com/free-wheelbarrowprofits Want To Get Into Multifamily Real Estate Or Scale Your Current Portfolio Faster? Apply to join our PREMIER MULTIFAMILY INVESTING COMMUNITY & MENTORSHIP PROGRAM. (*Note: Our community is not for beginner investors)

In this Fund Friday episode, Craig McGrouther welcomes Pascal Wagner, founder of Grow Your Cashflow. Pascal shares his journey from managing a $150M venture capital fund at Techstars to becoming an LP investor with $250K+ in annual passive income across 23 investments. He reveals how his Venture Capital background shaped his investment thesis approach and why he shifted focus to debt funds in 2022, perfect timing to avoid the multifamily distress. Pascal breaks down his three pillar framework for LP success: having a clear investment plan, comparing deals with proper context not in isolation, and mastering due diligence with his 100 point checklist. Plus, he explains the "money pie" concept, how to balance investments between cash flow, equity growth, and tax benefits to build sustainable six figure passive income.Learn more about Lone Star Capital at www.lscre.comApply to attend the LSC Summit 2025: www.lscsummit.com Get a FREE copy of the Passive Investor Guide:https://www.lscre.com/content/passive-investor-guide Subscribe to our newsletter and receive our FREE underwriting model package:https://www.lscre.com/resource/fof-underwriting-toolkit Follow Rob Beardsley:https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-beardsley/ Read Rob's articles:https://www.lscre.com/blog 

Think you have to be a GP to succeed in real estate? Think again. In this no-fluff episode, I break down the four real levers that determine your success in multifamily: time, experience, education, and capital. Whether you're short on cash but loaded with hustle—or sitting on capital but strapped for time—you'll discover exactly where you fit in this game. I'll show you how to build wealth without burning out, why being the face of the deal isn't always the smartest move, and how to play your role like a pro. ✅ How to know if GP is right for you ✅ Why LPs might have the real edge ✅ The hybrid roles that most investors overlook ✅ What's killing your momentum before you even start Stop following Instagram gurus blindly. Start building a real plan that matches your actual life.

In this episode of Millionaire Mindcast, host Matty A. sits down with Blaine McLaughlin, an inspiring entrepreneur who successfully transitioned from a high-paying corporate career to a life of financial freedom through real estate investing. Blaine shares his journey of overcoming fear, the lessons learned along the way, and the mindset shifts required to escape the golden handcuffs and achieve long-term wealth. What You'll Learn in This Episode: How Blaine made the leap from corporate to real estate investing The challenges and fears he faced—and how he conquered them Strategies for generating passive income and building lasting wealth How to assess risk and make smart investment decisions The importance of mindset in financial and personal success Resources & Links from this Episode: Blaine's Website: http://mctoothcapital.com/ Connect on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/blaine-mclaughlin-759689b Follow on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/blaine.mclaughlin.9 Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Happytrailsrealestate Try the Retirement Calculator: http://www.caniretirecalculator.com Episode Sponsored By: Discover Financial Millionaire Mindcast Shop: Buy the Rich Life Planner and Get the Wealth-Building Bundle for FREE! Visit: https://shop.millionairemindcast.com/ CRE MASTERMIND: Visit myfirst50k.com and submit your application to join! FREE CRE Crash Course: Text “FREE” to 844-447-1555 FREE Financial X-Ray: Text  "XRAY" to 844-447-1555