# FamilyOffice10x - He invested in Sequoia, Kleiner Perkins, Lightspeed, Anthropic, xAI, Stripe.. - Vishal Verma, Managing Partner, Edgewood Ventures

An episode of [VC10X - Investing, Venture Capital, Asset Management, Family Office, Wealth Management](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1632806986), 21 Apr 2026, 53 min.

Audio: https://anchor.fm/s/a453ddd4/podcast/play/118790866/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2F2026-3-21%2F422515341-44100-2-c37cbc17d6c8b.mp3

Vishal Verma's family office has been operating out of Silicon Valley for over thirty years. His father arrived from India in 1977 with eight dollars in his pocket, worked as a rocket scientist, and eventually became an entrepreneur and venture capitalist. The family formalized their office in the late nineties with early LP positions in Sequoia Fund IX and Kleiner Perkins. Today Vishal manages a portfolio split across twenty-one venture capital firms and twenty-eight direct co-investments in generational companies including Anthropic, Wiz, Stripe, and xAI. In this episode, Prashant and Vishal go deep on how a thirty-year family office actually thinks about venture capital — the vintage strategy, the concentration framework, the Anthropic bet, and why most of what you hear about the first mover advantage is wrong. ⭐ Sponsored by Podcast10x - Podcasting agency for VCs - https://podcast10x.com We talk about - – The family origin story: $8 at the border to Silicon Valley – Portfolio construction: 70/30 public to private – The vintage strategy: why you have to be at every party – Three concentrations reshaping the VC ecosystem – The Anthropic investment at $18B valuation – AI vs crypto: behavioral change is everything – Bigger funds not returning DPI is hogwash – Emerging managers: what actually earns a check – DPI reality and the IPO bottleneck – Why family offices exist and what banks can't do Timestamps: (00:00) -Preview (01:40) - Introduction to Vishal Verma and His Family's VC Legacy (03:39) - The Family Office Origin Story: From India to Silicon Valley (06:57) - Challenges and Triumphs of Early Indian-American Entrepreneurs (08:56) - Why the Indian-American Community Thrives: Hard Work, Education, and Family (10:22) - Portfolio Construction and the First Investment in Sequoia (14:15) - The Rationale Behind a 30% Allocation to Venture Capital (17:22) - How Shorter Fundraising Cycles Have Changed LP Strategy (22:25) - The Differentiator for Top-Tier VC Funds (24:34) - Understanding the "Concentration" of Returns, Capital, and Founders in VC (28:08) - Do Bigger Funds Actually Lead to Shrinking Returns? (30:17) - The "Mafias" of Silicon Valley and Their Role in Deal Flow (32:32) - The Investment Thesis for Anthropic at an $18B Valuation (36:55) - AI vs. Crypto: The Critical Difference of Behavioral Change (39:15) - First-Mover vs. Best-to-Market: Lessons from Tech History (40:32) - The Reality of Stretched DPI and Liquidity Challenges (41:35) - The Rise of "Megacorns" and the Upcoming IPO Wave (44:34) - AI Investing: When Does Conviction Become Overexposure? (48:38) - Public Market Strategy: A Tech-Heavy Portfolio (52:50) - Conclusion Links: Edgewood Ventures - https://www.edgewoodvp.com/ Connect with Vishal Verma - https://www.linkedin.com/in/vishal-verma-551327 Connect with Prashant: https://linkedin.com/in/choubeysahab Subscribe to VC10X newsletter - https://vc10x.beehiiv.com Subscribe on YouTube - https://youtube.com/@VC10X Subscribe on Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/vc10x-investing-venture-capital-asset-management-private/id1632806986 Subscribe on Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/7F7KEhXNhTx1bKTBFgzv3k?si=WgQ4ozMiQJ-6nowj6wBgqQ VC10X website - https://vc10x.com 🔔 Subscribe for weekly conversations with family offices, fund managers, and the LPs behind the biggest names in venture. #VC10x #VentureCapital #FamilyOffice #AngelInvesting #Anthropic #Silicon Valley #LP #VentureCapitalPodcast #StartupInvesting #FamilyOfficePodcast #PrivateMarkets #AIInvesting #EmergingManagers #FundInvesting #VC

## Transcript

[0:00] My father came with many folks, 8 or $10 in his bank account.
[0:05] Actually, I don't think he had a bank account.
[0:06] He just had probably $810 cash that he brought in.
[0:09] What do you think has been differentiator for these big
[0:12] funds? What did they have that made
[0:15] them such big funds in the venture capital space?
[0:18] I always say there's only one reason why VCs are successful is
[0:22] because they have the proprietary deal flow that's.
[0:26] It and one common critique of top tier funds is that they're
[0:30] constantly raising bigger and bigger funds.
[0:33] And what that does for returns is that when you get to the DPI
[0:37] stage, it's harder to bring in those returns, and those returns
[0:41] are shrinking because of those bigger fund sizes.
[0:44] I've heard that so many times. I think that's just hogwash.
[0:47] Hogwash. Meaning I think there's
[0:48] bullshit. Anthropic, one of the biggest
[0:51] names in AI, competing directly against open AI.
[0:54] You got in at 18 billion dollar valuation, right?
[0:57] And that's from even someone who's investing into venture,
[1:01] that's still a massive valuation to get in, right, the entry
[1:04] point. So how easy or hard was it for
[1:07] you to write that check and what were you expecting out of it?
[1:11] It it was nerve racking that I think that's the right way to
[1:14] put it because there's no comps to where AI is going to.
[1:21] Yeah, first mover advantage in technology is not an advantage.
[1:27] Let's talk about DPI timelines. They have faced considerably
[1:30] across the industry. How has that changed the way you
[1:33] think about pacing and deployment?
[1:35] We don't talk about that man. I don't know what DPI stands for
[1:40] anymore. Hey everyone, this is Prashant
[1:43] and. I'll be host for the VC10X
[1:45] podcast. And today we have Vishal Verma
[1:47] with us. Vishal runs a single family
[1:49] office out of Silicon Valley that has been operating for 30
[1:52] years. His father arrived from India in
[1:55] 1977 with $8 in his pocket, and that family eventually became
[2:00] early LP's in Sekoa, cleaner Perkins, Lightspeed and 20 other
[2:05] venture firms and holds direct positions in companies like
[2:08] Anthropic, XAI, Wiz and Stripe. In this conversation, we get
[2:13] into why he allocated 30% of families investable capital to
[2:17] venture his bet on Anthropic at an $18 billion valuation and how
[2:23] he thinks about capturing every vintage.
[2:25] So without wasting any time, let's dive straight in.
[2:28] This episode is brought to you by Podcast Enix, my podcasting
[2:32] agency for VCs. We help VCs start and run
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[3:02] description below. Now enjoy the episode.
[3:05] Hey Vishal Subhadavi on the VC Tenix podcast.
[3:07] How are you doing? I'm doing good.
[3:09] Thanks for having me man, It's exciting.
[3:12] I know it took some time to get here, but we'll have fun today.
[3:17] Absolutely. It, it takes time to, you know,
[3:19] get the big ones on for sure. So totally worth it, you know,
[3:23] But yeah, it, it's great having you on to start things off.
[3:27] Tell us the family office story. You know, it's something that
[3:30] doesn't talk about, often gets missed, but I think that's the
[3:33] most important thing that holds the family office together.
[3:35] So tell us that story. How was it started and how's it
[3:38] going? Let me tell a little bit about
[3:41] the origin in terms of how we came to be.
[3:45] It is a perfect immigration in terms of immigrants coming in.
[3:51] My father came in 1970s to from, from northern India to to.
[3:57] Actually, our first point of entry was Washington Dulles
[4:01] Airport in 1977. At least that's what I was told.
[4:05] And my father came with many folks, 8 or $10 in his bank
[4:10] account. Actually, I don't think he had a
[4:12] bank account. He just had probably $18.00 cash
[4:14] that he brought in. I remember him telling me that
[4:16] he had one of his friends come pick us up from the airport to
[4:20] take us to their house so we can stay with them.
[4:23] And he worked hard for for many decades was amazing.
[4:30] Actually. He was a rocket scientist.
[4:32] That's how we entered this country.
[4:34] And we after Washington DC, the first point of entry, like I
[4:39] mentioned, his first job in the United States was as the first
[4:43] sights counselor to the Indian Embassy to the United States.
[4:47] So he was working on satellites at that time.
[4:51] And shortly after, three years later, as you know, being an
[4:54] Indian civil servant, you get a three-year rotation and I'm
[4:58] assuming three years is up. And my mom and him got together
[5:01] and saying, hey, if you want to live a life in the United States
[5:04] for the kids and what? So, so he or we moved to Los
[5:08] Angeles for about two to three years and then we Fast forward,
[5:12] we've been living in Silicon Valley since 1982, so early
[5:15] nineteen 1980s and he became an entrepreneur and a venture
[5:21] capitalist. And then shortly after we
[5:24] started a River family office in the late 1990s where he started
[5:28] investing into more as an Angel because some of his companies
[5:33] that he started and he invested into got acquired and and then
[5:39] we became more professional from the perspective of a family
[5:42] office structure a few years after.
[5:45] And I remember him putting money initially into funds like
[5:50] Sequoia and Kleiner and what so, so that was kind of the origin
[5:54] in terms of how our family office started.
[5:58] And now we have breakthrough into a different atmosphere in
[6:03] terms of our investment, both public and private market.
[6:06] I'm happy to share with that too and what we were up to.
[6:09] Absolutely. That's quite exciting.
[6:11] And your father was like some of the few who got entry into the
[6:15] venture capital space super early on and that's why you
[6:19] deployed into some of the biggest brand names right now.
[6:23] Do you remember anything from those days?
[6:26] I know how old you were, but I I think you'd be an adult back
[6:30] then too, I guess. And So what?
[6:34] My age on on TV, man. Yeah.
[6:38] So baby, I was a young baby. Yes, let's put it that way.
[6:41] OK, OK. So any any baby memory that you
[6:45] have of what your father was doing, what's happening around
[6:48] you, you were at that place, the hardest place in the world in
[6:52] tech right now. So the early days you have,
[6:54] anything that you remember from your baby days?
[6:57] I think a few things the the baby adult days were that the
[7:03] challenges for Indian Americans to really be known as
[7:07] entrepreneurs. We were known as great
[7:08] engineers. This is I'm talking about the
[7:10] 80s and 90s and late 90s even and we were known as great
[7:14] engineers. But if you make a few engineers,
[7:18] as my father used to say, you can make a a great engineer into
[7:21] a manager, but you might have a bad manager.
[7:23] But then is the population group of Indian Americans, it it was
[7:27] true and happened to be that we are just hard working folks, not
[7:31] just on the engineering side, but also on the management and,
[7:34] and entrepreneurial side. And I remember from those days
[7:37] that the biggest challenge was basically a bunch of brown guys
[7:42] going to Sand Hill Rd. and pitching ideas about the next
[7:46] generation technologies because no one's done that right.
[7:48] I mean, if it was a predominantly in terms of
[7:52] Caucasian Americans that were leading the entrepreneurial
[7:55] space and then over the say, since the late 1990s till now,
[8:00] Indians are dominating, just not entrepreneurship, but also
[8:04] academics as well as CX OS in large corporations.
[8:08] And now we're getting roadways into politics in this country as
[8:12] the, as, as the population matures, we have seen the, the,
[8:18] the, the, the, the dominance of the Indian American community in
[8:22] the United States. And I would say the last point
[8:25] to that is in the last maybe 10 years, maybe a decade or two
[8:29] decades, the advancement of the Indian American community in the
[8:32] United States is significant, which I'm sure you know, the
[8:35] data is that we per capita, we are the largest income
[8:38] generators in the United States, so.
[8:41] Absolutely. And do you have any, you know,
[8:43] observations or insight into why do you think that is?
[8:47] Is it that we are the most hard working of the Lord?
[8:49] Because United States is the place where people from all the
[8:52] countries go to, right? So what what makes us different?
[8:56] What do you think? I think a few things we're going
[8:59] back to the, the, the baby generations.
[9:01] I think from start, from young age, we have been in grown in a
[9:07] few things, hard work, education, family values.
[9:12] And that leads into success. Not necessary for everyone, but
[9:16] I think that leads to success from the perspective of we want
[9:20] to build a better life, just not for ourselves, but also for for
[9:25] our kids. Also, I remember the immigrant
[9:29] generation, I think is also failure is not an option, right?
[9:32] Going back to the motherland, failure is not an option.
[9:36] But I'm talking about that in the 70s and 80s and 90s today,
[9:39] India has boomed so much, right? It's India's generation to, to,
[9:43] to lose from the perspective of growth.
[9:46] And coming back to your, to, to, to your point, I think all those
[9:50] encompasses from the perspective of why Indian Americans are just
[9:55] so dominating in this country and, and, and, and just the hard
[9:58] work, like you mentioned, right? But everyone is hard work, hard
[10:01] working. Also, the last thing is I think
[10:03] the Indian community has built a small type community where we're
[10:08] supporting each other. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
[10:11] I think that that goes a long way as well and to shifting
[10:15] focus on to asset allocation, right.
[10:17] Walk me through how you think about portfolio construction.
[10:20] How are you allocated across asset classes today?
[10:23] Well, let me tell you a little story and then I'll get to your,
[10:25] your, your, your, your question. So when we started putting money
[10:30] into into venture and let me let me step back for a second also.
[10:35] So in my, in my family office, it's a single family office.
[10:38] We've been running this for about 30 years.
[10:41] A big chunk of the capital is in the public markets and a smaller
[10:45] chunk, about 30% are in the private markets, which includes
[10:48] 21 venture capital firms, Tier 1 venture capital firms, some
[10:51] emerging managers and 28 later stage, I like to say high
[10:54] octane, high growth companies. And the story I wanted to tell
[10:59] you was that when are you? The first fund that we invested
[11:02] into was a Sequoia fund, Sequoia 9 in the late 1990s.
[11:06] And I remember somehow I came across the old file from 30
[11:10] years ago. So that file is a three hole
[11:11] punch binder that I made and it was kind of interesting.
[11:15] It's like a fossil. And when opening, there's a few
[11:19] things that I learned or in terms of from 1990s till today,
[11:23] we're still using our El accounts.
[11:25] We're still using our faxes. Not faxes from the perspective
[11:28] of actually many of your viewers probably don't even know what
[11:30] faxes are, but facts from the perspective of those carbon copy
[11:34] faxes, not those Laserjet printers, but those common copy
[11:37] of faxes. But interesting part was there
[11:40] was an insane letter from Doug Leone and Mark Kwame to my
[11:43] father saying that the Silicon Valley is a washed of capital.
[11:47] Take this back in. This is 97, maybe 96 time frame.
[11:52] And back then, we didn't have Google.
[11:54] So I had a yell what a wash meant.
[11:56] A wash meant flooded. So Silicon Valley's flooded of a
[12:00] capital. And this is what they were
[12:02] mentioning in this letter in 1997.
[12:04] And Sequoia at that time closed the largest fund ever in history
[12:08] of Sequoia Capital, which was fund #9 at that time of $339
[12:12] million, right? Today, they're doing a Series A,
[12:15] Series B rounds at that. Not that valuations, but that
[12:19] investments and the latest funds if you kind of look at it.
[12:23] So query raised just about $15 billion.
[12:26] General Catalyst raised six, I'm sorry, $8 billion.
[12:29] Lightspeed raised 9 billion. So awash definition is quite,
[12:33] quite different. So to, to, to your point coming
[12:37] Fast forward today, the quantum of capital has just changed,
[12:42] right. So a Series A round when I
[12:44] started my career was a half $1,000,000, right?
[12:48] That's like what Yahoo, for example, Yahoo Sequoia came in
[12:51] the into Yahoo give them a half $1,000,000.
[12:54] Guys you play with, play around with it.
[12:57] Today a Series A round is 100 million, two, $100 million,
[13:01] right? So a lot of things have
[13:03] drastically changed. So from the private market
[13:06] perspective, what my family office is doing on the venture
[13:09] side as well as on the on the direct investments, we're
[13:13] investing money into top tier venture funds.
[13:16] So we're in the funds like Sequoia, Kleiner, General
[13:20] Catalyst, Lightspeed, Menlo, ADC things to that effect.
[13:25] And we are Co investing with them on some of their later
[13:29] stage high growth, high arcane companies that are generational
[13:34] companies like an anthropic, like an Android, like a Wiz.
[13:38] And we leverage our investments into the venture funds to Co
[13:43] invest with them on some of these later stage companies.
[13:47] So I do both venture investment and also do direct investments.
[13:51] So the direct investments are serious, are usually serious B
[13:53] and beyond. And that's how the kind of kind
[13:56] of from the portfolio construction and the private
[13:59] industry or the private investments we've made is about
[14:01] 30% of the allocation or the 30% of the assets and approximately
[14:06] I would say 10% to I'm sorry, 10% of the 30%.
[14:10] So about 1/3 of the money is in direct investments.
[14:12] The remaining are in venture capital firms.
[14:16] Absolutely. Like 30% is massive by what most
[14:20] families would do into venture capital, which is considered a
[14:23] riskier asset class. You go there for alpha, but what
[14:28] makes you do like 30%? What's the conviction behind
[14:31] that number? So the conviction is that we've
[14:34] been doing this for the last 30 years.
[14:37] We understand this market, we understand the industry, we
[14:40] understand the risk appetite and we also understand the potential
[14:44] reward from what is there to offer from this asset class.
[14:50] Also some nuance in this, this things you continuously have to
[14:54] put money from 1 vintage to another vintage to be invited
[14:57] back to the next party. Very simple.
[15:00] So we continuously been investing and we wouldn't have
[15:04] been doing this if you're not making money out of this, right?
[15:09] And we are going through, I think a time where it's going to
[15:11] be unprecedented growth for not just United States, but for the
[15:15] world and especially for India especially.
[15:19] And also the what everyone talks about the AI revolution, but the
[15:23] AI revolution is just not there to increase valuations and all
[15:27] that stuff. It's really to from couple
[15:29] perspective to improve productivity both from personal
[15:34] as well as corporations and just build a better life from from
[15:39] everyone's perspective. So just to summarize the the
[15:43] question is the construction we have, why is it 30% plus or
[15:49] minus right now? Actually I joke around.
[15:50] So it's more than 30% of the market is down.
[15:52] So it's probably 40% right now in the private markets, but but
[15:58] public markets directly correlates with the private but
[16:02] only different things on the private side.
[16:04] It's it's, it's the evaluations are not changed second by
[16:08] second. It's every time a next round is
[16:10] done right. So and VCs have a tendency not
[16:15] to most VCs have a tendency not to reprice in the down way down
[16:20] wrong way. Some of their portfolio even if
[16:23] the markets are are fluctuating for instance enterprise software
[16:26] companies from Adobe's too service now to to sales force.
[16:30] Those markets have been down by 50 to 60% not on the private
[16:34] side. They have not reduced their
[16:35] portfolios down by 50 to 60%. The maximum reduced it by 10%,
[16:40] if they have reduced it at all. Yeah, absolutely.
[16:43] And you mentioned that you have been continuously investing
[16:45] into, you know, subsequent fund, continuously into these bigger
[16:49] brand name funds because that is how you maintain those
[16:51] relationships. That is how you get invited to
[16:53] the party next time they are raising, right.
[16:56] So how much of A pressure there is and have you been able to
[16:59] maintain the same percentage of the entire fund that you were
[17:02] deploying initially up until this point?
[17:05] You know, and if you were able to do that, it's almost obvious
[17:10] that you have been making similar amount of gains on your
[17:14] previous investments that you're able to deploy and increase that
[17:16] investment with with the same proportion as to the bigger fund
[17:21] sizes they're raising now. Yeah.
[17:23] So that's actually Prashant. That's a great question.
[17:25] So what's going on? Let me tell you a little bit a
[17:28] story behind it as well. So when we first started putting
[17:32] money into the venture class, venture capital firms, you know
[17:36] life, the funds life is usually 10 years, +231 year extensions
[17:41] at the violation of the GPS. But then you have to go back,
[17:44] get LPLP approvals. But investment cycles used to be
[17:52] 5 years, three to five years rough for tech exits used to be
[17:57] less than 10 years. So really within one fund
[18:00] portfolio of 10 years used to get a good chunk of returns
[18:04] before the fund would actually got over.
[18:07] Today what's happening, the dynamics is, is quite change.
[18:11] Why? Because only one reason, the
[18:12] access supply of capital, which is in the market, right?
[18:15] If you kind of look at it in 2020, I'm sorry, 20 yeah, in
[18:19] 2020 is just before COVID. The, the, the venture capital
[18:22] community plus or minus raised about 150, a 160 billion.
[18:26] In 2021, the venture capital community raised 300 billion.
[18:30] The next year they raised 200 billion.
[18:31] The year after that became more normal, where they're raising
[18:34] 150 to 600 a hundred 150 to 160 billion.
[18:38] Last year after almost half a decade, the venture capital
[18:42] community raised a less than $100 billion.
[18:48] So and what's happening in the industry is the big are getting
[18:53] bigger and some more data for you is that over the last decade
[18:57] or so there's been more than 15,000 venture funds that
[19:03] haven't started in the United States.
[19:06] Just think about 15,000. That's a whole lot more.
[19:10] I was kidding around. You know, there's a saying Bala,
[19:12] I'm sorry, there's a Tom Dick and Harry.
[19:14] I was kidding around saying there's there's Bala Kristar on
[19:16] because everyone's Indian in this valley who's raising these
[19:18] venture funds and whoever made a dime is raising money.
[19:23] So but only 25 to maximum 30 not percentage.
[19:30] But venture funds are returning capital and like what you said,
[19:34] returning alpha to their LP's. And the question is how do you
[19:41] get into those 25 to 3 funds? And we've all heard of the big
[19:46] ones and I'm, I'm an investor in most of them, right?
[19:48] The Sequoias, the Lightspeeds, the, the Neas, the Kleiners,
[19:52] the, the Menlo's and what so, so we have been putting money into
[20:01] these allocations into these funds and continuously put
[20:05] money. But now to answer your question,
[20:07] I should actually run for politics.
[20:08] I'm not answering your question. So, so is back 30 years ago the,
[20:18] the investment cycles were five years.
[20:20] What happens when you're in five year investment cycles when
[20:23] you're deploying money over five years in the same fund is that
[20:26] you might miss a cycle, right? And for instance, if you started
[20:29] putting money in 21 and the market was higher than 22 was
[20:33] low, 23 was low, and then 24 because of AI started coming
[20:36] back up. You, you hit many different
[20:39] market cycles over a five year investment horizon.
[20:42] But now funds are raising money every year.
[20:44] I won't name names, but I'm in many funds that raise a billion
[20:48] dollars every year. I don't know how they do it or
[20:51] at you. I don't know why they do it, but
[20:54] they're raising money every year.
[20:55] But guess what? If I miss a vintage, I miss the
[20:59] vintage that might have the next, the next generational
[21:02] company out there, the next Google, the next Anthropic, the
[21:05] next open the eye. So from my perspective, what I'm
[21:08] doing is if I put a dollar, I say if I put $10 into a fund
[21:13] that's raising money every year, I I will lower my allocation to
[21:17] the fund the next year. But if a fund is raising, but
[21:22] typically now funds are raising over three years.
[21:24] So for instance, Lightspeed raise money in 2022 and then
[21:27] there is money again last year, 2025 General Catalyst raise
[21:31] money in 2024 announced in 2025. And this has started raising
[21:35] money again for the next for the next vintage is General GC 13.
[21:40] So those are still acceptable because their horizon from a
[21:44] from a market perspective, because the downturn upturn, we
[21:47] don't know. And GPS are, are smart, they're,
[21:52] they're intelligent, but no one can time the market.
[21:55] You have to be lucky to time the market and who does who, who,
[22:00] who does that? They later on they become
[22:01] geniuses, not when they're doing it.
[22:03] So to, to, to just to address your, your question to the funds
[22:09] that are investing over a certain period of time, we're
[22:12] continuously investing the same amount and the funds that are
[22:15] collapsed their investment cycle per vintage into one year or
[22:19] plus or minus, we're we're reducing the allocation.
[22:22] Every time they're new funds, they raise new funds.
[22:25] Absolutely. Yeah, that's actually quite
[22:26] insightful from an LP perspective.
[22:29] I think most family offices would not be taking that
[22:32] sophisticated approach to investing into venture capital.
[22:34] They're just, you know, deploy the entire chunk into maybe pick
[22:39] 2-3 funds in the same vintages or two 3 vintages and then keep
[22:43] waiting for that liquidity. But I think that's a very smart
[22:46] approach that you want to capture all the different
[22:48] vintages because success in venture capital is only in
[22:52] hindsight. You cannot tell upfront that,
[22:55] OK, there's going to be a vintage that's going to produce
[22:57] the winners. You just don't know it.
[23:00] It can come out of a downturn, it can come out of a boom.
[23:04] You just don't know. So you have to hedge your bets
[23:06] in that way that you capture every vintage.
[23:09] Every year some deployment has to go out, right.
[23:12] So that's, that's a great approach.
[23:14] And since you are deployed into these brand new funds, which are
[23:17] now brand new funds, they weren't always brand new funds,
[23:20] right? I'm sure you would have also at
[23:22] some point of time deployed also into funds that didn't go past
[23:25] fund three, fund four and just fizzled out, right?
[23:29] Or maybe not, you can tell me more, but what do you think has
[23:32] been differentiator for these big funds?
[23:36] What did they have that made them such big funds in the
[23:40] venture capital space? Was it the access that they had
[23:43] in their very near network or was it the brand that they
[23:47] build? What was it exactly that made
[23:50] them this big? I I I always say that there's
[23:54] only one reason why VCs are successful is because they have
[23:58] the proprietary deal flow. That's it, but that they have
[24:02] access to and that's the reason I'm willing to invest in them
[24:07] and give my 2 and 20 away right from an investor standpoint.
[24:10] But like every VC says, they have proprietary deal flow and
[24:14] they have superior deal quality. So exactly, so I'm not AVC, so
[24:19] I'm not pitching them. I'm just saying from the
[24:21] perspective of from my, from an LP perspective, funds that have
[24:25] returned capital to US #1 #2 when I say so there's a few
[24:30] things there which are happening.
[24:31] So let me let me step back. Let me tell another story.
[24:34] So there's a, there's a new word that's repeating back and forth
[24:37] in this, in this valley against is concentration both on three
[24:41] fronts, on the VC side, on the entrepreneur side and on the
[24:44] LPLP return side. So for instance, let me just
[24:47] kind of go into that. The LPLP return side is more
[24:51] than I think 6070% of my NAV is in six companies, right?
[24:56] The Wiz Anthropic what is this XAI a stripe.
[25:03] So that comprises more than 60% of my own portfolio.
[25:10] And so the concentration from that perspective is that the
[25:14] returns are coming only from six or seven companies at least in
[25:17] My Portfolio. Second thing is, is the
[25:19] concentration on the venture capital site.
[25:23] I was kind of lowering towards this a few minutes ago where
[25:26] more than I think it was 60% of the capital raised in the
[25:31] venture side is by the five venture funds, General Catalyst,
[25:36] Sequoia, Lightspeed, A16Z. So they have raised more than
[25:42] 60% of the capital which was raised last year.
[25:46] Also, what's happening is because the first part, the
[25:49] concentration of the, of the, of the returns, the, the bigger the
[25:54] companies, the anthropics, right?
[25:55] They raised 30 billion in the next round or last round, the
[25:58] next round, they're going to raise $100 billion.
[25:59] That's I think 700 billion valuation.
[26:02] That's a lot of money. That's a lot of money to raise,
[26:07] right? So those are the best deals go
[26:09] to the best venture capital firms, right?
[26:12] Because A, they have the access, B, they have money, and C is
[26:16] that they actually add value to these generational companies
[26:22] that are going to be going out, hopefully, at least in My
[26:24] Portfolio, hopefully going out, meaning in an IPO and an exit in
[26:28] the next one year. And that's what's happening.
[26:32] And the last, last concentration from the perspective of repeat
[26:36] founders, right? When Elon Musk or Brett Taylor,
[26:40] they want to raise $10 million or a billion dollars in their
[26:42] venture for in their next startup company, they're going
[26:45] to raise 1 billion, they're going to raise 2 billion,
[26:46] they're going to raise 3 billion.
[26:47] There's a raise 5 billion because money is being thrown at
[26:50] them. Why?
[26:51] Because there's only one reason which I've allured to before
[26:53] access supply of capital. There's so much money in the
[26:56] system and they have to deploy with a combination of raising
[26:59] additional amount of capital, shrinking investment cycles.
[27:05] They have to deploy. No VC, no investor is going to
[27:08] return the capital that they raise back to their LP's.
[27:11] They're going to deploy in this different venture funds or in
[27:13] there into different startup companies or these generational
[27:18] companies, which I call them. So if you kind of look at the
[27:21] ecosystem from concentration perspective, that's what's
[27:25] happening. And like what I mentioned, the
[27:26] Balakrishna Rams who are raising these venture funds, these
[27:29] smaller emerging managers that are coming out who might be
[27:32] successful in one company, but might have decided to, hey,
[27:35] let's start another venture fund or company.
[27:37] A person who might have put in $25,000 into the next stripe and
[27:42] now has $100 million, a single shit.
[27:44] I can do that once I can do that again.
[27:46] So I'm my focus on the venture capital side is to put money
[27:51] into the top, the top tier venture funds.
[27:53] Those are the ones who I get access to to Co invest.
[27:57] I've I've done a smaller amount of investments into some of the
[28:00] emerging managers, but that's about 10%, maybe 15% of my
[28:05] venture portfolio. So it's not significant.
[28:08] Absolutely. And one common critique of top
[28:11] tier funds is that they're constantly raising bigger and
[28:14] bigger funds. And what that does for returns
[28:17] is that when you get to the DPI stage, it's harder to bring in
[28:22] those returns and those returns are shrinking because of those
[28:26] bigger fund sizes. Do you buy into that?
[28:29] And since you have a look into the data you have been deployed
[28:32] across all these vintages for about 20-30 years now, do you
[28:36] see that actually playing out into how these funds are
[28:38] returning as they're getting bigger and bigger in size?
[28:42] First of all, every that common, I've heard that so many times.
[28:45] I think that's just hogwash. Hogwash meaning I think that's
[28:47] bullshit. Why is because again going back
[28:53] to my previous statement is 25 to 30 funds, not percentage of
[28:57] the funds are returning capital to their LP's number one, number
[29:02] two out of 15,000 venture funds. How do you know the the ones
[29:08] going to be the next Kleiner Perkins?
[29:10] We don't know that. So from my perspective, even
[29:14] when I look at emerging managers, I look at a few
[29:16] things, proprietary deal flow and if the manager has actual
[29:19] operating experience, it's just not an MBA from one of the top B
[29:24] schools or whatever the cases in those amazing Excel sheets,
[29:28] someone who's gone actually through an operational
[29:30] experience. I, I've invested into Kevin
[29:33] Mahaffey, if you know SNR Capital, he started a company
[29:35] called Lookout. It's a deco corn now, amazing
[29:38] guy. I mean, but he's got that
[29:40] proprietary deal flow, right. I've invested into Anil Rana
[29:44] Devis fund called Soma and again, operating guy.
[29:48] He's he's ran companies. He's now on his fourth fund.
[29:51] He manages over a billion dollars.
[29:53] So most of the funds I've invested, actually all the funds
[29:56] I've invested into that are emerging managers and I'm just a
[30:00] qualified emerging managers for me means vintage 3 and and and
[30:04] and and and fresh to vintage 1-2 and three.
[30:07] That's rich managers to me. These funds have proprietary
[30:16] deal flow that again I cannot get access to and there's two or
[30:20] three mafias in in in in Silicon Valley, right there's the the
[30:24] the company mafia and then there's the acting mafia.
[30:27] So the company mafia that there's two company mafias that
[30:29] run this valley is is the the PayPal mafia and the and the Y
[30:33] commodator mafia. You have some Google mafia.
[30:35] You have some Facebook mafia, Mafia meaning just not the dawns
[30:39] of let's call them the dawns of Silicon Valley.
[30:42] And then you have the at the mafias, you have the Indian
[30:45] guys, you have the Persian guys, you have the Jewish guys, and
[30:48] they all are amongst themselves. So if you kind of look at it
[30:52] from from just to, to summarize this is, is the funds that I'm
[31:00] involved with either have a level of repeat founders that
[31:04] are coming to them or they're part of a a group.
[31:08] Let's not call them mafias, let's call them a group that
[31:11] have proprietary deal flow that are coming into them because
[31:15] they can. And just to answer your previous
[31:18] question, why are these funds raising like the Lightspeed or
[31:23] the Journal Catalyst, they raising more money is because
[31:26] they can very simple. Money is being thrown at these
[31:30] guys. They're actually there are they
[31:32] are pushing capital back because they just can't handle the, I
[31:36] mean, if you have a traditionally raised two $3
[31:39] billion and all of a sudden you have $78 billion that you raise
[31:41] in the next fund, how can you actually manage the capital?
[31:45] And just to the last point is everyone, everyone on paper is
[31:49] great. The TVPIS are great.
[31:51] The DP is, are, which were the, the issues.
[31:54] And hopefully this year and it's as investors, we always say next
[31:58] year or next year and hopefully this year is when the market's
[32:02] going to open up for IPO to happen.
[32:04] And you've heard SpaceX is already having the churches of
[32:09] going IPO. So is open AI and Anthropic.
[32:13] And that will be the the telltale sign of how this whole
[32:19] AI infrastructure, AI ecosystem is actually going to be valued
[32:24] by the broader investment class from retailers to to merchant
[32:29] banks to, of course, LP's like me.
[32:33] Absolutely, Yeah, That'll be quite interesting to watch.
[32:36] And on the direct side as well, you have made some amazing
[32:38] birds. Anthropic ways to take one
[32:42] particular interesting and hot case study, let's say Anthropic,
[32:46] one of the biggest names in AI competing directly against open
[32:49] AI. You got in at from what we
[32:53] learned from from a previous call is that you got in at $18
[32:57] billion valuation, right. And that's from even someone
[33:01] who's investing into venture, that's still a massive valuation
[33:04] to get in right the entry point. So how easy or hard was it for
[33:09] you for you to write that check and what were you expecting out
[33:12] of it? So first one, I like it when you
[33:15] say write a check because no one writes a check anymore.
[33:17] That's still a good thing. You're a young guy, man, that I
[33:23] like it. Yeah, it was it, it was nerve
[33:27] racking that I think that's the right way to put it because
[33:30] there's no comps to where AI is going to, right.
[33:36] And the way I looked at it is because the last two generations
[33:39] of of technology that has been moving the market has been
[33:42] crypto, which was the previous generation was two years ago,
[33:46] three years ago. Plus, don't forget that it was
[33:49] crypto, right? You could buy on the Sandbox, a
[33:52] property next to Snoop Dogg on the Sandbox.
[33:54] It was like crazy. All right, now it's AI.
[33:58] But the difference I always said in my mind is the difference
[34:02] between crypto and AI is you're not changing behaviour, right?
[34:06] Meaning you're still Googling it.
[34:08] In this case, you're clotting it, you're and dropping it.
[34:11] You're whatever in it. So you're not changing consumer
[34:14] behaviour, correct? Like, for instance, in my wallet
[34:17] by chance, I have my wallet here.
[34:19] I have 20 bucks. I actually have a dollar.
[34:21] That's all the cash I have. And I have a bunch of credit
[34:24] cards, right? It's a credit card business in
[34:26] the United States. And now you, how is the
[34:29] transaction in crypto actually going to happen to the point
[34:33] when you can make normal transactions?
[34:38] Buying a coffee at Starbucks, buying a lunch at your local
[34:42] lunch place, That's when this is eventually going to be big.
[34:47] And I think Apple's going to lead that way with the Apple
[34:49] Wallet and Apple Pay and things to that effect.
[34:51] But that's a side thing. So coming back to your question,
[34:55] it was not necessarily nerve racking.
[35:00] I got Anthropic through Lightspeed and the they're
[35:05] writing a much bigger, bigger check.
[35:08] I think they wrote a $500 million check in into into
[35:12] Anthropic at the $18 billion evaluation.
[35:14] Relatively my check is small than 500 million.
[35:18] So at the end of the day, it's a great investment opportunity
[35:22] with a high growth company. So the conviction was a big VCs
[35:26] leading it. Second thing, it was a high
[35:28] growth company. 3rd is that the team, I had a chance to speak to
[35:32] the team, they're kick ass. They knew their stuff and I've
[35:36] always asked the question to VCs because they always ask me, they
[35:41] have conviction over the entrepreneurs.
[35:43] I'm like, what does that mean? What is conviction?
[35:46] They haven't made you money money.
[35:47] So how does that mean? It's just, it's just a bunch of
[35:50] smart guys who knew how to make business, get business off the
[35:54] ground. And the growth rate that they
[35:56] were growing at was was crazy. So don't forget, I come at
[35:59] Series B and beyond. So I think this is a serious C
[36:01] or series D round that I first came in and and they're already
[36:05] a business. They're already growing, right?
[36:07] So first year of revenue, they did, I think about 100 million
[36:10] in revenue and that was the second year of existence.
[36:13] Third year they did 9 billion, I'm sorry, 30.
[36:17] A second year they did 1 billion.
[36:19] Third year they did 9 billion. And then I was in a call with
[36:22] some folks from General Catalyst and they're saying they're on a
[36:24] runway to do 30 billion this year.
[36:28] And this thing that happened with the government of United
[36:30] States was actually not a bad thing for Anthropic because
[36:34] they're part of this much more kick ass right now than anything
[36:37] else in the market. They're much more comprehensive
[36:40] in terms of the, the, the, the results and it's, it's just I
[36:47] think a better product than the competition which is, which is
[36:50] out there right now. So it was interesting, but I'm
[36:53] happy that I made it so. Yeah, absolutely.
[36:56] I think 2 incredible points there.
[36:58] One is that he made about crypto versus AI and why crypto didn't
[37:03] cast the kind of fire that AI has caught and that behavioral
[37:07] change. I think that's a very crucial
[37:09] point. I've been thinking about the
[37:10] same for quite some time now. Why did crypto not go as big and
[37:14] guys the imagination of people as AI did and so quickly and,
[37:17] and I think it boils down to behavioral change.
[37:20] I think AI was just amplifying what people were already doing
[37:24] and making it easier. Was this crypto needed a, a
[37:27] basic fundamental level of behavioral change and at some
[37:31] level infrastructure change as well.
[37:32] So that's very interesting. And the other point you
[37:35] mentioned. Just just one point.
[37:37] The behavioral is just a mindset, right?
[37:39] So this takes me when you just mentioned this, I remember I was
[37:42] living in India about 10 years ago in Flipkart or maybe more
[37:45] than 10 years ago when Flipkart just started its massive run.
[37:49] And the biggest challenge everyone was telling me when I
[37:51] was living in India is how do we, how can we pay for this on
[37:56] our credit card? What's going to happen?
[37:57] The security and all that stuff. And the same thing happened in
[38:00] the United States in the late 1990s.
[38:01] When people are saying what I can buy shoes I can buy books, I
[38:05] can buy whatever, how does it work?
[38:07] So it just takes a comfort feeling and crypto is eventually
[38:11] going to get there. It is going to get there.
[38:13] But when it's going to get there, I, I don't know, but I
[38:16] think the big complexity of it's going to be is when you can make
[38:20] normal daily transactions like your credit card with your
[38:26] crypto. So instead of your Apple Pay
[38:28] being connected to either your Apple credit card or your bank
[38:32] or what are the cases, you are connected to your your crypto
[38:36] wallet, whatever that is. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
[38:39] I completely agree. Yeah.
[38:41] And on the Anthropic side as well, you mentioned a very
[38:44] important point about the thing that happened with the US
[38:47] government on the defense deal. And we actually did a dedicated
[38:52] video on that, how that was actually a net positive for
[38:55] Anthropic because users actually searched after that drastically
[38:59] immediately. It's quite the contrast for open
[39:03] AI because it it actually built more trust into Anthropic as a
[39:06] platform versus open AI. So that was a good win for them.
[39:10] So once you gotta, you gotta, you gotta make sure that your
[39:13] viewers know is that, yeah, first mover advantage in
[39:17] technology is not an advantage, right?
[39:24] So yeah, absolutely. But just look at search.
[39:29] When Internet started. When?
[39:31] Well, not when Internet started, but when the Internet revolution
[39:34] happened, the late 1990s, there was like 10 search companies
[39:38] that were public. You had Excite, you had go, you
[39:40] had go do. You had Magellan, you had Lycos,
[39:44] you had Yahoo, you had all of these fun searches which are
[39:48] there. Guess what?
[39:49] None of them are in existence today.
[39:51] There's only one firm Google, right?
[39:55] And Google was the last party, a less to the party.
[39:57] And then there's a famous thing about Apple.
[39:59] Apple is never first to market, but it's best to market, right?
[40:04] So for your viewers, we have to be especially our viewers in
[40:07] India who are entrepreneurs. We got to figure out that don't
[40:10] worry about in terms of the first to market, figure out the
[40:13] best product that resonates in people's mind either do consumer
[40:17] side or on the on the on the enterprise side from that
[40:20] perspective, so. Yeah, absolutely.
[40:23] That's quite important. And let's talk about DPI
[40:25] timelines. They have stressed considerably
[40:27] across the industry. How has that changed the way you
[40:30] think about pacing and deployment?
[40:32] We don't talk about that, man. I don't know what DPI stands for
[40:39] anymore, so I was kidding around.
[40:46] On paper I'm worth a lot, but on rally I only have the dollar in
[40:50] my bank, in my in my wallet. Which I just told everyone.
[40:56] Yeah. Don't reach out to Vishal right
[40:58] now, he only has a dollar to give.
[41:03] So I think so. So again, going back to
[41:07] concentration, man, it's one of these big companies have to go
[41:13] out and once they go out there, there has to be a sustainability
[41:18] from the perspective of the market and market from the
[41:21] perspective pricing. So what I'm thinking, let me
[41:24] tell you what I'm thinking about when I say that is either be it,
[41:29] open the eye, Anthropic, SpaceX, whatever the big companies you
[41:33] want to. So right now, what is it, you
[41:36] know, Oh, by the way, I think I coined this phrase, megacorns
[41:39] companies that are over $100 billion.
[41:41] So all these megacorns are going IPO, right?
[41:45] Supposedly, right. Your anthropics over 700
[41:47] billion, hopefully in the next round your open EI, maybe over a
[41:50] trillion dollars in the IPO. SpaceX, which is now it's like
[41:56] slowly creeping up. First they said three months ago
[41:59] it's going to be a 1.25 trillion.
[42:01] A few weeks ago it was supposed to be 1.5 trillion.
[42:04] A few weeks later it was 1.7 trillion.
[42:06] Now they're talking about $2 trillion of an IPO and they're
[42:09] going to raise I think 100 billion because they have got
[42:12] over $200 billion worth of interest just in the IPO, which
[42:16] is, if you think about it's, it's, it's staggering, it's mind
[42:19] blowing. But again, these generational
[42:23] companies, these generational founders, either be a Tesla or
[42:27] you have a Meta or you have a Google.
[42:30] What I was saying I was thinking was the stock always plummets
[42:33] the first few weeks of an IPO. That's when the the river hits
[42:39] the road in terms of from the perspective of how do they
[42:42] recover from the perspective of their stock.
[42:46] What happens I think in the, in those time when the market is
[42:48] going down and then eventually going up, the industry, the
[42:51] market, the market meters, the consumers, the retailers,
[42:55] whatever the case is, they're trying to understand what is
[42:57] this really a product, what this really market?
[43:00] How can they really grasp the growth?
[43:03] Same thing what happened with Amazon, right in the initial
[43:06] stage of these 3-4 companies that went public, the the
[43:10] industry, the the market makers, they had to understand what
[43:14] really the cost was, what the pricing is, what the, what the,
[43:19] what the margins are. Same thing what's happening with
[43:21] Oracle stock today, right? Oracle stock is in the doldrums
[43:24] that hit 340. Now it's 140.
[43:26] The reason is they have not been able to tell the Street
[43:30] perfectly what are the margins that the company is going to get
[43:33] for them, even though Oracle is a publicly traded company.
[43:37] And if you remember about a year ago or less than a year ago, the
[43:39] stock went from 2:40 to $100. After they were they released
[43:43] that their RPA was $550 billion. But that's good, $550 billion is
[43:48] your RPA. But the problem is to get to the
[43:50] recurring revenue, you have to spend 180 billion.
[43:54] So I'm trying to make that kind of from a perspective of
[43:56] understanding from an Anthropic or an open EI, because no one
[43:59] knows that. No one knows their numbers.
[44:04] I don't even know if the board members know their numbers.
[44:07] So what their growth is great. And today Corviv's CEO was on on
[44:15] CNBC today and he was talking about the question was when are
[44:20] you going to be profitable? He's like, we are reinvesting
[44:23] every dollar that we have back into the business because to
[44:27] sustain the growth that they have.
[44:29] So it's an offshoot. Do you want to growth or do you
[44:31] want profitability? And that's what all tech
[44:33] companies are all about. We absolutely, completely agree.
[44:37] And on the AI space, you know, AI is consuming a significant
[44:41] share of capital across the ecosystem.
[44:43] At what point does conviction in a thesis become overexposure and
[44:47] how do you think about that? That is a great question, but
[44:53] don't forget this. What's happening today in the AI
[44:56] market happened in the in every generational change industry in
[45:02] tech since I've been in this business for 30 years, right?
[45:07] Going back when, when, when Internet came, there's so many
[45:10] money when I went into the, the Amazons of that generation,
[45:16] right? The Googles, we just talked
[45:17] about the Googles of that generations.
[45:19] We had a public companies that were search companies, but
[45:23] there's only one that succeeded and that's what's going to
[45:25] happen. So you've heard of the Open Eyes
[45:28] and Anthropics, but guess what? There's probably another 100
[45:31] companies that were doing large language maritals.
[45:33] And do you know why we haven't heard of them?
[45:35] Because they're no longer alive. They're probably no longer
[45:38] there, right? So and, and, and venture dollars
[45:41] have gone into that. So the business of venture
[45:44] capital is very simple. You bet on the best teams, you
[45:48] bet on multiple best teams and you back the team that is
[45:52] growing the fastest. And that's what's happening
[45:54] today. The numbers have changed, right?
[45:59] It's unprecedented. When a private companies raised
[46:01] 130 billion, that was opening I which is mind blowing, right?
[46:06] I mean, $10 billion was raised by data bricks in February,
[46:10] right after that, everyone's like, Oh my God, that's such a
[46:12] large money. Then Anthropic announced the 30
[46:14] billion and then open air announced 120 billion, 130
[46:17] billion, whatever the number of money it was.
[46:19] So I, I, I think what happened will, what will happen if
[46:25] history repeats itself, there's going to be 1 winner second
[46:31] lager. The rest are going to pass away.
[46:34] And that's what's been going on. And to that point, and just to
[46:38] conclude to your, to, to your question is once the growth
[46:43] rates plateaus, then the venture community has to find new areas
[46:47] to reinvest, which they are already.
[46:49] Don't forget, AI has been around since the 1960s and 1970s,
[46:53] correct? So what happens is going back to
[46:58] economics one O 1. So I have to show you my, I'm in
[47:01] a Business School industry in Chicago.
[47:02] So I have to tell you what I learned at least is that's
[47:06] probably the only thing I learned is there has to be a
[47:08] shock to the economy to change behavior.
[47:13] The shock to the economy was Microsoft's investment of $10
[47:16] billion, I think what was in N23 or N22 into open AI and all of a
[47:22] sudden the floodgate opened for these investments to go into
[47:24] that. And there has been investments a
[47:26] lot of a lot of investments in AI.
[47:28] If you kind of think about it, Siri that was sold I think to
[47:31] Apple. What was it 2012 two, 1011 was
[47:35] the first vintage for lack of words of taking a crack at the
[47:40] AI evolution that eventually is today.
[47:43] So, and so to conclude your, your question, it's bunch of
[47:49] companies are going to be started, one or two companies
[47:51] are going to be successful and then the rest is the and then
[47:55] and that's the question, how do you get your money into an
[47:58] anthropic or into an open AI? Yeah, absolutely.
[48:02] And you know, I love your approach across venture.
[48:07] You know, it's a very sophisticated approach.
[48:09] Rarely do I find a family office taking such a sophisticated
[48:12] approach to venture and having such strong relationships.
[48:15] But kudos to you, but would love to learn more about the other
[48:19] asset classes and your approach to them as well.
[48:21] A little bit or just an overview, What are the
[48:24] percentages allocated to, let's say, fixed income or maybe
[48:27] public markets in your in your entire portfolio?
[48:30] And to dive deeper into public markets, are you there again
[48:34] focused on the tech stocks or are you diversified within your
[48:37] public equities? So.
[48:39] So let me tell you another story since I like telling stories and
[48:42] the reason why we started a family office.
[48:44] What is a family office? A family office is nothing, but
[48:47] one person in the family made a shit load of money and our job
[48:51] is not to lose it, right? So we hired a bunch of people
[48:53] from outside to manage the capital to make sure that we
[48:56] invest wisely, not from an Angel perspective, but wisely.
[49:00] So currently our portfolio is about 70% in the public markets,
[49:03] 30% of the private markets. We talked about the private
[49:05] side. On the public side, it's all
[49:07] tech. So I would say about 90% is
[49:09] tech. We have some income generating
[49:12] stocks which are more dividends than anything else.
[49:14] We have made some investments also into funds that are venture
[49:18] debt that gets us some some some revenue on a on an annual basis.
[49:24] But majority of it is on the high risk stocks even on the on
[49:29] the on the on the on the public market side.
[49:33] And that's one thing why we started our family office,
[49:36] right, is because we parked our money initially with a Goldman
[49:40] and A and a Morgan Stanley and great, great banks, great
[49:43] private wealth managers. But they have their own
[49:48] restrictions of whatever compliance has approved, right.
[49:52] So to your .10% in income generating 10% in commodities,
[49:56] 20% in bonds and whatever their, their portfolios tells you what
[50:00] to do, they're not there to, they're there to conserve
[50:05] capital and make you a good chunk of more capital, but
[50:07] they're not there to invest into high risk, high return asset
[50:12] classes. Now they're doing that because
[50:14] they're the company. They're, I'm sure they're,
[50:16] they're, they're the clients have asked them to do this.
[50:20] So a big fund will go to a more Goldman Sachs and say, hey,
[50:24] here's a whatever, take a #100 million, two, $100 million
[50:27] allocation that I can give to you that you can raise money
[50:29] from your private clients themselves.
[50:33] So, and so that's the reason why we started our family office in
[50:36] the late 1990s, early 2000s is because to put money into the
[50:39] high risk, high asset and those are what we feel comfortable
[50:43] with, right? So West Coast family offices are
[50:47] very different than Midwest family office that are very
[50:49] different than East Coast family offices, right?
[50:52] I would have, I just mentioned I went to Business School,
[50:53] University of Chicago. So I was talking those two years
[50:56] I was there, I talked to all those private equity firms.
[50:59] I'm like, OK, guys, what stocks are you in?
[51:00] What, what, what, what companies are you investing to?
[51:03] Because I was thinking my mindset was tech like, oh, we
[51:07] shall we invest into the largest, we just bought over the
[51:09] largest Mexican frozen food company.
[51:14] What what is that? But they're, they're, they're,
[51:17] they're, they're spitting out so much free cash flow.
[51:21] So that's their business, right? What is private equity?
[51:24] They take a cash cow, lever it on tax basis, increase it, clean
[51:30] up the gut of it, and then eventually sell it back to
[51:33] someone else or, or take it public.
[51:36] So that was an eye opener in terms of from the perspective of
[51:39] different businesses. And but those businesses are
[51:42] real cash cows, right? I have another friend whose
[51:46] father was at one point the chairman of McDonald's.
[51:50] He had the largest paper company and it was just bought over by
[51:54] private equity. And again, I was because my
[51:57] mindset is technology, I've been ingrown in Silicon Valley where
[52:00] every business, every entrepreneur is a technologist
[52:05] is building the next generation Google, which is not the case.
[52:08] So, so to, to, just to, to summarize your, your, your,
[52:11] your, your question is that we have the remaining portfolio is
[52:18] mostly on the public sites. So when the dip happens, we
[52:22] continues to buy. So we're buying more and on the
[52:26] cash side, we try to keep less than 10% cash in our portfolio
[52:31] just for like when the dips happened today or in the last
[52:33] few weeks is to continuously buy and we nibble on the public
[52:37] markets, so. Yeah, yeah.
[52:39] That's. Definitely that I have in my
[52:41] wallet so. Yeah, that, that you keep with
[52:45] you, right. That's that's the ultra safe
[52:47] investment in in your wallet, right one.
[52:51] Awesome, lovely. It's been great talking to you,
[52:54] Vishal. And I think our listeners would
[52:57] have learned a turn from this conversation, especially on the
[52:59] venture side. I think you're the OGLP who has
[53:02] seen all these different vintages and knows how to get
[53:06] into the big ones and also sustain through them and
[53:08] maintain those relationships. Loved it.
[53:10] Thanks so much for coming on. I wish you happy allocating
[53:12] going ahead. Thank you Prashant, talk to you
[53:15] soon. Awesome.

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