Alexa Binns 00:03
the VC podcast from the LP perspective, with your hosts, Alexa bins and Ernest. Are you ready? Let’s dive in. Our guest today is Darren Chappell, Senior VP of investments at Provenio Capital. Provenio specializes in sourcing and diligencing alternatives across hedge funds, private equity, venture capital, real estate and direct deals for institutions and ultra high clients. Previously, Darren spent a decade as a macro trader at more capital and Wellington management. We chat today about Provenio’s advanced asset allocation techniques, how they win allocation and macro economic trends on the horizon we should all keep an eye out for. Thanks, Darren.

Darren Chappell 00:50
Nice to be here. We

Alexa Binns 00:53
actually paid Darren to be on this podcast because everybody with his accent sounds brilliant.

Darren Chappell 00:59
It’s all made up. I’m actually from New Jersey.

Earnest Sweat 01:01
I figured I was like, that sounds like a new word.

Alexa Binns 01:09
Rough, but true that some accents don’t actually make you feel like you have all the answers. But how did you come to be an LP Darren,

Darren Chappell 01:18
yeah, sure. Well, thanks for having me excited to chat today. Yeah, I kind of became an LP. I transitioned from the public markets to the private markets. So the first half of my career was really focused on the public markets. I started in investment banking straight after college, and was extremely fortunate to get a job at Moore capital as a trader, and so went on to spend almost a decade working up more on the execution desk. Actually worked there in two stints. That kind of book ended a couple years I had working at Wellington management as well. So really, you know, most of it was spent as a rates trader. So government bonds, European swaps, interest rates, across government bonds and options, and then really it kind of all kind of the transition kick started about seven years ago when I came to California for the first time ever, actually on vacation or holiday for my English friends and I met my now wife, and so I started traveling back and forth, which was good for The Air Miles, it was less good for the bank balance, but I started networking with a bunch of other single family offices, and I was in the really fortunate position that I’d done a bunch of angel investing and put some syndicates together myself, just amongst my friends. And on those trips, I was chatting with other LPs, seeing what they were interested in. And on one of my trips, I actually met provenio, which is, you know, where I’m now, and helped lead the investment team, alongside Ben Darren, our CIO, and one of the co-founders, alongside Kevin Murphy. And it was really when I went through the green card process, and then, five years ago, joined the team and have been along, along for the ride of the, you know, helping grow the business and providing, hopefully really great, investment returns and solutions for our clients.

Earnest Sweat 03:10
Darren, was there any person or experience that led you down this path? Because I have to say, quite honestly, of my friends who started out in bond trading and kind of on the public side. When I talk to them about ventures, they’re like, You guys are in a casino. So how did you make that? Yeah, fun

Alexa Binns 03:30
jokers. Yeah, they don’t. They don’t always take this seriously, just

Darren Chappell 03:34
rolling the dice. Yeah, no, I was, I was in a fortunate position. So, you know, having grown up kind of more in traditional finance, the rigor and, you know, approach and discipline that I learned at both Moore and Wellington, you know, really apply, I try and apply, to this day, to allocating across the private markets. And so whether it’s, you know, investing in public market stocks or bonds, or really, you know, making the decision to allocate to a venture or private equity firm. It’s the same level of diligence and then ultimately, risk management that we try and approach that stayed with me for my very, very formative years. And really, you know, when I first started out, I had a trio of wonderful bosses at more capital, Tony Kearney, Maritza Alfano and Nick RIT were really just, you know, really instrumental to me growing. They gave me my first shot, and that’s something that I’ll always be tremendously appreciative and loyal to, and really just understanding what it is that you stand for and how you want to go about investing, and the fact that there’s no kind of shortcuts. Tony used to get in extremely early in the morning and work very, very, very hard at providing some absolutely fantastic market commentary, something that I still try to do to this day, to organize my own thoughts. But it’s really that rigor and that intellectual discipline of investing and then being, you know, having the humility to know when you’re wrong, when things aren’t working out as planned, and trying to take that institutional approach.
Alexa Binns 05:21
Was there a, like, a thesis around what’s happening in private markets that made you want to switch? Was this a thoughtful transition? Yeah,

Darren Chappell 05:33
I tried to be as awful about it as possible. You know, definitely moving to America, you know, we’ve seen an explosion in private markets, you know, just more broadly over the last decade, and really provenio was born out of this belief that, you know, there’s a huge opportunity to provide advice to families on private markets. Obviously, we’ve had this huge kind of tailwind, you know, folks leaning into whether it’s private equity or real estate, real assets, private credit, has exploded. You know, when provenio was formed eight years ago, Ben as a former single family office, CIO and Kevin that has a lot of insurance estate, kind of tax planning background, there is a coming together of, you know, listen, a lot of multifamily offices, advisory firms aren’t providing, unable to source diligence, underwrite and then monitor these more interesting, more niche, idiosyncratic opportunities that are harder for some of the more traditional allocators to access. And certainly, you know, and now we’re seeing this explosion of, you know, private market growth across raas and multifamily offices more broadly, you know, prevention is great, and really ahead of the time, kind of eight years ago, really setting their stall out as the, you know, the main focus of the firm. And I think that the asset growth and the job that we’ve been fortunate to do for our clients have been testament to, you know, being kind of at the cutting edge of that, of that growth, for sure,

Earnest Sweat 06:57
While we’re on that, can you tell us about the history of the firm and kind of the focus and who they look to serve?

Darren Chappell 07:04
Yeah, sure, absolutely so prevention, we’re a multifamily office, registered investment advisor based in Newport Beach. We’re a boutique firm. We’re about 12 people. I help alongside Ben, one of the co founders, lead the investment team. But Ben and Kevin Ben, Ben Durant and Kevin Murphy came together, kind of eight years or so ago, and really had this great insight and vision to launch an ORP focused advisory firm. So Ben came at it from being a similar trading background to myself in the public markets, and then was a single family office CIO. And then Kevin, you know, was was involved in another raa, and was really seeing some of the unique opportunities that Ben was able to source in diligence, and then they thought about launching provenio, started with one or two clients, and have really latched on to this theme of providing unique, customized portfolios to what are predominantly very, very sophisticated investors in their own right, and typically focusing on those smaller, emerging managers that I touched on earlier. We have five, potentially six people soon, I will help lead it, alongside Ben, and we just really try and spend the bulk of our time looking for unique, interesting managers. Often leads us down to smaller fund sizes, and folks that are on fund one, two or three, we’ve been fortunate to anchor a few vehicles since I’ve been here the last five years. Venture plays an important part of it. But you know, of our asset base for about 1.7 billion of assets under advisory, the large bulk of which are in the more predictable, often cash flowing strategies. So we have venture is predominantly our growth exposure on kind of the right hand side of the barbell, and then the left is the more predictable, cash flowing stuff that’s private credit, real estate, real estate equity, real estate debt. And so really, a lot of our clients have an asset allocation barbell across those strategies.

Earnest Sweat 09:03
How many opinions and perspectives do the families come to with you all? Or do you require or look for?

Darren Chappell 09:10
Yeah, it’s a great question. You know, we’re fortunate that a lot of the families are Asset Management Professionals. There Are some real estate entrepreneurs, very, very successful people in their own right, you know, and so they will often come to us with an expectation of maybe perhaps we’re looking at the whole overall asset allocation. We’re helping them with discovery, setting strategic asset allocation, and building it. Help build the roadmap as to where we get there over the next few years. Some might be pretty specific, like we’ve built out, you know, just venture portfolios for one or two families or that have just asked us to target private credits and just really provide the foil to what they have, often some exposure to in their day job. You know, we’re not often, you know, helping real estate entrepreneurs with their real estate equity exposure, for example. Um, but I think what commonality we have across all of the client base is that, you know, they’re very distinguished, very, you know, discerning folks. We are building customized portfolios often, you know, client minimums are in excess of $25 million so, you know, folks that rightfully get, you know, white glove service. We’re in a fortunate position that the numbers are large enough we’re able to achieve diversification across different vintages, a number of managers, different sectors and stages. And so it’s really kind of our job as a team to help build those portfolios, to address their unique goals and objectives. And

Alexa Binns 10:37
In that case, are your clients investing directly? Or how do you structure those investments?

Darren Chappell 10:42
Yeah, great question. Alexa and so yes, they are. So typically, they’re investing out of their family trust or their children’s trust. And you know, we don’t build any aggregated kind of commingled vehicles internally. But when you know, when we do engage with a venture, GP, we will always be their main point of contact. So often, you know, if it’s a five or ten million allocation, you know, maybe made up of half a dozen to a dozen or so families, but they’ll always interact with the prevention investment team. So we’ll, you know, we’ll have calls with our managers. Venture might be quarterly or semi annually. We’re talking to them about what’s going on in the portfolio. And we try and, you know, minimize the burden. But they do have a number of line items come into their, you know, their LP base directly.

Alexa Binns 11:24
That would be a fascinating breakdown to see what percentage of venture investments people are making on behalf of themselves, versus the next generation, where they’re willing to take some bigger swings. Definitely,

Earnest Sweat 12:44
Since your tenure of joining in five years, we’ve seen a lot of change in venture. Have you been able to, you know, kind of make it more transparent to your clients as well as yourself, and find the best opportunities for alpha? Yeah,

Darren Chappell 12:59
no, that is a great question. I think broadly, over the last five years, we’ve really worked hard to Insta institutionalize the firm more broadly. And, you know, we’ve brought in a number of investment professionals who have, each and every single one have done it just a fabulous job in terms of helping build out a very transparent investment process that we take all of our managers through, we have a really wide funnel that thins down pretty quickly in terms of navigating the environment over the last king of five years, we had always been, you know, Ben has some absolutely fabulous venture relationships that come from his previous time at the single family office, and we’ve transported them over to prevention. We’ve been in the Fortune position to back them over a number of vintages and funds. And so it’s really been about discerning where we want to add to the roster. So we have this, you know, warehouse of existing managers, and then this conveyor belt of opportunities that is always coming through the door. And so really looking to those GPS, the new GPS, over the last half a decade, to be additive to the exposure that we already have on deck, and then, you know, methodically place them within client portfolios, and then be able to start those relationships so that it’s meaningful on both sides of the equation. I’m acutely aware that if we’re investing in a fund once, by the time they’re off raising from large lives, institutions and pension funds and endowments, you know, we’re less relevant, but we want to be in a meaningful relationship. It doesn’t mean we need to be the biggest by any means. But I, you know, certainly when we’re adding a manager into the portfolio over those last few years, it’s been with the interest of compounding knowledge, and whether it’s, you know, bringing on a prop tech manager so we can get more learned around that, you know, or if it’s a healthcare VC or a different sector specialist, I really had a lot of affinity with a previous guest of yours, Eric sippels thoughts around specialists. And it doesn’t necessarily have to be a sector, but just some uniqueness in their approach or their network or their stage.

Earnest Sweat 17:37
Darren, what’s the experience for a new manager who’s a prospect to be a fund investment of yours at provenio. What’s the structure you mentioned? Kind of like 1516, steps. But you know, how do they find you, and what should they expect with the process?

Darren Chappell 17:53
Yeah, no, that’s a great question, You know, our funnel is pretty wide across that alts, you know, aperture. So I think, you know, last year we met with somewhere in the region of about 600 to 700 or so managers, myself or Ben, got introduced to probably half that we had initial kind of screening calls, second calls with again, half that again. And we got to the point of allocating to between our kind of natural run rate is maybe half a dozen to a dozen new investments per year, and try and think of around maybe one or two new relationships per asset class per year. The process, while kind of sounding a bit scary, it’s really focused on the people, their process, the portfolio, and the philosophy, you know, very, very simple and, you know, obviously for venture, extremely long duration asset class, and just really understanding the nuances of that relationship. You know, obviously we dig in. We do all the table, stake stuff. We dig into the pride track. Record, we understand what the portfolio companies are saying about the assistance that the GP provided, and we’re trying to get under the hood. We reference things extensively, both from stuff that we get given on the formal list, and, you know, the back channel informal routes as well.

Alexa Binns 21:21
Is there anything you’re actively hunting for in VC managers right now that, you know, if somebody listening should say, oh, that could be me. Yeah,

Darren Chappell 21:31
no, I think you know, we’ve, we’ve very, very consistent early stage allocators. There’s been a, you know, a fruitful, you know, area of focus for us. And obviously, we are long term believers in innovation. We know we’re investing there for, you know, 10 years out. And so I think we continue to be thoughtful about allocating throughout the cycle. You know, I think ventures are cyclical by nature. It’s a feature, not a bug. And so, you know, we want to be consistent in our approach, we have tried to opportunistically lean into, you know, kind of counter cyclical valuations. We do have some growth equity managers, you know, the valuation backdrop there is absolutely, you know, much more appealing than it was in the zirp period, you know, for folks that do have dry powder. And then, you know, one area that we also have seen is the slightly more structured secondary strategies that are tackling those types of opportunities, but doing it with a more nuanced, you know, structuring component, whether it’s you know, structuring to earlier employees, whether it’s you know, kind of back ending some of the return profile, whether it’s having a credit Like component in the interim, there’s some pretty innovative structures that we’ve, you know, we’ve been working pretty closely on, actually. So yeah, there’s some of the areas that we’re focused on as an investment team.

Earnest Sweat 22:51
Darren, is there anything that you wish VC fund managers knew more about organizations like yours?

Darren Chappell 22:57
Yeah, I think, as you know, Raas is becoming, you know, a growing focus in terms of some of the, you know, LP raises, and certainly as the broad fundraising backdrop, is definitely challenging for some of the smaller managers. You know, I think for us, a big part of you know, finding fertile ground is the timing. You know, we do have an existing roster of managers. We do want to support them. We do have a limited number of bullets. We are also, you know, like everyone you know, struggling with the distribution challenge. I think fair to say, you know, as a firm that’s eight years old, you know, we have a number of, you know, venture allocations are 678, and so, you know, venture returns come in waves. You know, we’re as excited as anyone to, you know, see more mula in the cooler, you know, get more dpi. And so, you know, that’s definitely a big focus for us. And I think that having folks that reach out, that are interested in building that longer term relationship, versus, you know, something’s closing in two, two weeks, two months. You know that that’s definitely a harder focus for us. But I think, you know, there is a real benefit to persistence, to being, you know, on people’s distribution list, from the periodic check in, you know, to really focusing on, like, the relationship side of things, and then, you know, and then also challenging us, challenging other RAs, other multifamily offices, to what they’re focused on, like, how should we think about you as a co investor? I know a lot of people say that they want to do them. You know, not many are actually able to move swiftly enough we really prioritize the diligence on the GP, so that eventually, you know, we can participate on a more accelerated timeline, on a G, on a co investment, but really reliant on the manager to ring the bell and say, you know, perennial. I think we’ve got one or two deals for you, you know, over the source of our investment period. This is one that I think is a real standout. And it’s a standout not because we’ve got an allocation to fill, but, you know, for, really, for XYZ reasons. So that’s, that’s a big one. And certainly, and also. Understanding how venture fits into the wider portfolio. Ventures probably less than 200 million of commitments for us across the 1.7 million, the vast majority is in these more predictable, cash flowing strategies that form a bit of a bedrock of the portfolio. And then the venture exposure is the ability to fund the excess. And so, you know, understanding that dance between the different asset classes and what’s in focus, what’s not that that can be helpful in terms of the slightly more you know, tactical timing.

Earnest Sweat 25:35
Now we’re going to take a quick break to speak with our sponsor, and on the show today, we have industry expert and sponsor, Braughm Ricke, founder and CEO of Aduro Advisors, which leverages best in class technology powered by the industry’s top professionals to provide premier fund accounting services. Thank you, Braughm, for partnering on the show. Curious on the kind of insights you’ve been able to see from your data. Are there any years that seem to be like there’ll be breakout years over the last 10 years? Any vintages?

Braughm Ricke 26:11
Yeah, from a vintage perspective, I think, off the top of my head, I think 2019 was a good vintage kind of going into the pandemic, right? And so, and you can kind of extra, you know, you can think about that logically and see why, right? Like, so, you know, kind of thinking through the ability to invest before, you know, the big ramp up in the, you know, kind of post pandemic period that we’ve seen in getting into valuations when they, you know, prior to that, to that big ramp up, and, you know, going all the way back to my time at true, we saw that as well. So we, you know, we had our second fund at true, kind of, right after, I think, literally, we closed it, like, two weeks before Lehman Brothers, oh, wow, yeah, went bankrupt, right? And so, like, you know, that was a really good performing fund, because, you know, kind of invest, kind of investing into that, you know, that slightly depressed cycle, or, you know, that time a quite depressed cycle, but, you know, being able to take advantage of that, I think it does, it does show in the numbers,

Earnest Sweat 27:14
yeah, yeah. I’m just curious, given that a lot of people, even if you’ve been investing over the last, I don’t know, 10 years, it’s kind of felt like a complete bull market, right? So, you know, high water marks with a lot of different companies, especially after 2020 so just curious on like, what years are trying to start to show that there was some alpha there?

Braughm Ricke 27:41
Yeah. And I think that in more recent years, it’s, you know, it’s a big TBD, right? Because it’s still too early to tell, even if it was still a, you know, even if we still were all kind of up and to the right. But it’s very true. I even, you know, kind of, when we started to, you know, to see a little bit of a downturn in recent time, you know, talking to all of our employees here, you know, I started this back in 2012 which was really kind of the beginning of that, you know, long extended up into the right cycle, right? And so, you know, most of the people who work for us, you know, they probably haven’t even seen a downturn in their career yet, right? And so, you know, kind of providing that calm, that this is normal, right? Yeah, and we’re overdue for it. I think it was an interesting discussion to have with our team. Yeah?

Earnest Sweat 28:29
This is why I’m always thankful that I graduated college in 2007 and immediately worked on Wall Street and got kicked in the mouth. People were like, you saw it right off the bat. They were like, Yeah, this happens. And so I just always know, yeah, sometimes the market can go bad. You mentioned before that. You also, a majority of your customers are VC firms, but you also do some private equity and for allocators, LPs, yep, as the VC landscape evolves, how does fund administration like change for fund of funds like in LP funds like,

Braughm Ricke 29:12
Yeah, I think from fund to funds, what they’re looking to understand. Well, you know, it’s a very different environment today for a fund of funds. And it was 10 years ago, right? You know, a fund of funds. 10 years ago they were talking about managing, you know, five, 710, relationships. And now they’re talking about managing, you know, a multitude of relationships, because there is this, you know, huge amount of interest, huge volume of individual managers. And again, kind of, going back to my earlier comment, these managers are focusing more and more narrowly on a specific investment theme and investment thesis. And the fund of funds are actually having to kind of build out their investment thesis at a level that they haven’t had to potentially in the past, right? So there’s a lot more to manage, a lot more to keep track of. And so for them, it’s about, how can they, effectively, um. Um, you know, monitor all of that, all that activity and all that data, and, you know, kind of ensuring that they’re not overexposed to, you know, kind of inadvertently to one specific strategy, one specific sector, you know. So the look through data is, as I think, becoming even more critical for the fund to funds community. What,

Earnest Sweat 32:54
Since getting into this industry and talking to LPs, I’ve always heard about making sure that your fund is institutional, especially in the back office, right? What advice would you offer to LPS when assessing a fund’s manager their operational efficiency? How important is it for a strong fund administration in the long term, success of a venture fund? I

Braughm Ricke 33:20
I think it’s extremely important to kind of set that standard from day one, from the outset of, you know, kind of creating an institutional grade back office, if you will, right? And so that’s everything from any internal people that you hire, or eventually do hire, you know, whether that be a CFO or, you know, an operating partner, what have you. But then also the fund administration firm that you operate with. One of the things that we do and we provide our clients is we’ll sit down with an institutional LP we will have those, what are called operational due diligence meetings with the institutional LPS so that we can walk through our processes, walk through our documentation, and walk through our systems with them to provide them the comfort that they’re looking for that you know, this is a you know, quality provider, quality systems, quality security, quality processes we have off the shelf, operational due diligence questionnaires that we just proactively provide to our clients to include in their fundraising materials, right? And so I think that, you know, roll back 10 years ago, the operational due diligence wasn’t, as you know, much of a focus, and I think it’s much more today, because of the sheer volume of managers that they’re looking at,

Earnest Sweat 34:39
That’s a great point. Braughm, thank you once again for being on the show, sharing your expert insights and being a partner of soil with allocators.

Braughm Ricke 34:48
Absolutely thanks so much for having me. Really enjoyed the conversation. If

Earnest Sweat 34:52
you are a GP or LP looking for fund administration, please go to aduroadvisors.com Now, back to our LP interview.

Alexa Binns 38:36
Now that, now that other IRAs or wealth managers are sort of coming into your territory, yeah. How do you think about sorting yourself differently, whether it’s your process or your track record?

Darren Chappell 38:53
Yeah, no, it’s, it’s something we think about continually. You know, we are fortunate that we are coming at it with, you know, having relationships in and around space that are decades old. And so I think, versus some really wonderful solutions that are out there that are providing greater access, whether it’s coming or vehicles, whether it’s thunder, funds, where it’s online platforms, there’s some really great, really great stuff out there. And I think, but as you’ve seen, the more mass adoption kind of pushes into the ecosystem, you know, I think there’s still some, you know, there’s still some learning lessons. I think most, you know, most advisors, it’s tough to start out in this, you know, sector and space. I think it is different from allocating to hedge funds. It is different from allocating to broad middle market direct lending. And so, you know, venture an asset class reliant on outliers and the you know, the pattern, the impact of the power law. I think if you have to have, first and foremost, you have to have numbers large enough that you can achieve the necessary diversification. You have to understand it. Being able to back managers over different cycles, you have to understand the illiquidity, you know, I think, you know, everyone sees, you know, maybe 10 years on the sticker, and then, you know, two one year extensions, and then the continuation vehicle. And you know, these are long, long, long term assets, and for us, you know, we have a pretty strong sense of how they fit into the portfolio, what we’re trying to achieve in terms of the factors that they’re bringing and the, you know, the uniqueness of the access and so for us and our client base, it’s, it’s well understood and established. And I, you know, I think that as adoption broadens out and access is democratized, it’s going to be interesting to see how that kind of plays out.

Alexa Binns 40:40
Is there a number that you sort of keep in mind for your clients, of the ultra high net worth, where ventures are suitable versus where it’s not appropriate?

Darren Chappell 40:50
Yeah. So our minimums, you know, to become a Provenio client, is $25 million and so $25 million into alternatives over the space of a number of years, you know, you can kind of back into a pretty meaningful, net, investable assets or net portfolio number. And so I think it’s really at those levels that gives you the ability to create the diversification that’s necessary, you know, I think, you know, if you do one or two things here or there, or you do the angel thing of, you know, death by 1000 cuts, applying some rigor to it and to what you want out of your venture portfolio is, is, quite honestly, very different. You know, for the bulk of our portfolios, you know, tracking 10 to 10 to 12% across, you know, predominantly senior, secured, asset backed private credit. You know, this is a different animal altogether. And so, you know, we definitely see that the numbers need to be large enough. We need to think about building a critical mass of exposure, but not too many line items. That’s considerably be almost as bad a challenge managing all the K ones and the capital calls, and especially as our clients own what they own directly. And so I think then that’s probably a pretty good, you know, pretty good starting point. Not everyone is going to be at the Yale endowment. Not everyone, you know, needs to have, you know, emerging managers in the book. But you know, if you believe in it, if you’re in it for the long run, it can be a hugely rewarding asset class, you know, you know, maybe now more than ever. But certainly you know, for us, we’re in the fortunate position that our clients are, you know, of the size and subs where we can lean into it meaningfully.

Earnest Sweat 42:30
Darren, you’re a former macro trader, so we’re going to have you put that hat back on. What trends do you believe all allocators should be? You know, keeping an eye out for the next two, three years.

Darren Chappell 42:44
so for us, venture is the main expression in innovation. For for, you know, for macro, I think we’ve seen a lot of narratives, you know, market narratives have flipped really, from, you know, we started off buzz over AI to concerns over kind of big tech spending and whether that’s actually going to materialize into revenue from recession to now, you know, after the payrolls number and the 50 basis point cut to, you know, the fact that we seem to have now a soft landing, and so kind of anchoring this choppy markets, viewing this kind of world as being shaped A bit by supply, not a typical business cycle, you know. I think staying at risk on owning assets, investing for the future, you know. I think as inflation continues to cool, hopefully interest rates falling grows easy, slowly, we’re in a pretty kind of Goldilocks environment for risk assets, I think, you know, but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be cautious. And you know, I certainly, when we look at what’s going on in the public markets, you know, there’s ample, you know, opportunity for risk, I think, as we look out over the short and medium term. But you know, we want to be owning assets. We want to be investing in innovation. We want to be, you know, on the cutting edge of technological improvements over the next decade and beyond. And so, you know, for us, venture occupies the, you know, the main expression of that desire. But yeah, lots, lots happening on the macro front, for sure.

Alexa Binns 44:54
And any lessons learned, maybe it’s from your angel investments or the prevention of venture. Exposure that you can share.

Darren Chappell 45:02
Yeah, lots, lots of lessons learned. But I think you know from my time at some of my previous, previous employers, you know, the focus on risk management, the focus on being able to, you know, kind of proactively engineer solutions. You know, if things aren’t going the best, I think you know for for today’s conversation and for a prevention, like for our venture allocations, it’s really been quite stark, the number of managers that have been able to engineer liquidity and folks that have been really thoughtful on whether it’s secondary sales, whether it’s returning. Dpi, you know, I think that that’s been a big focus for us over the last couple years, in terms of other lessons learned, you know, I think building, building meaningful relationships, you know, being being respectful of people’s time, being, you know, earnest in what you’re looking for, being open as to whether it’s a fit, whether it’s not right now, or whether it’s, you know, an outright No. I think that, you know, for us, we’re in the business of investing. No one’s got a monopoly on good ideas. We, you know, we want to meet as many people as we can, and we want to be a meaningful partner for those that we, you know, do decide to invest with. So there they’ve been. You know, some of my main takeaways,

Earnest Sweat 46:15
Darren, any parting thoughts you want to leave our audience of allocators and GPS? Yeah,

Darren Chappell 46:21
sure. I think for us, you know, when I think about our venture portfolio, you know, we, you know, we haven’t had as many distributions as we like. You know, we aren’t in the interest of trying to time and market. You know, we are preaching to the, hopefully, to the choir of our client base of vintage year diversification. And, you know, having enough managers in the portfolio where, you know, returns can still be meaningfully impacted, but we’re not kind of getting diversification, and so I but it’s still hard, it’s still hard to come up with the new commitments. And every decision, you know, touches on all of the different asset classes, and if it’s shifting from public to private markets, there’s a relative value decision in everything that we’re doing. You know, obviously we’re investing on behalf of some of the most unconstrained individuals like individuals on the planet. And you know, every decision of why should allocate to venture versus private credit or real estate, you know, that kind of factors into our process. And so, you know, within those bounds, we are trying to be, you know, consistent in our approach. So it’s, it’s, it’s really about, you know, not not timing things. It’s having things looking compelling on a risk adjusted basis, and being able to weather the storm for the long runs. And so that they’re really some of the, you know, some of the things that we’re talking to our clients about, you know, we do think that now is a really compelling time to be, you know, allocating new dollars, you know, consistently to early stage but, you know, now more than ever to some of the stuff that’s really been impacted the later stage growth. And have been really impressed by some of the more structural solutions, I know we touched on earlier, addressing some of the use cases in the later stage companies for sure.

Earnest Sweat 48:04
Hello, Darren, yeah,

Alexa Binns 48:05
we can see why your clients come to you. Darren, um, thank you for sharing your wisdom.

Darren Chappell 48:11
No. Thank you.

Earnest Sweat 48:13
Thanks, Darren,

Alexa Binns 48:15
See you later. Allocator.