Earnest Sweat 00:02
Alex, welcome to swimming with alligators

Alexa Binns 00:04
the VC podcast from the LP perspective, with your host, Alexa bins and Ernest. You ready? Let’s dive in.

Earnest Sweat 00:13
I appreciate your thoughtfulness, and I always have since we’ve known each other. And I don’t know if it was like somewhere I read or heard you on another podcast or in our conversations, but you’ve always described kind of like entering conversations with an open mind and assuming the other person across the table sees the world differently. I was always curious. I’ve never asked you, but like, where did that come from? And has that kind of like shaped your career path?

Regina Green 00:44
I realized that in hindsight. But if I were to say, I think there’s a number of just elements of my life where I’ve been, I’ve just been different from the other people around me, and like, yeah, there’s the obvious. Like, I grew up in Georgia. I was in, I’ve been in, like, predominantly white institutions my whole life. So be like, often I was, like, the only or a few, like, black people in the room, or things like that. But even, like, more generally, I think I mentioned this in other contexts, but like, my parents are both. My mom’s one of seven, my dad’s one of nine, and I’m an only child. So like, even in my house, like, also I’m the only Southerner in my nuclear family. My parents moved to Georgia just before I was born. Like, from my mom’s from Illinois, my dad’s from New York. So, like, there’s all these things that are just like, my context is, is different, like, from as basic as that, but then, like, you know, I moved to New York for college, and like a lot of people that I went to college with were from New York, New Jersey, Long Island, and I was just like, I have no context for these places. And similar, like starting on Wall Street, like, there’s just like, not super common to find, like, a southern person, and so there’s just, like, a lot of different elements where, over time, I’ve realized, like, oh, the My immediate instinct and the way I think about this is not the way that another person thinks about whatever the conversation is. I had a boss who used to tell me that my brain works differently than other people’s like, I’d be like, hey, like, working on this problem, I’m doing this, this and this. And she’s like, Well, did you ask these questions? Did you think this person? And I’m just like, no, like, what seems obvious and logical to me. And she would just consistently say, like, your brain works differently. Like, go back and ask these other questions. And just like I think, I’ve been fortunate to have a lot of people in my life who bring a different perspective and lens on the world, and my general approach is to try to see things from their perspective. So like to try to identify, like, where is there an intersection or commonality, as opposed to being, like, frustrated with the fact that we don’t see things

Earnest Sweat 03:04
the same way, I completely empathize with that given, you know, from Little Rock and even within like Little Rock, being at a magnet school and being an athlete and being in like, my school is 60% Black, but all my classes are like, like, yeah, like, 20% black, and so I don’t know, like, you can have some frustration in there, of, like, I just want to fit in. But like, I think what it made, like, made me do is, like, I don’t know, have FOMO with, like, understanding other people. So I listened. I feel like I became a great listener. And anytime I was trying to connect with somebody, when going to college in New York, or, like, work and stuff like that, if I knew something about where they were from, I would talk about that.

Alexa Binns 10:40
One of the last roles you had at Goldman was head of launch with us. Can you give us the background on what that initiative is? Yeah, and then I would love to hear any lessons learned?

Regina Green 10:55
Sure, yeah. So in 2018 Goldman started this initiative called launch with us. And it really kind of came from this observation, like our the CEO at the time had been spending some time in Silicon Valley and just really observed, you know, especially in the wake of the ME TOO movement, the lack of gender diversity in the venture space. And so that kind of led to this, this idea of, like tasking, the Chief Strategy Officer at the time to figure out, how could Goldman contribute to addressing this like misallocation of capital and need for more diversity in the industry. And so there was sort of this multi asset class approach across all of our investing teams to try to deploy more capital to women led funds and women led businesses. That initiative evolved to include underrepresented and diverse kinds of managers and founders across some other demographics as well. But it was this idea that we had a growth equity investing business. We had a private equity investing business, a number of different areas that did lending and other things, as well as a manager selection business. And how could we really bring all of those resources together to get capital to some folks who had historically been under invested in and so, you know, I think part of kind of launching that initiative with this, like really broad lens, and from from a seat within, kind of the Chief Strategy function was that it had the resources of, kind of the executive office to task a bunch of different teams to collaborate on what that looks like. And, you know, coming out of it, it was kind of, it became clear that the area where the firm could have the most influence was kind of at the earlier stages of the market. So ended up being very growth equity, focused on the founder side, and then focusing on managers, primarily ventures, some other asset classes. Initially, we raised a fund to funds that was focused on women led managers. We had thanks to some regulatory changes, the ability to deploy some balance sheet capital into some venture funds, especially in 2020, and then we, over time, really learned like the source of some of these gaps were a lack of resources and information for founders and fund managers like one interacting with a bank is, is probably one of the more challenging types of allocators you could interact with. And so, you know, there were a lot of instances where we couldn’t invest for, you know, regulatory reasons related to being a bank, let’s say, like, there’s a lot of caps on the types of ownership we can have and other things. And so we started to think about what other ways we can provide support or leverage the network that Goldman has to connect the dots for founders and fund managers. So we launched an entrepreneur cohort, which was essentially a program for a small group of founders where, like, it was my job to kind of go around the firm and figure out, like, who can be helpful to this founder? In some cases, that was, you know, we’re going to have an associate on our investing team, like redo your model, or we’re going to have a banker who would cover this sector, talk about, who could the potential acquirers be, and how should you think about approaching some of these larger enterprises as potential customers, or maybe, like, the firm could be a customer. And so how do we connect, like, the right vendor management team, I think at that point in my career, like leveraging everything I had learned about the firm across all my different roles, I was, like, strangely, like, well positioned for that role in a way that I couldn’t have expected, just because knowing who does what and like who to call and how, how we can help was was really fun. As far as lessons learned, I would say the biggest one for me was just, there’s this um, kind of necessary overlap between Founders Fund Managers, companies who’ve historically been under invested in. Like, you can’t just. Say, like, okay, the industry has been ignoring this group, and we’re going to know all of a sudden, just like, open the doors and say, like, come in. We’ve got money for you. Bring me all of your growth stage companies that are ready for, you know, 2030, $50 million of capital from us, like that just didn’t exist. And so there was a lot of learning about, like, it’s hard to to effectively execute a diversity strategy without an early stage strategy, or an emerging manager strategy, new manager strategy. And so we really spent a lot of time thinking about where at the margins could we reach earlier stage companies and newer managers, there are definitely a lot of challenges in doing that. And so, you know, I think in some cases, people might have felt like progress wasn’t happening as quickly as they would have wanted to see from us. But there were a lot of, in my opinion, kind of necessary structural reasons for that, and sometimes we would have to explain that.

Earnest Sweat 17:07
Very, very true. Now, only in America is playing in my head. So I’m curious what, what would you do if it was 2020, today, like, I don’t June of 2020, and all the things that you know. What would you do differently now for not just, I won’t just focus on launch, but different programs from large institutions, what would you focus your time on based on what you know now?

Regina Green 17:41
Yeah, I think I would, I think I would really focus on equipping new managers, you know, thinking about capital as this, like, you know, it’s a flow of capital. Like, there’s different points in that journey, or in that kind of flow, how capital goes from asset owners to the people who are executing a project or building a company like there’s a number of different places where it made sense for Goldman to plug in, you know, these later stage companies. And so, how do you expand the source? So whether it’s like getting more early stage investors in business, so that they are investing in companies that will eventually grow to be in growth stage, I think we saw a lot of because a lot of folks who are underrepresented like they may be naturally constrained to raising smaller funds. So smaller funds are well suited for like, pre seed and seed, that’s great. But then you end up in this point where there’s kind of a cliff or a gap at Series A Series B. We confronted that a lot where, like, companies were almost where we needed them to be, and there wasn’t an obvious investor who could bridge that gap. I think also just on the allocator side and investor side, helping people build context to evaluate these companies differently. Like, there’s a fund manager in my pipeline today who has a regional strategy, and she’s talked a lot about, like, what a series, a deal looks like in the southeast, where she’s focused, is different from a series a deal in Silicon Valley or New York. And how do you equip one? How do you have more investors who can evaluate those companies in their context for their kind of market? And then how do you equip those founders to translate their progress, their capital efficiency, in a way that will be appreciated by an investor in some of these other jurisdictions. And so I do think that that was something we ran into a lot where, like, certain sectors maybe were just unfamiliar to the investors on our team, like we worked on some things in the beauty space. And I think a lot of no offense earnest, a lot of men don’t appreciate it. How much women will spend on beauty. So, like, they would just be like, is this really sustainable? Is this really going to grow? It is, like, the conversations we would be having in IC where, like women are trying to explain these things, is just like, there’s got to be a systemic solution to this. We can’t be doing this every week, like kind of a thing. So I think that just more of this, like translation work and then, like, helping people appreciate context for whoever is going to be on the other side of the table

Alexa Binns 20:29
from them. This sounds like this has informed what you do today.

Alexa Binns 20:52
. How do you spend your time today?

Regina Green 21:19
some background on catalyze, and then we can dive into how I specifically spend my time. But catalyze was founded in 2022 with three founders who had this vision for wanting to see more underrepresented managers and more innovative capital products come to market and really come to market at scale, so that more capital would reach businesses that have been historically overlooked. So there’s sort of this long term impact strategy. They they launched the company with this idea of a fund fellowship, so working with first time fund managers, really providing operational support and coaching to help those managers build an institutional quality firm, and thinking about like, you’re not just raising a fund, but you know, there’s a bunch of things that institutional allocators look for that might not be obvious to someone who’s just been like, I’ve been investing an angel investor, or I’ve been at another firm, and now I want to do my own thing. Like the job of being a GP, like investing is just one part of it. So how do we help them think about their operational infrastructure, hiring a team really building out the firm in a way that will appeal to institutional investors, and after a few years of running that program, consistently heard from GPS. Like, all this advice is great. Like, I totally get it. I need to not take, like, the cheapest fund admin, but all this stuff is really expensive, and so how am I supposed to pay for that? And there had been a component of grants with the program, but it was really unsustainable, and the team really had this belief that if these managers were properly resourced, their businesses would grow, and there might be another way to finance that. So based on that feedback and a lot of kind of iteration with GPS, we launched the GP runway Fund, which is our first kind of capital solution, and where I spend most of my time. We can dive into that in more detail, but essentially, we provide working capital loans to management companies for firms raising a fund, one, two or three to help them invest in that firm infrastructure and really grow and hopefully accelerate their fundraising progress. And I’d say the third component of our work is really focusing on the allocator side of things. We see a ton of allocators who either have interest in or have begun investing in these newer managers. They want to back more innovative capital strategies as well, and either want to work with other allocators, so that, you know, all working together, we hopefully can accelerate the amount of capital going into this space. Or, you know, for those folks who are kind of newer to it, or thinking about, what’s the framework? How do I get started? How do I approach this? Where do I find these managers? And so we do also spend a lot of time trying to consult with those allocators and really one provides a pipeline of the managers that we’re seeing hopefully will be relevant for them as LPs, and then also helping those allocators think about how they evaluate these managers. How do they set them up for success? You know, our hope is that the GP runway fund is one of many products that we ultimately offer to GPS, but then also that other folks in the ecosystem will replicate those strategies. So we think about it as one. We want to support GPS, of course, but we want to do it in a way where we’re sort of building in public and encouraging other people to kind of fall asleep.

Earnest Sweat 24:45
There’s so many threads I can pick from that that I just love. But the first thing that I noticed is that you guys have this idea of capital entrepreneurs, yeah, and one of my favorite interviews we’ve done last. Share was about Benedict, where he said, LPs and GPS need to come up with their own language, because it helps build their world. So is there a difference between capital entrepreneurs and fund managers or emerging managers? Are they the same thing?

Regina Green 25:16
Yeah, so the thinking behind it for us? Well, guess a couple things. Let’s say like one. I think emerging managers has been a term that a lot of people use, and it means different things to them. So it’s not really that demonstrative. Like some people, that means fund one. Some people mean fund one, two and three. Some people, they say emerging managers. And the thing they mean is diverse managers, which has been a personal frustration of mine, but to catalyze, I would say we use this term capital entrepreneurs for two reasons. One is because we do want to back more under-represented managers, and we think about that broadly, like there’s obviously demographic ways that someone might be underrepresented, but there’s also lived experience. And you know, there’s a number of different ways you can slice the asset management space and see a lot of like perspectives lived experience that are not represented. But we also focus on these kinds of innovative capital strategies. So irrespective of the GPS demographic service experience, we want to back more funds that are using capital products and tools that might be a fit for companies who are not a fit for venture whether that’s like revenue based financing, redeemable equity, employee ownership strategies, things like that. So because we’re specifically thinking about these two populations, and we’ve identified some similar challenges they face in trying to raise funds at scale. We aren’t using the term emerging manager because we want people to say, like, hey, actually, what does this term mean? And have the opportunity to explain it. I’d say the other. The other main reason is, you know, I think it is often underestimated how much a GP or fund manager is building a business, right? Like, yes, you’re raising a fund and you’re going to go invest in a bunch of businesses, but you are also building a company. It just happens to be an asset management company, a financial services company, and so you have to think about a lot of the same things that the founders and entrepreneurs that you’re investing in are thinking about, and sometimes, particularly when we talk about this working capital strategy. You know, people have never really thought about, like, how does a fund manager get started? What does it cost? What do you need to do? And so being pretty, forward leaning with the fact that you’re building a firm, and that’s the part we want to help you with. We’re not going to teach anyone how to be an investor. Like, that’s table stakes, but we might help someone think about the firm building side of things differently than they otherwise would.

Alexa Binns 27:43
Do you mind just rattling off for folks, everything that you could include in that infrastructure, in the firm building? Yeah.

Regina Green 27:49
Um, of course. So I mean, even, like, literally starting, like, forming the entities, like, all the legal documentation, hiring counsel, like, that’s the like, most obvious thing, like, that’s not cheap. I don’t know if you guys have ever worked with a lawyer, but they’re not cheap. And then typically, we think about the team. So even if you’re a solo GP, maybe you have an EA, maybe you have a principal, maybe you have, like, a platform, or other components of the strategy that you need people to execute. So, you know, a GP might be able to survive for some time without a salary, but you probably aren’t hiring anyone without paying them. Something we also think about, you know, all the service providers, so fund, admin, your tax, accounting, audit, all of that fun stuff, you know, paying for technology and services depending on the strategy, you might need other resources and private credit. You typically need some loan servicing and administration. So there’s, like, tons of different expenses. And then, of course, for fundraising, people are typically traveling to meet potential LPs, going to conferences, stuff like that. Like, you know, there, there is sort of, like, the leanest way you can run your fund. But like them there’s no shortage of things that you could be spending money on. And of course, as you grow and scale the firm needing to put in more operational capacity, things like cyber security, you’re maintaining your data room somewhere you might, you know, level up that platform as you have more institutional investors who can’t use Google Drive and things like that. So just, yeah, the expenses would surprise you, but like, you can’t pay for that stuff until you have fees coming from the fund. And you’re not having fees coming from the fund, until you have LPs, which you can’t get, until you spend a bunch of money on all the things I just listed. So there’s this, like, chicken and the egg problem that we’re trying to address, and it’s largely like a personal finance problem, because, like, GPUs would otherwise either themselves or from friends and family pay for some of those things. And you know, there isn’t really a reason for that to be correlated, right? Like your investing talent has nothing to do with how much wealth you have that you can divert for this purpose, and not like taking care of your family. And yourself and things

Earnest Sweat 32:18
there sounds like there’s a lot of things that you guys are doing and could be doing, and unless you have 100 people on staff like you could be stretched. How are you all prioritizing how to be really high touch with your fund managers or capital entrepreneurs? I should say, yeah.

Regina Green 32:48
I mean, I think that last bit is exactly like we want to be really high touch. We want to have, we want to show up as true partners. And so one is we keep things pretty small. So our fellowship program, for example, we tend to work with like five to 10 managers each year. It’s a six month program, and we meet with each we you know, across our team, we meet with each GP team like once a month for for an hour, 15 minutes, hour and a half, and really try to be very accessible to them in the loan fund like we specifically think about this capital as strategic growth capital. We do not want to be a high volume lender and so we can talk about this more as far as GP being about strategy like we designed a product we know is not a fit for every manager. Not every manager’s cash or capital gap is like a two, two to four year gap, which our loans are. We can be as short as two years, as long as four years. And so, you know, part of it is really just accepting the fact that not every GP needs or wants the capital we’re offering, needs or wants the support that we’re offering. And so, you know, in some ways, similar to founders that you guys are working with is like, who’s the ideal customer profile? And like, just having a lot of ownership over that. And I would say we also think about, like, when we are working with a manager, that it’s not going to be for this one fund, like we view them as part of our community, part of our portfolio, whether that’s as a fellowship alum or or a borrower on GP runway fund. And so we’re thinking about it for the long term, although I’m sure many of these managers will kind of graduate beyond the help that we’re offering. We hope that they’ll continue to invest in the community and support their peers and things like that. And so we also try to leverage other GPS LPS in our network, lots of other experts and mentors who can be really targeted to the specific needs of a GP. We try to offer really pretty bespoke help. And I think that becomes even more relevant when you’re talking about GPs who are. Are working across asset classes, like what’s what makes sense for you know, a search fund manager and a venture manager aren’t necessarily the same, but we might have someone in our network who can be really targeted to the types of support that each needs. And so part of it is, is knowing when we’re not the expert on something, but we know who is, and leveraging them

Alexa Binns 35:22
and catalyze gets confused a bit with GP stakes. Can you explain the difference so that, yeah, everybody can understand where to set you. Yeah.

Regina Green 35:34
So I think this is probably the most common reaction when I start talking about the working capital product. So GP stakes essentially are selling a stake or an equity ownership in either the management company or the GP entity for a fund. I think it’s more common for, to me, the management company, you know, typically that’s coming with a bunch of rights around control. There’s sort of perpetual upside to be had where the stake investor gets a portion of the management fee, as well as any carried interest that gets paid eventually. And so it’s in some ways, you can think about it like selling an option on your success as a fund manager is like you get some capital today. And you know, these deals can be structured in a lot of different ways, like it’s very common for them to be perpetual. Sometimes there’s like a return target or an ability to repurchase the stake in the future. For catalyze and GP runway funds, we are specifically doing a non dilutive term loan product. So the structure is, you know, up to the managed option as far as the maturity to three or four years, but we were providing a loan, so there’s capital up front, and then for six to 12 months, it’s interest only payments, and then the loan begins to amortize. So there’s a little bit of principal and interest being paid each quarter till maturity, it is flexible and pre-payable if, as we hope, like people’s fund raises get accelerated and go better than expected. And a GP says, Hey, I’m ready to repay this. You can. We’re actually getting our first early repayment next month, so we’re excited about that. And so we really are trying to design a solution that is one providing GPS the capital they need for the purpose that they need it for and in a way that’s, like, very flexible, like, we want to get out of the way when it makes sense to do that. I think as we’ve been talking to GPS, there are different types of capital needs and capital gaps. So some GPS we talked to have, you know, much shorter capital needs. Maybe they’re like, closer to the end of their fund to raise, and it’s only six months before they’re gonna be able to turn that fund on and start generating fees. So they really need something that’s more like a 90 or 90 day or six month kind of line of credit that’s probably going to be cheaper than our capital. And then there’s folks who maybe the nature of their strategy is much more capital intensive, like a larger private equity fund, or, you know, significant private credit, or structured credit type of fund where you might have additional back office needs and need more capital than we’re willing to lend. You know, I could say also with with something like a private credit strategy, where your your investments are going to be having distributions, and it’s a little bit more of a cash flow play, as opposed to this, like equity upside play, like the the trade off between the capital that you’re getting and the return that you’re able to pay feels a little bit more just like a revenue share, and is like maybe Less extractive over the long term. And so, you know, one, we’ve essentially designed an alternative to GP stakes so that GPs have more tools that they can choose from. You know, I think I sometimes come off as like, very anti GP stake, but I think it’s probably more accurate to say that I am pro GPS, evaluating their options and really understanding the cost. Because I think sometimes the nature of getting that upfront capital feels like so helpful, and like, not having a cash flow payment that we obviously require feels great. And then, you know, three, four or five years, like you’re knocking out of the park, you’re paying a lot, maybe a lot more than you anticipated you would be. So it’s kind of a matter of like, are you how you want to bet on yourself, and what you think that upside is going to be?

Earnest Sweat 39:28
How do you think LPS view the different options of people getting off the ground, whether they do a GP stake or doing working capital loan,

Regina Green 39:39
I think with stakes. Sometimes the term, because the terms are, like, really widely varied, like, the devil’s in the details. And I think there can be a lot of questions around judgment. If you’ve sold a significant stake, or there’s, like, you didn’t negotiate for the ability to repurchase it, so that can raise a lot of questions. Questions around, you know, did the GP enter into this agreement? Because they were really desperate, like, what are you being offered? You know, sometimes it’s a lot of times a GP stake is coming with, like, back office support and things like that. And maybe if it’s from someone who’s a trusted partner and is really, like, not just financially, but also like, operationally, invested in the manager’s success. Like, maybe the economics makes sense, and so I think there is a very nuanced way of thinking about it, also from the LP side, right? We have all these different components, or like, like the GP commit and other things that are giving us indications that the GP is invested in the success of the fund and align with LPS interest. So depending on the amount of ownership you’ve sold, like, if you’ve sold so much equity in the firm that you know, the difference between a 2x and a 5x performance is, like, marginal to the GP. Like, that’s going to raise questions of whether you’re when you’re truly aligned. You know, we’ve, we’ve, we’ve chatted with some GPs who have, like, these perpetual profit share arrangements, and, you know, flat out ass. Like, what do you do when you guys are really successful? And like, you have these investors that are still entitled to this, like, portion of your profits. And I’ve had GP say, Well, maybe we’ll think about just like, leaving and starting a new firm. And like, that’s not the answer an LP wants to hear. I want to hear. So like, that raises some red flags. Like, so I think one, it’s like, it depends on the details, but those are the types of questions that I think an LP will want to answer, as far as, like, how does this GP stake inform you know what they think about the firm and your ability to deliver on the fiduciary duties that you owe to them. On the working capital side, we’ve been spending a lot of time trying to educate both GPS and LPS about what we talked about this kind of operational needs and working capital gap that GPS faces. Because I think, if I’m honest, and I would put myself in this bucket, until the last couple of years, I never really thought about, like, how a GP gets started, what it costs, and like, where they get that money from. And so, you know, especially for LPS, who maybe aren’t investing in fund ones and fund twos, I don’t, I don’t really cross their mind. And so when they hear like, Oh, you, you took out a loan, or you did this other thing, like, their initial reaction might be, like, a little bit of the amount of questions about it, so we’re trying to do some of that work so that GPS aren’t feeling like there’s any kind of stigma.
Alexa Binns 44:24
You’ve got some very, I think, cool and helpful advice on how to pitch LPs, thinking of this more as like a sales process. Would you mind sharing that with our GPS? Yeah.

Regina Green 44:38
So in one of my observations, especially from my time at Goldman, was like, we were never going to be kind of a first close lp. And I think I had this, this experience where GPS would effectively, like, talk to me too early. And so, you know, over time, you’d be like, oh, man, this person’s been in the market for a really long time. And like, the reality was, like they were telling. To me about the fund that they were planning to launch. And so it felt like a long time to me, but they maybe hadn’t actually been in the market that long. And sometimes in the fellowship we’ll we’ll hear from GPS like who they’re targeting, and a lot of the more well known investors in these like fund one fund twos are kind of more institutional players that have this bigger presence, and so one, I’d say, like GPS really should spend time understanding the different profiles of LP types, whether it’s like high net worth individuals, family offices, foundations, endowments, etc, and like fund to funds in particular that have certain, like, structural needs, and tend to come in as late as possible, for reasons that make a lot of sense, for where their capital comes from and how they execute their strategy. One, is like that kind of obvious bucket, these different profiles move in different ways. And then two, even getting more granular with the specific investors that you are talking about like, what motivates them, what is the thing that they need to see in terms of progress for coming in, like some LPs are really excited to be very catalytic and come in very early. And so those are the folks you want to be talking to. Others are going to be much later. They want to see you get to a certain threshold, and things like that. And so the more that a GP can really capture that information and tailor their interactions accordingly. Like the DLP, who says, you know, we have a $50 million fund size threshold, and what that means to us is we don’t even really want to start digging into the data room until you have 40 million of capital. Like, why are you calling them when you have 25 million? Like, Sure, they should know who you are. Like, get them, get them on your newsletter so they can monitor that progress, and you don’t miss that window from, you know, we get a 40 million, and you got a bunch of people calling you, and you forget to call them, and you could have been over subscribed. Like, there are some of that. Like, we had situations at Goldman where, like, we kind of missed something that we would have been excited to back if we had gotten that, that last call. But I think sometimes people squander their ability to make a strong first impression by trying to make that first impression too early.

Earnest Sweat 48:59
So what’s one manager behavior you wish more allocators rewarded,

Regina Green 49:26
I would say, I don’t know if there’s a behavior, but entrepreneurial and ecosystem building track record, I think sometimes people don’t give GPS enough credit for the businesses they’ve built in the past. Like, obviously, like, if there is an investment track record, that’s that’s important. I mean, we all know that markets change, and so their ability to execute the same strategy over and over again, like, you got to take a bunch of grains of salt for that. But like, someone who’s really built a business before. Especially one that maybe has worked with enterprise customers, is kind of more akin to an institutional fund manager. And I think managers don’t necessarily get enough credit for that.

Earnest Sweat 50:13
What’s the best tale that a first time GP can actually build an enduring firm?

Regina Green 50:21
Two things. One would be strategic vision. So when you talk to a GP about what they’re building, and they tell you about the investment strategy, but more so they tell you about the firm strategy over the next couple of funds, like how they’re thinking about the development of their team, the development of the broader platform to engage and support founders, really, especially like those folks who’ve spent time thinking about what that’s going to cost them and how they’re going to adapt their their role beyond just being an investor to really being a manager and a firm builder. You know, sometimes I’m talking to GPS about this loan product, and it’s clear that they just, like, don’t even have an imagination for how they would use the capital. So I’m like, Okay, well, you’re just like, you haven’t gotten a paycheck in a long time, and that would and like, I agree, will be nice if that weren’t the case, but like, it’s not going to bring more LPS into the door, and it’s not going to sustain you over the long term. And the other thing I would say is just like, how folks engage in relationships, like, you know, during my year of transition between Goldman and catalyze, like, there were GPS, who helped me think about what my next role was going to be, and invested in me because, you know, I had someone who’s flat out said, like, I know you’re not working anywhere right now, but You will in the future. And I want to continue to build this relationship. I think there is a lot of mobility in this industry. And so the person who’s working at whatever insurance company today might be leading a family office in three or four years. And if you’re building those relationships in a way that says, I know this isn’t about the transaction in front of us, this is more long term. I think that is an ethos that, to me, says this person has long term orientation.

Earnest Sweat 52:09
And then is there a book, a bit of information or belief you want the audience to sit with this year?

Regina Green 52:19
I guess as far as belief I I’m really trying to cultivate the belief that investing will look different and value will come from different places. And we spend a lot of time really trying to think about what the impact, like the long term impact of our strategy will be. And part of it is like entrepreneurship as a vehicle for wealth building and closing wealth gaps into some of that is like being able to see that wealth will be generated in different ways. Like it’s not just going to be home ownership and employee stock purchase plans, or how my parents developed wealth. Like, there’s got to be these new ways of doing it, and so just continuing to challenge our assumptions that what’s worked in the past is always going to work

Alexa Binns 53:09
in the future. Awesome. And a final question for you, given what you’re focused on at catalyze what’s something that you’re extremely optimistic about in the next three to five years,

Regina Green 53:22
I’m optimistic about the innovative capital landscape. I think we get the privilege to talk to a lot of asset owners and allocators who want to do something different. They have a lot of passion or interest in backing new managers or new strategies, they just want help from resources and the community to do it well. And I think it’s possible to unlock that. And so I’m excited about that. I think it’s sort of related to some of the other topics that people frequently talk about around the wealth great wealth transfer and stuff like that, but there’s just a lot of things prompting people to think about aligning their investments, their spending, their kind of just general stewardship of wealth, in line with both their values and like the future that they want to see. And so I think there’s really immense potential for us to change the world if we work together. That’s an