Why This LP Is Staying Consistent in an Unpredictable Venture Market

Speaker A: Welcome to Swimming with Alligators, the VC

Speaker B: podcast from the LP perspective with your

Speaker A: hosts Alexa Bins and Ernest Sweat.

Speaker B: You ready? Let's dive in on Swimming with Alligators. Today we welcome Teddy Repko. Teddy is an incredibly clear thinker and speaker. He speaks to his lessons learned over seven years at the Columbia Endowment as they transitioned from a hedge fund heavy framework to a very relationship driven venture capital one. He's applying all those lessons learned today and gives us a very clear picture of where they are interested in investing and where they've dialed back, including more investment in Israel, China and India.

Speaker A: Welcome Teddy. It's so, so great to have you here uh, with us today. Thanks for being on.

Speaker C: Thank you very much for having me. Pleasure to be here Teddy.

Speaker A: Um, during our prep conversation prep call, I really enjoyed just hearing your background and how you've many different environments and has shaped your worldview. Could you just provide our ah, audience with a glimpse of the origin story?

Speaker C: Yeah. So let's see. I grew up in, in San Diego, was there for, for most of my childhood. Um, I think there were sort of two defining features of my childhood that really shaped the investor I turned into or the path I took down the road. I think it was one growing up with an older brother and a younger sister, both uh, all three years apart. Um, but my older brother in particular, contrary from I think what is typical where the first child is supposed to be in line, very reserved, quiet. He was the crazy one. And so I grew up observing his craziness, um, and the trouble it got him into. Um, and that I think had uh, an effect on me where my approach is probably more risk aware, a little bit more disciplined. Um, and as an individual and now as a professional, someone who tries to excel within guidelines, you know, I think about the world you all live in every day with founders breaking the rules and you know, driving these amazing change, it's a little less of what I'm comfortable with. Um, so it's a different style of investing that I think that upbringing took me into. I think the other relevant point, um, that influenced a lot of my decisions growing up and now as, as a professional was growing up with parents who really emphasized uh, an international perspective. Uh, my dad spent a lot of his young childhood growing up in Asia. My mom spent a lot of time in Latin America and we were fortunate enough growing up to spend ourselves a lot of time on the road traveling. And I think that shaped very early on the importance of having a broad global view. Um, it not only impacts the decisions I made for going to university and afterwards, but certainly now in how I think about underwriting managers and strategies.

Speaker A: So Teddy was, Was uh, venture capital always, uh, something that you had an interest in or like how'd that come, come about?

Speaker C: I would say it was not something that I had my focus set on early. I did have a clear focus on investing from a very young age. Um, and again I think that goes back to my older brother. He was one of those guys where in high school he was reading all the finance books and me a few years younger wanted to be exactly like him in every way except for the getting into trouble. Um, but it meant I uh, tried to learn about investing early on and sort of pivoted my focus toward investing on the path going forward. Um, for me, uh, the focus was more on liquid uh, markets. Out of college I worked uh, as an equity trader focused on Delta One swaps. Um, and I thought that was a great place to cut my teeth. Um, you know you're thrown into a very lean trading desk. We were given a lot of early autonomy. Um, I think that did a lot of forced growing up, um, and built a lot of quick connectivity with understanding market dynamics. But I quickly realized after a number of years that that style of investing wasn't what I wanted to do long term. I wanted something with a little bit more breadth, um, and a longer term focus. And I didn't know exactly what that was going to look like. But I started to look around and really out of pure luck, um, I stumbled upon a posting from Columbia's endowment, uh, to be an allocator on their investment team. Um, I went into the interview process wholly unprepared. There aren't resources like sudo allocators that we have now like we did back then, uh, but fortunate enough to get that role which was uh, an analyst, uh, working in a generalist model which gave me my first exposure to venture and through that really fell in love with the asset class.

Speaker B: You were there at a time, um, where, correct me if I'm wrong, but the uh, CIO changed over with a new strategy that was much more focused on venture. Anything you can share about that experience?

Speaker C: I am incredibly grateful for that change because it feels like while I was at Columbia for seven years, it's as if I worked at two different places because the philosophies were so different. When I was originally hired at Columbia, I was working for Peter Holland and Tim Donahue. Peter came from a, uh, JP Morgan derivatives background, um, and that very quantitative risk oriented focus that he trained on Growing up in his career really bled into how the endowment was organized and how we invested. What it ultimately meant was we didn't do very much in dedicated venture and we took a lot of tech and innovation risks in the hedge fund portfolio. But everything we did and how we made decisions was incredibly quantitative in nature. Uh, fast forward a couple of years and Kim Liu joined, um, to lead the organization and her philosophy is quite different. Um, she is amazing at reading people and investing on relationships. Um, she was able to complement our process by integrating really this people underwriting methodology, uh, while also pivoting the portfolio to do a lot more in venture. Um, and so what that meant was the handful of years I worked under her spent a disproportionate amount of time working in the venture ecosystem and cutting my teeth there.

Speaker A: How was it picking up after, you know, having such an analytical background, quantitative background, uh, how do you start to build that muscle of being able to read people better and diligence to people better when there's frankly in venture not much numbers to really grapple with?

Speaker C: Well, I think that in and of itself is an area where venture can improve a lot. I think there are a lot of numbers in venture, um, and I think the fact that we came from this very risk oriented mindset has led me down that style of assessment in venture. However, I will say that the people part is so much more important the earlier you go. Um, I think what I have found is that when we're investing into early stage venture, um, it's far less about um, what deals you've done so far, how they're tracking and more about who are you as a person. Can I trust you? Do you do what you say you're going to do? Um, and do we have shared alignment on what you are trying to build over the long term? Um, with this long term being the timeline we're trying to assess you on. I mean one stat I always go back to when trying to get too quantitative in early stage venture is only about half of the funds that are in the first quartile on a TVPI basis in year five end up, uh, as a first quartile fund. All to say, the numbers are a little bit meaningless early on. And if you invest in TZero in year zero, you have to make another one to two decisions before the numbers really mean anything. Of course there are a lot of signals in there that we spend a lot of time on. A lot of them are people oriented, coming from references with other founders, with other investors, um, but it's an interesting dynamic of trying to bleed the two worlds together of quantitative and qualitative underwriting.

Speaker B: Could you share with us some of those more quantitative things that are really important to you?

Speaker C: What I've spent a lot of time on in the venture ecosystem is trying to understand base rates and then having managers communicate to me how they're different and why they're different from the base rate. The very common numbers that um managers talk about or excuse me that is a reality in venture is call it 50 to 60 early stage companies go to zero. Um on the other hand um, the market standard is 2.5% of seed stage companies achieve unicorn status. Um for the best managers, the Sequoias of the world this can be double that. Still a very small number. Um, but if a manager is walking me through their venture math and for their math to make sense they need a hit rate of 10%. Something's a little off there. I think it just gives us firepower to talk through the philosophy in which the venture manager is organizing their strategy.

Speaker A: What traits have you or signals do you feel like you have to see to trust that that manager could at the right times be in the top quartile, uh top decile over the 1015 year relationship?

Speaker C: I would say the answer to that is very hard and there's obviously no surefire way of knowing um what I look for as positive signals that help build conviction in early stage managers are uh those gps that have a very clear idea of what their competitive advantage is. What is their superpower such that they can be better than the base rate on a sustainable basis, not on a one off basis. So I think that's point number one a clearly articulated edge and um, that can come in many different shapes and sizes. And then the second um, which goes back to more the quantitative side of things being able to express the portfolio construction approach that aligns with that superpower. I think so much of the um risk Reward um that LP's ultimately experience comes through portfolio construction and yet so much time is spent on a manager's ability to pick. Certainly if you're not a good picker and not a good, not um, someone who has the access they need. That's a ah first principles reason to pass. But the second necessary ingredient is being able to build a portfolio around those ideas.

Speaker A: Um, as the three of us sit here we know that we're kind of in unprecedented times um and you've been following the market for a while now. Teddy, uh, two part question one what trends are you seeing that are really net new that maybe you haven't seen before in previous cycles. And two, how has that impacted the way you approach the asset class and diligencing it?

Speaker C: Two things come to mind for me. I think the first has to do with some of the truly mega companies that are being formed in the private landscape. Um, we hear so much now in speaking with managers about the path to a trillion dollar outcome. Not so long ago we were really happy with a $10 billion outcome, um, and there frankly aren't that many $10 billion outcomes. And yet, uh, uh, a trillion dollars is what we talk about now. I think the impact of that, that we're going to see in the very immediate future, likely to see in the very immediate future, that will be a uh, step change is there's a world in which in the next 12 months, uh, $4 trillion, give or take of enterprise value, of venture backed enterprise value goes public. Um, I think these three companies alone, SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic themselves can change the DPI story that is constantly the issue, um, or the challenge that LPs talk about when discussing venture. I think digging a layer deeper, it's a very concentrated list of companies and list of fund managers who experience DPI from these uh, public offerings. Um, and so I think from an LP's perspective it will change a little bit how we think about and analyze dpi because the benchmarks are going to look a little weird for a long time to come. Um, so I think TBD on that. I think the other um, material change we've observed over the past decade or so is the emergence of mega platforms, um, where just a handful of funds are raising the vast majority of venture dollars and deploying far more than anyone else. Um, I think the jury's still out on uh, what the performance of these mega funds will be. I uh, know you guys talked to David Clark from Prevent Cap. Um, I think he is, he and his team are amazing, his data is amazing and they offer really compelling narrative um, as to why these mega caps are structured to win. I think on the flip side of that, some of the assumptions you do have to believe to get to a 3x plus are difficult to wrap your head around. But I think what is changing is, you know, these mega cap or these mega funds are um, changing the seed ecosystem. Just writing hundreds of seed checks, uh, you know, new investments every week. Um, I think that changes a little bit how uh, other funds, smaller funds, will have to compete. So these are all things we're trying to wrap our head around. And they continue to evolve very, very quickly.

Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. Is there anything concerning about the venture capital landscape? Uh, as you're looking forward, since we've, since we've got a second son, speaking

Speaker C: to the risks, uh, I think they're related to these two dynamics that I just spoke about. I think the first is valuations. Um, it's amazing that something can go from zero to billions of dollars in a matter of months, uh, or straight out of the gates. Um, there's a high degree of trust that excellent founders will be able to turn an idea into something very real. And while I'm confident that these will happen and they have happened, um, it doesn't leave that downside protection that I would typically hope for in getting large ownership stakes at a low valuation, um, at this stage of investing. So valuations I think is one, um, and the other is because of the pace of innovation happening in AI, I think the knock on effect is the pace of funding rounds has ticked up to be incredibly quick. Where GPS can have, and you guys will know this better than me, will have days to make a decision on something. I think it can be very hard to have, um, a deep diligence dive with such a short timeline. You know, it's important to want to go into these opportunities with a prepared mind. Um, but still having to make decisions quickly is a sacrifice that scares me a little bit.

Speaker A: Now we're going to take a quick break to speak with our sponsor.

Speaker B: All right. Today, as our special guest, we have Nick Cassin, who heads up Sidly's secondary practice. Nick has a ton of experience with fund liquidity transactions. He's focused on venture, but also PE real estate. So any questions you have around continuation vehicles and LP and GP LED secondaries or tender offers, those are the things that his clients are coming for him to ask about. Um, welcome, Nick.

Speaker D: Thank you. Thank you, Alexis. Great to be here with you.

Speaker B: You have a front row seat of so many of these transactions. Um, and some of them are in the news because there have been crackdowns on secondaries. Uh, some of these secondaries on secondaries on secondary SPVs no longer being recognized. What should GPs and also LPs who are listening be, um, thinking about so as not to fall victim.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker D: It's an excellent question. And as you know, it's been a really, a topic of high interest because of anthropic issuing statements and other and other private companies that are considering IPOs also doing the same. And what I would say is really not all secondaries are created equal. Uh, you need to have the appropriate legal advice when entering into any secondary transactions. But whichever structure you employ, there's always going to be a certain risk based on the underlying portfolio companies governing documents which may or may not prevent the transfer at hand because they're drafted usually these documents extremely broadly to cover both direct and indirect transfers. Having said that, the spectrum of the risk is very broad. And on the one hand of the spectrum, what I would describe as the riskier assets is where there's an attempted direct transfer being made at the cap table level in one of these portfolio companies, which specifically requires board consent for the transfer and any purported transfer absent that consent will just be void. Similarly, if you are acquiring interest in an SPV which has been specifically listed by a portfolio company as a SPV through which no transfers will be recognized, the risk is high. Now, on the other end of the spectrum you could have, and this is often the case, private funds that have exposure to these private m. Uh companies that at the private fund level agree to entertain transfers which will effectively be an indirect transfer in the underlying portfolio company, but not one that would ever be on the radar of that portfolio company. And based on the limited risk associated with such transfers, it is largely undertaken with the parties going in eyes wide open, knowing the underlying risk, which as I mentioned in that fact pattern, um, is very limited. It's really going in and knowing what you're agreeing to and know understanding the risks. And that's where advisors come in.

Speaker B: Yeah. How, how on earth are you going to know whether you're. What if you aren't given access to the company itself? How do you, how do you check that?

Speaker D: Right. And so often case you would take the view that if, if you're acquiring an interest in a private fund, for instance as a, a portfolio of five assets, one of which is a portfolio company where there is a potential for specific restrictions, you may take the view that you need to do a little more additional diligence, uh, with respect to that portfolio company. But the commonly held view would be as part of these secondary transactions, that you do not need to go and look at the um, underlying portfolio companies documents since um, the risk is minimum vis a vis the LPs are transferring. The big caveat to that is, what I'm talking about is more in the context of LP trades happening between existing investors in the fund, as opposed to a GP LED continuation vehicle where you are topping about perhaps doing a GP with respect to a single asset, um, and with respect to a majority ownership of that single asset, then the Analysis is different and obviously the risk is heightened. And typically in that situation you would ensure that you comply with any restrictions in the underlying company's um, articles of association or bylaws. Because the consequence of any transfer being declared void in that situation would be drastic on the transaction because we'd be talking about a single asset, uh, transaction.

Speaker B: Yeah, indeed. And what can you give us a quick overview of what your team at CIDLI does in your own words?

Speaker D: Sure. So we do pretty much anything touching on secondaries. So whether that be lp, trade transactions, um, strip sales, GP LED continuation vehicles. And the beauty of these types of transactions is that they can apply and they do apply to virtually every asset class in the private market. And so we work on not just venture capital, uh, CVs and trade and venture capital funds, but also real estate, P buyout, uh, credit, uh, and some even more bespoke ones such as transactions involving litigation, finance, um, hotel deals, um, et cetera. So there's always something new and novel, uh, features to these transactions which makes it um, such a pleasure to work in this group.

Speaker B: Are you seeing Stripsdale's be uh applied more often with venture?

Speaker D: Funny you ask and I am actually. Indeed. So the trip cell, uh, transaction type has existed uh, for a while, um, but I would say that I have seen an uptick in that transaction type being used for venture transactions. You're just taking the buyer. The new money is taking an A exposure to a strip of the assets rather than the entire annoying assets which um, uh, creates alignment because the existing fund is maintaining a uh, portion, uh usually a significant portion. And it also on the buy side gives uh, ah, diversification to the buyer which is why it's also favored by the buyer because they get pieces of multiple underlying portfolio companies rather than a single portfolio company.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: So a strip sale may be something you're considering now. You have Nick to ask about it.

Speaker D: Exactly.

Speaker B: Thanks Nick. And now back to our LP interview.

Speaker A: Are there certain parts of the market, um, whether it's stage, um, geography or uh, verticals that you're a little wary of today, that you, you know, not to say there's no, in this business there's no like absolutely never investing in something. Right. There's always exceptions. But where are you a little bit more like wary. Um, when looking at kind of the thesis areas of your um, fund managers,

Speaker C: two areas come to mind. I think the first is dedicated later stage growth. Um, there's a lot of ways to make money in venture. There'll be very, very amazing uh, outcomes in this ecosystem in this space. But I think broadly what I worry about going back to the valuations is that if you aren't choosy in later stage venture, um, I worry about you getting burned in a very big way. Um, I think in this world, Ren, in uh, AI driven venture, there will be outstanding outcomes, unprecedented outcomes. But I also think we're likely to see some unprecedented losses. Um, and so that dispersion is something top of mind for me. Um, the other one that comes to mind a bit for me more recently is the crypto ecosystem. They're one historically, uh, I've had high conviction in sharpshooter, uh, dedicated venture managers. I think where I am beginning to uh, feel a bit of concern is around the bitcoin narrative being a store of value. It just hasn't behaved that way in an area of inflation relative to gold. And so now I think you have to believe that Bitcoin is on its path to becoming a store of value. And that's a different bet. Obviously that's very different than the broader venture, uh, crypto venture ecosystem. But it's such a big proportion of that ecosystem. I would have to think if something um, if something material were to happen in a negative way to bitcoin, it would have terrible ripple effects for the ecosystem. So that's something we continue to study as well.

Speaker B: And what about on the flip side, what are the opportunities or where do you see alpha?

Speaker C: There's a lot of areas we're very excited about. Um, a couple that come to mind are more geographically oriented. Uh, in a lot of ways I think China has become washed out. But there's a lot of great um, innovation happening there at ah, reasonable multiples. Um, so that's a place where we're quite active. I, earlier this year spent some time in India. I went on that trip with a high degree of skepticism because I feel like um, the idea of now is the time for India has been what allocators have said for the past couple of decades and it hasn't really worked out. After getting boots on the ground there, that perspective for me has changed. Where I am quite enthusiastic, you're finally starting to see those power law outcomes um, domestically that can change the risk reward formula there. And I think a very interesting data point, one of the most um, active IPO markets uh, in the world last year was India. Um, so things are happening there. We're spending a lot of time there. Um, I think the last I would say are it's more of a structural thing, it's smaller Funds where to have a power level outcome at the fund level, um, you don't need a decacorn, a, ah, $50 billion outcome, a trillion dollar outcome. You construct your portfolio in a way where um, a $5 billion outcome can return one times or multiples of your fund. And why that's compelling is because they're kind of fishing in a different ecosystem, um, of founders and of ideas that I think what I am seeing more typically in other funds. So those are the areas we're spending a lot of time on and are quite excited about.

Speaker A: The conventional wisdom has been from a number of domestic and even international, uh, allocators is to kind of stay away from the Chinese market. Uh, what aren't they seeing that makes you more interested?

Speaker C: Uh, I think I, and we are eyes wide open to the same risk of not being able to get capital out. Um, I think where some of us differ is on um, if um, that risk is a hard line and a reason to completely divest. Right now I'm at the point uh, of believing it's not a hard line, um, but it does raise the bar. Um, and the risk reward we're seeing there does compensate for that risk. But it's an area we debate very regularly and intensely.

Speaker B: Teddy, you are investing on behalf of the Yahavyatam tribe. And um, I would love to understand what a sovereign wealth fund is looking for. Who are your compadres? What should we know about these pools of capital?

Speaker C: To start off, I will say a little background on Yahavia, Tom. It's a federally recognized tribe of Serrano people based in the San Bernardino Valley here in Southern California. Federally recognized since 1891. Um, more recently, a very big milestone for the tribe was reclaiming this ancestral name of Yahavyatam, um, which means people of the pines. They do a lot of fantastic work. Um, I think it's since 2003, 2003, the tribe has awarded more than $450 million in philanthropic support for the community in terms of education and culture. So really, really a great organization and a great group of people, um, that I'm very proud to work on behalf of within the sovereign wealth fund. In terms of how the sovereign wealth fund operates, it looks and feels and makes decisions a lot like a typical mid sized US Endowment. Um, many people when they think of sovereign wealth funds would not think a sound wealth fund within the uh, geography of the United States. Um, and so I find it helpful to draw the parallels to an endowment or a foundation. We construct the portfolio very similarly. We Think about risk quite similarly. There are nuances of course, as there are with every program. And I, um, think the world is not entirely different from how we thought about um, building the portfolio and making decisions while is back at Columbia. I think that the biggest difference that I've adjusted to is the program, uh, is a bit more new. Um, and so we don't have the legacy exposures, we don't have any tech debt. We can really build fresh. Uh, and that was a key draw of why this role is so attractive to me and moving east to west to join, uh, the opportunity when um,

Speaker A: joining a new organization, how, how much ah, venture capital were they doing before? Without getting into specifics, I'm just trying to get a sense of was there already a known book or were you being brought on to kind of help shape what it looks like?

Speaker C: Uh, there was an existing venture portfolio when I arrived. Uh, it's a fairly robust portfolio with great exposures. And so uh, when I joined my focus was not on ripping things out or changing things drastically. It's really trying uh, to add value on the margin and find areas of uncorrelated alpha within the existing exposures. Um, so there's still plenty for us to do and we're very excited about continuing to build. Um, but I would applaud my, my team, uh, on what they've accomplished to date.

Speaker A: So enhancing and bringing more value add for our um, other allocators who are, who, you know, our audience. Um, a lot of them are moving into places that maybe already have uh, established books. What are kind of some of the pointers you would give to those folks on when joining uh, these organizations, how to actually do that enhancing?

Speaker C: Um, I would say there are a couple of things. The first is before you enhance, you need to understand what you have. Um, it's really important to understand the mix of managers, the mix of uh, areas of differentiation, the mix of exposures. I think one of the most compelling things that a new individual can add to their portfolio is saying here are all these special sauces of our mix of managers and again can come from a lot of different sources. But in venture, one of those is oftentimes the network that ah, a GP brings. Here is uh, what I have found as an excellent GP and why it is different. Uh, to me a lot of that enhancement comes through differentiation. It might be helpful for me to give an example of things we're thinking about in our portfolio. Um, I would say our portfolio today is very Asian heavy and very US heavy. Uh, an area of the Market that I've spent uh, a lot of time in and a very highly convicted in is the Israeli venture ecosystem. Particularly with seed stage Israeli venture. Um, why is that differentiating? It has the beta I think of US Venture but uh, with a very different top of the funnel which is geographically in Israel. So that's something that could be quite additive to our portfolio today. One of the things I loved about canvassing the Israeli ecosystem, which is an exercise I did very deeply a uh, handful of years ago, um, was that you could go to Israel, spend a week or two and meet with the vast majority of institutional players. Not all, but you can get a pretty good idea of um, the different players in the market. And that makes it far easier to begin making decisions and narrowing the funnel because you have that full, that full view. I find that so much more intimidating and challenging in the US because there are just countless opportunities and you know that there are things you don't know in U.S. venture. It's, it's far less extreme in a much smaller market of Israel.

Speaker B: Yeah, that ecosystem, what I've learned, it's also there's still plenty of room for the emerging uh, managers but so many of the US firms now are playing in the seed series A, et cetera that um, I guess those Israeli managers are not alone any longer.

Speaker C: It's such an interesting dynamic because that was the case a decade plus ago where all the big global firms had their dedicated office in Israel. Um, and for a host of a variety of different reasons it didn't play out. Um, those managers pulled from uh, Israel and the boots on the ground, spun out and started their own firms. And there are you know, probably a dozen of those from Sequoia, from Benchmark, uh, you know, a whole number. And now these managers are coming back. So I think it remains to be seen a little bit the impact of that on the moat around Israeli seed. I think what I go back to from my experience there is the market connectivity between people is very tight. So much goes back to the military experience that I think first of all if you're going to be successful in Israeli venture, you have to be Israeli really ingrained in the culture there. Um, and that could be hard for uh, non local institutions.

Speaker A: I think this also points to in our pre conversation how, how much you value network, uh, building and relationship building in this space both from uh, allocators and other GPs. Um, it's no surprise that now everything's becoming spam with the advent of AI, um, and a lot more noise is happening. So I'M sure your email is just like, it's probably a lot right now. How do you leverage in this new world? Um, or how do you build, like, true relationships? Whether they're kind of like cultivating people you've already known versus, like net new relationships? How do you find the right people? How do you stay connected to them? And what do you expect in return?

Speaker C: I think I'll approach that question, uh, a couple of different ways. First of all, I think you're completely right that the value of an email inbound or outbound has just gone down drastically. So much can be automated. And so the volume of traffic that we see has just gone up exponentially makes it really difficult to, uh, sort the signal from the noise there. Um, what I think it does is create an opportunity to really build the meaningful relationships. But it requires time and effort, and a lot of that time and effort has to be in person. Um, I think the limiting factor for us as people is time. So we have to be really purposeful with who and why we try to start relationships. And it's very important that there's a give and a take. But the actual practice of building those relationships, I think is evolving to be even more in person. Um, one sort of amazing tactic that I experienced, and now I do it myself, is rather than a thank you email after a really impactful meeting. Um, handwritten note. Handwritten note goes amazingly far at building a lasting relationship, um, for someone you really want to connect with long term. Uh, we also provide, for example, some interesting, uh, tidbits from the tribe or, you know, endowment could provide interesting tidbits from the university. Something very personal, um, that when the receiver gets, uh, whatever you sent them, they know that you put thought and you really care. I think subtle actions like that, um, are only growing increasingly important in this world of AI.

Speaker B: We started out this conversation talking about our small children falling from great heights. And so, Teddy, I'll be really. I'll really feel like you're taking care of me when you Amazon me those baby gates. Appreciate it. Um, any, any final, um, words of wisdom or just things you've been chewing on and thinking a lot about that you could share with us as a final sign off. Teddy, this has been such a joy.

Speaker C: Final sign off. Um, let's see. I would say it's an incredibly interesting and dynamic venture backdrop, um, one in which comes with a lot of potential, ah, FOMO and fears, but also a lot of opportunity. And many of your guests have said it, and I completely agree, um, the name of the game adventure is consistency. Um, it is a very dangerous game to exit the venture market, um, because of the power law you see in vintage years. Um, and so when I think about where do we go from here, it's keep following our North Star of looking for GPs with sustainable superpowers, um, and backing them for the long term.

Speaker A: Teddy, thanks so much for being on and where can people find you or your wonderful events that you throw all over the country?

Speaker C: I would say the best place for me is probably on LinkedIn when our events do come up, which is usually around Tech Week. Previously Tech Week New York, now that I'm on the west coast, uh, Tech Week la. Um, but I think that's a great place to catch up with me. Always happy to link up or answer any questions. Um, or of course as we talked about. Handwritten note.

Speaker A: Absolutely. We will have Teddy's address in this. No we won't. Joking. Teddy, thanks for being on. Really appreciate you man.

Speaker C: Thank you very both for having me. Uh, this was a great time.

Speaker B: See you later.

Speaker A: Allocator after portfolio tile investing with a smile.