Allocate Podcast Allocate

Welcome to the Allocate Podcast, an interview and educational content series to help investors learn and navigate investing in alternatives. Join us to hear from leading founders, fund managers, and allocators on the latest trends and the keys to successfully participating in the private markets.
For our next episode, we’re delighted to have Hana Yang, Allocate’s Co-founder and CXO, host Seyonne Kang, Partner of StepStone Group.
Together, they deliver an insightful conversation covering:
- how to pick winning GPs
- how to support portfolio companies and diverse GPs
- the current and future fundraising environment for LPs, GPs, and portfolio companies
About Seyonne Kang:
Seyonne Kang is a member of the private equity team at StepStone Group, focusing on venture capital and growth equity investments.
Seyonne joined StepStone when Greenspring Associates, a venture capital and growth equity investment firm where she was a Partner, merged with StepStone in 2021. Before that she spent seven years in investment management with a focus on private capital and about a decade on Wall Street in institutional equities.
Ms. Kang earned an AB with honors from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and an MBA from the University of California at Berkeley.


This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit joinallocate.substack.com

Welcome to the Allocate Podcast, an interview and educational content series to help investors learn and navigate investing in alternatives. Join us to hear from leading founders, fund managers, and allocators on the latest trends and the keys to successfully participating in the private markets.
To kick off 2024, we’re delighted to have Nic Millikan, Allocate’s Managing Director and Head of Client Solutions, host Allocate’s Co-Founder and CEO, Samir Kaji.
Together, they deliver an inciteful conversation covering:
- the founding of Allocate and why its value proposition is meaningful for the industry
- the evolution of investing in venture capital toward a contemporary, frameworks-based approach
- the importance of education to enable responsible participation in private markets investing
About Samir Kaji:
Prior to Allocate, Samir spent nearly 22 years in venture banking between SVB and First Republic Bank and closely worked with and advised over 700 venture capital and private equity firms. During this time, he completed over $12B in structured debt transactions and invested personally in over 60 funds and companies, including early-stage investments into Carta (seed), Side (seed), PolicyGenius (Series A), and FanDuel (Series B) as well as Growth investments into Reddit, Alto Pharmacy, and Carbon Health.
Samir completed a finance undergraduate degree at San Jose State University, an MBA from Santa Clara University, and completed the prestigious Kauffman Fellows venture program.
He is also an active writer on venture capital and is the host of a top venture podcast called Venture Unlocked.


This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit joinallocate.substack.com

Welcome to the Allocate Podcast, an interview and educational content series to help investors learn and navigate investing in alternatives. Join us to hear from leading founders, fund managers, and allocators on the latest trends and the keys to successfully participating in the private markets.
For our third episode, we’re delighted to have Allocate’s CEO, Samir Kaji, host three experienced institutional venture LPs - Chris Douvos of Ahoy Capital, Beezer Clarkson of Sapphire Partners, and Guy Perelmuter of GRIDS Capital. This was an inciteful conversation about the dramatic shift in the market over the past couple of years. Together, they address the impact of the current market on emerging managers, what managers can do to navigate this market, and the role of secondaries.
About Beezer Clarkson: Beezer Clarkson is Managing Director of Sapphire Partners, the LP arm of Sapphire Ventures. She began her career in financial services over 20 years ago at Morgan Stanley in its global infrastructure group. Since, she has held various direct and indirect venture investment roles, as well as operational roles in software business development at Hewlett Packard. Prior to joining Sapphire in 2012, Beezer managed the day-to-day operations of the Draper Fisher Jurvetson Global Network.
Additionally, she is a judge for 100&Change, a MacArthur Foundation competition that provides funding to solve critical challenges of our time. In 2014, she was named to the Forty Over 40 list of women to watch.
About Chris Douvos: Chris Douvos is the Founder of Ahoy Capital, a boutique Fund of Funds that focuses primarily on allocating into early-stage venture capital funds, while selectively co-investing directly into companies.
Chris started his career at Morgan Stanley while still at Yale earning his MBA. From there he worked at Princeton University’s endowment fund where he got his start in venture before moving on to The Investment Fund for Foundations (TIFF). At TIFF he decided that the right strategy was to make “heroic investments” and invest in very early-stage, and often unproven managers.
About Guy Perelmuter: Guy Perelmuter is the Co-Founder and CEO of GRIDS Capital. Guy began his career in Banking as Chief Risk Officer at Banco Pactual (acquired by UBS), one of the largest banks in Latin America. He went to Vinci Partners, an investing platform for alternative investments in 2009 as Chief Risk Officer. He and his partner, Isabelle, Co-Founded GRIDS Capital in 2016.
He received a BS in Computer Engineering and an MS in AI from Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro.
In this episode, we discuss:
(02:51) Venture is _______(06:46) Outlook for emerging managers(09:42) Why it’s so difficult to raise a fund two right now(13:01) Is new money and funders in venture a net positive(16:16) Why emerging managers are still important for LPs(21:46) What they look for in a fund one investment(22:48) The decision to stop investing in grownups and look to emerging managers(25:24) How GPs get mentored and how information flows to them(27:23) Peer pressure amongst GPs to grow their fund size(31:53) How managers are recalibrating their funds to the current market(35:12) The role of secondaries(39:49) Why Venture is an unsophisticated asset class(44:29) How do you get institutional investors


This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit joinallocate.substack.com

Welcome to the Allocate Podcast, an interview and educational content series to help investors learn and navigate investing in alternatives. Join us to hear from leading founders, fund managers, and allocators on the latest trends and the keys to successfully participating in the private markets.
For our second episode, we’re delighted to have Allocate’s CEO, Samir Kaji, host John Avirett, Partner of StepStone Group, a leading global wealth manager of over $140B in assets across 26 individual practices. This was an inciteful conversation about the evolution of the secondaries market, from its history to the current landscape. John and Samir also dive into how venture secondaries work in practice and - with the amount of macro change we've seen over the last two years - why secondaries have been a popular area for investors.
About John Avirett:John Avirett is a Partner and member of the venture capital and growth equity investment committee at StepStone Group. He previously served as a General Partner at Greenspring Associates, which merged with StepStone in 2021. John’s responsibilities include sourcing and due diligence efforts for direct and fund investments on a primary and secondary basis. His prior investments include: Chewy.com, Roblox, WalkMe, Scopley, Woowa, GrubHub, Workfront, Nutanix, and UserTesting among others.
In this episode we discuss:(01:58) John’s journey to the secondary market(08:56) How market conditions have driven factors in the secondary market over the last few years(13:44) Mechanics of the liquidity windows and capital calls(19:29) How valuations differ in Venture Secondaries versus traditional PE secondaries(22:35) Factors driving the need for liquidity in the venture market(30:29) How emerging managers can sell in a structured way outside of later stage rounds


This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit joinallocate.substack.com

Welcome to the Allocate Podcast, an interview and educational content series to help investors learn and navigate investing in alternatives. Join us to hear from leading founders, fund managers, and allocators on the latest trends and the keys to successfully participating in the private markets.
For our inaugural episode, we’re delighted to have Allocate’s CEO, Samir Kaji, host our first guest, Robert Picard, Head of Alternative Investments at Hightower Advisors, a top RIA managing over $110B in assets across 128 individual practices.
This was an insightful conversation about the growing trend of high-net-worth investors investing in the private markets, the things that have led to this wave over the last decade, and Robert's view on how he expects the markets to evolve in the future years across all categories, including private equity and venture capital.
About Robert Picard:Robert Picard is Head of Alternative Investments at Hightower Advisors. He has been responsible for building 5 multi-billion-dollar alternative investment platforms at First Republic Private Wealth Management, The Carlyle Group / Rock Creek, Optima Fund Management, RBC Capital Markets, and State Street / InfraHedge. Robert has performed due diligence on private market investment strategies since 1997 and visited over 1,000 firms domestically and globally during that period.
Robert did undergrad at College De Geneve and studied Law at University of Geneve.
In this episode we discuss:(01:55) Robert’s career path to Alternative Investing(04:43) How Robert defines an Alternative Investment(07:32) What has driven the growth of the Alternative Investment market in the last 15 years(09:53) Factors holding back retail investors from diving into Alternative Investments(14:47) The speed of money and excitement around investing in the modern markets(20:16) The spectrum of advice from wealth advisors around portfolio construction(22:58) Types of returns Alternative Investors have seen as a premium for the risk and illiquidity of funds(25:53) How higher interest rates will affect Alternative Investments moving forward(29:02) What it will take for individual investors to enter venture capital at scale(33:30) Robert’s view on the next 10 years in the tech space(37:14) The narrowing gap between public and private companies(39:59) What the future holds over the next decade for Alternative Investments and Private Wealth


This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit joinallocate.substack.com