How I Invest with David Weisburd - E7: Samir Kaji | Founder and CEO of Allocate on How the Top 5% of LP’s Invest in VC

Episode Date: August 28, 2023

David Weisburd and Erik Torenberg sit down with Samir Kaji, the co-founder and CEO of Allocate. In this episode, they talk about what differentiates truly elite emerging managers, what VCs get wrong in portfolio construction, what fees VCs are charging today, and his predictions about where the venture ecosystem is going by 2025. If you’re ready to level-up your startup or fund with AngelList, visit https://www.angellist.com/tlp to get started.

The first 10 minutes are where you can create positive bias by listening, understanding who they are, what they care about, what their objective is. If an LP or a family office may meet 30 managers over the course of a quarter, well, to stand out, you can't just pitch the same thing over and over. Here's my marks and here's all the great companies and here's the value I add. You have to build a rapport with the underlying person because it is going to be a long-term partnership. Good afternoon, Samir. Samir Khaji, founder and CEO of Allocate. I looked up actually when we first met each other. It was roughly eight years ago to the day when you were at FRB

and I was a newly minted solo GP. So it's great to connect and welcome to the Limited Partner Podcast. Thanks for having me, guys. So for people who aren't familiar with your background, maybe you could talk a little about how you went from SVB, First Republic, and now to be founder and CEO of Allocate. I was born in Canada, moved around the US. My dad was a commercial real estate developer.

He actually started his own company. So worked with somebody that was very much the entrepreneur and got a job in September of 99, actually lending to companies during what ended up being the tail end of the dot-com bubble to working directly with fund managers in 2009. And so around that time, started seeing this change in the venture market. So away from being a monolith where it was just Sequoia, Lightspeed, Excel, to a lot of emerging managers.

You guys might remember some of the folks early on were like Mike Maples, Iden Sunkett, Jeff Clavier. And for me, a lot of those people felt like entrepreneurs that were just happening to write checks versus code. And so I really saw this change in the venture ecosystem, really wanted to build around it, joined First Republic Bank in June of 2012 to really start a group focused on the venture managers, particularly emerging. Spent about eight years there, worked with about 700 managers you know our first couple clients there were actually what now is 8vc and then forerunner ventures when kirsten first started her fund

one of the things that we observed during those 10 years was that venture capital as an as a category which has such wide dispersion from top quartile to bottom it was really advantage toward the institutions institutions have their resources they had the check sizes they had the ability to build well-crafted portfolios individuals really didn't have that and so our belief was that you know private markets not only are getting bigger but the participation within the private wealth sector is going to get bigger so allocate was founded on this premise that private markets should be more accessible, transparent, and then ultimately liquid. You mentioned Kirsten Green from Forerunner and of course AVC, which was started by Joe Lonsdale. At some point,

they were emerging managers. What separated them from the pack? Kirsten, if you look at her, look at her background, what she did before, she realized, she had this great observation that so many of these commerce companies the actual spend is coming from females not males yet many of the people that were investing in these companies were actually males and her view was no we have a different lens in terms of how to evaluate these companies understand what the trends are and she built a firm around that and one thing that stood out to me early on is she didn't ever think about just raising a fund. It was always this long-term, this is a multi-decade endeavor that we're going to.

This is how we're going to build it. This is what we care about. This is our true north. And those are things that were very clear early on when talking to folks like Joe and Kristen. You mentioned self-awareness and thinking about it in a multi decade perspective. If you could communicate to emerging managers that maybe are not on the same level of Kirsten and Joe and you weren't worried about offending them, what would you tell them?

It's a great question is why are you doing this? Most of the people that are starting these funds have actually plenty of other opportunities. The opportunity cost is high when you start a fund you should be signed up for a multi-decade career you know you raise three funds you are going to be running those funds for what likely will be 15 or 20 years and so why are you doing this do you understand the opportunity cost? Do you understand the fact that this is a very long feedback cycle? It's hard to even know whether you're really good for seven to 10 years. And even then, you can be humbled very quickly. And so the thing that we tell people is understand

why you're doing this. Are you really passionate about being an investor and actually creating a long-term franchise? And are you self-aware to know where you can play you know today there's effectively 4 000 active VC funds in the US alone 2600 that have come to market since 2010. so where do you fit in and do you have some kind of unique comparative advantage that you can press on over and over again. So what do you think are compelling, comparative advantages and ones that maybe people might think are compelling, but actually not quite compelling to help ease perhaps? So what's not compelling is differentiation for the sake of differentiation, meaning that I want to invest in Web3 or AI because I think it's cool. It has a huge TAM and I know a lot of people.

That in itself is not differentiated. When you think about a venture fund, ultimately what you're looking at is what are you doing in four areas? Sourcing, picking, winning, and then ultimately portfolio management. So when we look at those things, how do you give yourself the fourth one to me is table stakes, like you should know when to do follow ons. And, you know, when maybe to take chips off the table, those are things that you should know. But the first three all come down to, are you doing something in a way that gives you a higher probability of success,

because you have differentiated a great example of differentiation is someone like Kirsten Green, I know we just talked about her, but going back, or somebody that has built an incredible network that allows them to see deals that other people can't, or has a deep domain expertise scenario. So if you tell me you're investing in AI, but then I look at your background and nothing maps back to either AI expertise,

AI networks or networks of founders, or anything that shows me that not only do you understand what you're doing, but you have a real comparative advantage. So to me, it's meaningful differentiation that has to do with what do you have about you or your team that gives you a better shot at sourcing, winning, and picking? And it could be a lot of things. It could be a brand. I'd look at someone like Tomas Tungas, who left Redpoint to start TheoryVentures, raised 230 or so for his first fund. But Tomas has been doing SaaS for a long time. Enterprise has shown himself to really understand the space, very public about how he thinks about the space. He has a newsletter that has hundreds of thousands,

if not millions of impressions. So he's built an interesting moat from a brand reputation and domain expertise side. That's meaningful. You mentioned Tomas, a great investor, a fellow Dartmouth grad, and he has access to so many opportunities. You mentioned picking and also winning.

Is VC a game of being contrarian, being right when other people are wrong, or is it a game of access? So I think people generally think at the seed level, you can't pick. I don't know that I believe in that. I think actually people have shown to be themselves as really good pickers at that stage. But usually when they really understand something, whether it's a domain that they really understand, it's founders or they have some kind of mental model. But in order to pick, you still have to see the right opportunities.

So I do believe that seeing opportunities is incredibly important. And you have to find an opportunity to get in front of the right founders pretty consistently. And so these things aren't mutually exclusive, but i do think that you have that to have a network to be able to see the opportunities for you to then pick with a high level of quality that doesn't mean you're doing things that are consensus though that's why tomas actually has been successful because he puts his thoughts out there founders will self-select in and out if they like what he has to say they may come to him and it may be somebody

that hasn't even talked to any other vcs where tomas can have a conversation make a contrarian bet and the way i look at vc you want to be in that quadrant where you're right and where other people aren't looking you know when things are you know where everybody's investing prices go up competition goes up it just becomes harder to make money. But going back to your question, access first, and then you have to be able to pick from, you know, this curated list, you don't need to see every deal, but you need to see the deals that fit your thesis. I was watching a podcast by Jason Lemkin. I think another thing is knowing what is one of your deals and having a prepared mind for exactly what you're

looking for and being disciplined. I think this entire thing about not caring about valuation is a nonsense argument, which we could delve into deeper as well. There's a view that, you know, it's all power law driven. And if you get into the right company, you ride the rocket ship, other people are more valuation sensitive. What are your views on this? So I think valuation does matter you know ultimately it's pure math and you know at the early stages of investing you don't know which company is going to be the outlier i don't know you know like people didn't know figmo is going to be figma or stripe is going to be stripe at that cedar you know pre-seed round ultimately

you have to have some kind of discipline i i think the key though is great VCs are not completely dogmatic and they understand there are going to be exceptions they have to make when it comes to valuation or they have high conviction and they're willing to take it now you don't want to build a portfolio full of those exceptions because that becomes your business model but you investing in a 10 million versus a 20 million post at a 20 million post you're actually reducing your return on that particular investment by 2x and there's no way getting around the math and during the time of 2012 to 2021 it seemed like it didn't matter because in 2021 you had 787 unicorns a minute so it felt like everything went to the moon of course that belies what is

really possible in terms of exits so yeah you do I I actually do believe valuation matters at every single stage but you just need to know where when to make exceptions absolutely I think the lack of dogma is the best dogma for for VC so pivoting a little bit into allocate so I'm a very happy investor I was in the first round. But do we really need another investment platform? Isn't there enough people tackling this space? Why does Allocate exist? I don't think there's enough people tackling the space.

So if you think about the size of the innovation sector, tech, life sciences, it's grown. Today, it drives 22% of GDP and growing. A lot of that value is happening in the private market. So things that used to be happening in the private market so things that used to be had in the public markets Amazon went public three years after founding we just don't see that now the time to exit is 8 10 12 and sometimes even longer however if you look at the average investor that wants to invest in the innovation sector on the private side there's a

lot of adverse selection. And adverse selection is usually driven by network relationships, check sizing. And then ultimately, you know, one of the pain points I've always had is, well, I'm not really just investing in one off funds, but I want to build a portfolio that's well diversified across time, that's well diversified across manager types, across co-investments so ultimately the way we look at the world is not only are we you know a platform that allows people to invest in the highest quality opportunities but to do so in the way that's personalized to their own objectives and that to me has been missing uh within the wealth management world. And there are people that have tried to tackle parts of this. iCapital has done a great job, I think, on the private equity side, maybe someone

like Case on the hedge. But venture now is a mainstream product that is of significant scale, especially now that people define venture as anything from pre-seed to pre-IPO and everything in between. So our view is venture is making that transition into mass finance but the infrastructure tools are still not there for the private wealth sector samir can you trace the evolution of uh how you've navigated the idmas with with allocate in terms of what are the actual product of products that you've decided to offer? Yeah. So in the early days, when we first started, our whole concept was, you know, this concept of democratization, uh, how do you allow more people to participate in, and that remains one of our three pillars I mentioned accessibility.

Over time, what we realized is there's much more to investing in the private markets education. So we do about 50 events, webinars per year, just to educate limited partners that are emerging that want to invest in the space. Second is portfolio construction. How do you think about portfolio construction? Well, a lot of the tools that we're building around portfolio modeling. So I have X amount of funds that I already have in my portfolio.

What does that mean for where I am from a cash flow standpoint what are my cash flows going to look like where do i have gaps in my portfolio after i invest you guys know this really well you know you get these quarterly reports that come from different fund admins now i have to pull down from 10 different sites then i have to take that information put an excel spreadsheet to be able to track how much i've funded how much i have left what is my dpi ir i don't really have a good sense of which portfolio companies unless they spend a lot of time so a lot of what we spent over the last year is building those portfolio management tools to give people visibility and transparency into their portfolio so they can make smarter investment decisions. So that's been real, the real big evolution. The one thing that I'm excited about, about the future of the private markets is actually the third pillar, which is liquidity. How do you get better liquidity

from your illiquid investments? Meaning that Eric or David, you invest in a fund. Do you really want to be stuck for 16 years? Hey, we'll continue our interview in a moment after a word from our sponsors. The Limited Partner Podcast is proudly sponsored by AngelList. If you're a founder investor, you'll know AngelList builds software that powers the startup economy. AngelList has recently rolled out a suite of new software products for venture capital and private equity that are truly game-changing. They digitize and automate all the manual processes that you struggle with in traditional fundraising and operating workflows, while providing real-time insights for funds at any stage, connecting seamlessly with any back office provider. If you're in private markets,

you'll love AngelList's new suite of software products. And for private companies, thousands of startups from $4 million to $4 billion evaluation have switched to AngelList for cap table management. It's a modern, intelligent equity management platform that offers equity Or what if there's an opportunity that you can now borrow against your liquid stakes um you don't have to sell but you can borrow against them to make you know to do whatever you need or make another investment or sell in a secondary in a more efficient way. You guys know the secondary market is opaque. It's incredibly inefficient. So we are looking at creating this end-to-end stack from deal discovery all the way to portfolio management. I think liquidity is really critical. And it's something that third and fourth time

LPs are aware of that first time LPs oftentimes miss. In terms of, you mentioned all these tools and IDMAs, to Eric's question, who is your customer profile? Who is your typical customer? Who do you guys build for? It's a great question. So there's two types of clients that we go after and we work with. One is when we work directly with clients,

which is our direct to consumer model. That is really focused on family offices, U.S. primarily, but we have some global, as well as ultra-high-end individuals. These are the folks that typically are qualified to invest in some of the funds that are brought on the platform. The second is working with the independent wealth advisors. So these advisors could be private banks. It could be your independent wealth advisor

that's managing money on behalf of the family offices or in ultra high net worth. And for them, they have a great picture of their clients overall portfolio, public equities, fixed income, and we offer them the ability to onboard venture in a responsible, vetted way to their clients. And so those are the two areas we focus on right now. So, and in terms of this, and I know you'll probably say it depends, but I'm gonna put a gun to your head and make you answer this question.

If you have a typical customer, let's say he has 50 to $200 million in wealth, what percentage would you advise him to put into venture assuming he has no immediate liquidity needs? How would you allocate that venture portfolio among the different strategies and different funds? So the fact that you said you're going to put a gun to my head, because I was going to say it depends because it really does, as you know, depends on the individual.

But let's say somebody that has a hundred million dollars that has done nothing in the private markets, starting afresh. I mean, the first thing obviously is understanding what they want to do, what their return hurdles are, do they have any need for liquidity what their opportunity costs are but let's say all of those things we've figured out generally speaking venture if you look at of that size it's about 10 to 12 percent of a person's portfolio that doesn't mean you know from a commitment standpoint you're typically looking at that as net asset value of your overall portfolio obviously Obviously, you don't want to invest all of it in one day. So that person that has 100 million, they're not going to put 10 million into one VC fund today and call it a day. What we

would advise is you would build that portfolio typically over a three to five year period, and then have a mix of different type of funds. The reason you build it over three to five, you want some vintage year diversification. And ultimately the holy grail in venture fund investing is for it to self-fund itself eventually, meaning that as you make your new commitments in years five, six, and seven, they start to self-fund from the distributions

of the funds you invested in years one and two. And then you kind of become a steady state. And if you do that uh you will you can get the returns that the institutions get and be able to sell fund from a portfolio standpoint it is super important I'm glad you asked the question because Venture today is not this monolithic it's not like I invested in insight and that's the same as investing in a pre-seed 30 million million fund. These are two different type of risk return profiles. And venture, to me, is now a combination of different sub-asset

categories. So if somebody is looking for true venture, to me, that's kind of pre-seed, seed, maybe series A. And then as you go down the stack, it becomes more growth and PE. So even some of the large funds, people say, well, I don't want to invest in large fund because it's 2 billion. I can never get a three or four X. Well, that's not really the model for those bigger funds because maybe they do 25 to 35% in first checks and the rest is for following. And so a lot of the later checks are B, C and D rounds with shorter time to liquidity, less risk. And so a lot of the later checks are B, C and D rounds, with shorter time to liquidity, less risk. And in many cases, you're not looking for, you know, 4x on those funds, a two to two and a half x is, is a more normalized return. But the risk profile is different.

Whereas the pre seed, you know, typically, when we underwrite, we are looking, can we get a 4x net to our investors for any, you know, small seed fund we do,write we are looking can we get a 4x net to our investors for any you know small seed fund we do because we are taking more risk you know there's liquidation preferences that we have to think about as you know as their portfolio continues to raise more capital they're investing very early these are smaller funds and so we look at that as your Alpha and then as you get bigger and bigger funds that's your qualified beta and we think that some split between those and that's that really does depend on the investors overall objectives within the the asset class in terms of returns and

overall risk they're willing to take you mentioned kind of liquidity self-funding i think those are important things i think a lot of people should look up QSBS and the incredible tax advantage, both federal and state, and the rollover function on QSBS. Disclaimer, not financial or CPA advice. In terms of those top managers, you talked about getting a 4X. We all know how rare that is.

Let's talk about market today. It's Q3 2023. What are the top managers? What are they dictating in terms of emerging managers in terms of uh management fees and carry management fees have kind of stayed around the same so two percent blended over the years i mean sometimes they start off at two and a half percent but post investment period oftentimes they'll stair step down right maybe it's a you know 25 basis points a year,

and it kind of blends down to 2 to 2.2%. Carry has been something that has gone up over the last several years. Now we're starting to see some change, but during 2017 to 2021, what we saw is two things. On the carry side, we saw increased carry, sometimes starting from 1x 25 or 30 percent and we even saw a lot of emerging managers do tiered carry meaning that it's 20 but once you

hit a 3x it goes to 20 for 25 and then it goes out over 5x it might be 30 and the question we ask is okay well if you hit these hurdles is there a catch-up? Meaning that if I hit a 5.2x, which LPs would be happy with, does the 30% then apply all the way back to the 1x? And then, you know, what is the net return? So we saw a lot of that. We're not seeing that as much anymore. I mean, fundraising is incredibly, incredibly difficult. The other thing we saw during the bull run, the extreme bull run, was emerging managers stapling on opportunity funds and doing a lot of SPVs. So it was a way to build AUM. Some of those will do fine, but I think, again, going back to the self-awareness,

do you really have the ability and the domain expertise to actually be able to do growth stage investing, or is it just lazy follow-ons? And so I'd say right now, carry is getting pushed back. Opportunity funds definitely are not in vogue, unless you are a small percentage of funds where you've shown the ability to be a great fiduciary partner over a long period of time. So if I'm understanding you correctly,

the 2% blended is still market today so what fund size is that uh acceptable by the lp community today so two percent management fee i mean i feel like that's now become almost a road and i'm not seeing anybody go below two percent in terms of managed fee i think there's a few exceptions here or there but you know ultimately two percent it's more on the carry side that we're starting to see a little bit more friendliness to the LPs. And certainly with the, the stapling of other products, many people have unstapled or simply not raised an opportunity fund in this environment.

When you say staple, is that a dollar for dollar allocation among the seed fund, the opportunity fund? Yeah. You know, a seed fund raises, and sometimes the opportunity funds are bigger than the core so somebody raises an 80 million dollar core fund and raises 120 for an opportunity fund the opportunity fund usually comes with lower economics just to be clear typically it's like one percent maybe ten percent uh and sometimes that one percent is on invested capital not committed but ultimately this stapling means for every $2 I put in, let's say $0.80 goes toward the seed fund,

and then $1.20 goes to the opportunity fund, which is pro rata between the two opportunities. And then, of course, follow-on in the seed fund or no follow-on on the seed fund? So they do have follow-on on the seed fund. So typically, the follow-on in the seed fund is Series A, and then anything Series B-plus goes in the opportunity fund is series A, and then anything series B plus goes in the opportunity fund or through an SPV. Well, that's a good lifestyle. A lot of VCs were

living last couple of years. That's great. Good for them. In terms of looking in the venture landscape, obviously we have somewhat of a trough in 2023. Where do you see things going in 2025? Will there be a shakeout well there'll be new emerging managers how do you look at it from a holistic macro perspective well i mean if you look at it historically during these times of course capital going into funds has decreased dramatically in 2009 about 16 billion was raised by vcs you, first half of this year, about 33 billion, typically concentrated with the bigger managers. So this is the hardest fundraising environment I've seen in 14 years, and maybe in my entire career in terms of raising a fund. So we do think they'll be able

to take out a lot of people will realize that raising that fund to refund three is exceptionally hard to sign that not really what they want to do. And we're starting to see some of that. There are new funds coming to market. Ultimately, I do think that this is a good time to be able to have dry powder to be able to invest. I mean, we've seen that historically, the performance post an economic dislocation. The last two economic dislocations we had, we saw venture in terms of percentage increase in overall performance was 25 and 37 percent in the five years after an economic dislocation of bubble bursting versus the three years leading up to it. And so it is a good time.

But you have to understand that raising capital is very, very difficult. So we expect of the 2600 that maybe half decide not to raise a successor fund. So there was this concept of zombie funds that came up in the 09, 2010. And people that have a fund, it's still alive, of course, because it has portfolio companies, but they're no longer making new investments. And we expect that to happen in 23, 24, and 25. Some of it based on the fact that the marks that they had on their portfolio that allowed them to raise a fund are no longer going to be there because of the shakeout in the late stage market. I started my career in 2008 during the global financial crisis, similar to you in 99. And one thing that that taught me similar to you in 99 and one

thing that that taught me is to look for and i was able to get a couple lucky hits early on one things that taught me is to look for what's working even in dark times so what is working you know you mentioned half of those people will be out of business but the other half presumably will be in business what have you seen has worked to get people to a first close second close and get even if they don't get to their full target continue to proliferate as a franchise be in business what have you seen has worked to get people to a first close second close and get even if they don't get to their full target continue to proliferate as a franchise so getting to a first class obviously is the the toughest thing and maybe what we do is look at fund ones right a fund two you may have some existing lps that you can rely on to get to a

first close number one set a realistic target i i think that a lot of people started with targets even in 2023 that might have been fine for 2000 the 2021 demand market where i am raising a fund one or i'm raising a fund two that's gone from five million in fund one to 75 in fund two i think we have to be very realistic and think about what your minimum viable fund size is. So if you have a certain strategy, this is similar to a seed company that raised 2 million and maybe 2 million as a pre-seed and raised 6 million in the seed.

Well, that's not happening now. So you have to also do the same thing and say, instead of going from five to 75, maybe I go 5 to 25. And then as I continue to execute, maybe it's my fund three that now has the big jump in fund size. And so I think people that are really aware of the current demand side of the market, it's working because they're more thoughtful about how do I do more with less? How do I still build a nice portfolio construction? And then ultimately understand who your target client is. So if you're

raising 25 million, going to most of the institutions is not going to be a good use of your time. You know, there's going to be some fund of funds, maybe some strategics that do make sense, but your buyer is family offices and high net worths so how do you get that network how do you build that funnel and how do you build a pipeline of prospective lps that's large enough to get to 25 and i always say that to get to 25 million close you should have about 150 to 200 million in the pipeline knowing that a lot of people will fall off and the probability of getting to a close in this market is incredibly difficult. There are things you can do to get to that first close to drive some urgency. Sometimes people do provide some kind of economic benefit or sometimes

there's things where there's side letters that you can provide for co-invest. There's little things you can do. Generally speaking speaking we're not a big fan of having people give away economics unless it unless somebody's providing a huge anchor check in the early days where it just makes sense uh and sometimes you just have to do whatever it takes to get into business but for most it is building a pipeline and getting referrals raising money from high net worth and family offices is a trust business. And it's very difficult to just get in front of somebody and start pitching them without them knowing who you are, or you knowing them. And so getting a warm referral, and then being an active

listener. So this is this is one of my I guess, pet peeves. I'm sorry, I'm going on this tangent here. But it's really important for people to hear. If you're a GP pitching to a family office, what you don't want to do is just go and start pitching day one. I mean, pitching right from the beginning. The first 10 minutes are where you can create positive bias by listening, understanding

who they are, what they care about, what their object is. If an LP or a family office may meet 30 managers over the course of a quarter, well, to stand out, you can't just pitch the same thing over and over. Here's my marks, and here's all the great companies, and here's the value I add. You have to build a rapport with the underlying person because it is going to be a long-term partnership. So please spend the first 10 minutes asking questions and learning about them and then

that'll help you pitch a story that's actually more tailored for the uh for the end person that you're you're working with typically a good sign for that you've been listening well is when the person says well tell me about yourself uh when they're when they're done talking about themselves and they feel they feel heard. You mentioned minimum viable fund size. I think that's an interesting concept. I think something that's underreported is the proliferation of tools available to general partners.

So outside of Allocate, what are other tools that emerging and general partner, emerging managers should be aware of that could help them scale with maybe less capital under management. So one of the great tools that came out, I was surprised that it hadn't been done before that I am friends with the CEO on above, but he created a company called Tactic. And what it does is portfolio modeling. So it allows a manager to actually build a portfolio model from day one, factoring in things like dilution, check sizing follow on and it gives people a good understanding of like if I raise X amount how would my portfolio look how

much is going to be investable cash what do I need to get to recycling to build you know a type of portfolio that allows me to show execution of my overall fund but also provide those type of returns that LPs are looking for so tactic is a great great product it's super easy to use and it's one that i think every emerging manager should use and going alongside the minimum viable uh fund size what is the minimum viable team obviously there's different strategies but what do you need you know me and eric let's say are starting an emerging fund fund one uh 20 million dollar fund who will we need on our team could be just you i it doesn't have to be you know multiple people you look at someone like orin zev orin has now reached scale over two million rays and he's a one-man

shop and you'll never hire somebody or at least you know he's told me he's never going to hire anybody and he's been able to be incredibly successful because of his overall self-awareness of what he is and what he's not you talked about it earlier know what your deal looks like and focus on that focus on what your true north is what you're trying to execute now if you told me hey we want to do these five things for our founders and one of them's talent acquisition well then sure you may need somebody on the talent side. If you think go-to-market is something that you really want to focus on and you want to build a network of corporate relationships, well, maybe you need somebody if you don't have that domain expertise.

But I don't think there's any dogmatic way of looking at that you need a team to do X. And in the early days, I would actually encourage people to be much more simple and if you're raising a single on 20 million dollar fund it's fun one you should do it yourself if you can now if you already have a partner that you've worked with great but understand that when you add partners it creates dynamics that you know add even more potential risk to the question earlier. So let's say the two of you raise, the question I ask as an LP, what have you guys done before?

Have you invested before? Tell me your ideology. Like, are you guys in line? Because I've seen so many partner dissolutions because people stapled on partnerships because they thought it would help them raise more quickly and somehow provide sort of this unique one plus one equals three, somehow, you know, provide sort of this unique one plus one equals three, which as you know, even in the M&A market, like that doesn't always work out. I think starting with the end in mind is always good. And I think a lot of people will

always be in your ear telling you these things. And usually they came from big companies. We won't mention specific companies. So you've been really generous with our time. What would you like our listeners to know about Allocate and how you guys fit into the ecosystem and how they could get in touch with you? Yeah, so getting in touch with us, you can go to the allocate.co website, apply to join, you can get in touch, or you can just reach out to me on LinkedIn. My Twitter is at Samir Khaji. I'm pretty active on both LinkedIn and Twitter. I would also, you know, point people toward my sub stack, which is Ventureir Kaji. I'm pretty active on both LinkedIn and Twitter. I would also point people toward my Substack, which is ventureunlocked.substack.com. That's where I post a lot

of my writings, as well as my podcasts where I interview different GPs, mainly to educate both the GP and LP side. But in terms of allocate, look, our true north is unlocking the power and efficiency of the innovation market and allowing more people to participate in a responsible way. And if that resonates with people, we'd love to talk to you. Yeah, and of course, I'm not only a big fan, but I've voted with my personal money into Allocate. So I'm happy you guys are doing well. Thank you for the update as well. And thank you for taking the time to speak with Eric and I uh this was very informative and I know this was very informative for many people guys it's been a lot of fun for me and I appreciate you uh bringing me on with the with the great questions here thanks for listening to

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