Kasper Wichmann
Welcome to Balentic Edge. Today we’re joined by Jamie Rhode from Screendoor, a venture fund of funds backing institutional grade emerging managers at the pre-seed and seed stage. Combining capital with mentorship, Screendoor helps build enduring firms from fund one and onward across America. Prior to joining Screendoor Jamie was with Verdis Investment Management, a single family office focusing on emerging venture managers, private equity, and hedge fund investments, sourcing and due diligence. Prior to that, she has held roles with Bloomberg where she worked with both equity research and credit analysis. Welcome, Jamie.

Jamie Rhode
Thank you for having me, I’m excited to be here.

Kasper Wichmann
Fantastic, let’s dive right in. Starting with your personal story, your path to Screendoor spans public markets, hedge funds, private equity, and now you’re backing emerging venture capital funds. How did that multi-asset class experience shape your lens as an allocator? And what ultimately pulled you into the early stage venture and emerging manager space?

Jamie Rhode
Yeah, I would say, first off, starting my career at Bloomberg really grounded me in using data to help guide decision making. And then joining the family office, especially given that it was a generation seven through 10 family office, I had the opportunity to really be a crucial part in revamping their asset allocation. And part of that journey led me to understanding the distributions of each of the asset classes we had been investing in, what those expected returns were and the upside and the downside case. And then building investment strategies to maximize the right tail or to really try and get the best return possible. And so when looking across all those asset classes on the public market side. On the buyout side and on the venture side, each offered different returns, but venture was extremely unique. It was power law driven. It offered returns to compound capital at rates I hadn’t seen elsewhere. And there was a lot of friction and complexity in that ecosystem that could lead to significant alpha opportunities where in other asset classes, if you want a public market exposure and really could just buy an ETF and call it a day, active management is really hard there. And so it was really interesting building out a venture portfolio for the family office, spanning that across many managers and then finally getting DPI, real capital. And so it just was an asset class that really rang with me. I came from a family of entrepreneurs, my husband’s an entrepreneur, and the returns there, I couldn’t find anywhere else. And I’m interested in producing those returns, not only for myself, but for other LPs in the ecosystem.

Kasper Wichmann
Super, a very compelling story and I think a lot of things we’re gonna double click on a little bit later in the podcast. But before going there, tell us a little bit about Screen Door. What’s the origin story and how does your model differ from a more sort of, shall we say, traditional fund, a venture fund? And what role do you play in shaping the next generation of institutional managers?

Jamie Rhode
I love this question because it really resonates with me, especially because Screendoor’s uniqueness started with its founding story. So the idea came from a group of 10 GPs who had each successfully built their own firms. And along the way, they were constantly getting outreach from emerging managers, folks launching fund 1s, who respected their path and wanted guidance. And I’d say that the consistent feedback was that there’s plenty of advice out there, I think we all know that, but there’s no capital to back me. And so these GPs were building compelling strategies, but their fund sizes tended to be too small for institutional LPs, or they were told, come back when you have a track record. But at the same time, LPs wanted access to these early funds. They understood the alpha potential, but they lacked a practical, scalable model to really invest in the early signals and build conviction. So that’s the gap that Screendoor was built to fill.

The idea was to become the go-to emerging manager LP, one that could offer meaningful anchor capital, institutional quality diligence, and hands-on support from GPs who had been there before. Our model is intentionally different. Rather than a traditional fund of funds, which I would say is typically managed by straight down the fairway LPs, ScreenDoor is a hybrid platform. It’s designed and shaped by both seasoned GPs and institutional LPs.

And so these 10 GPs initially partnered with a group of external institutional capital LPs to begin backing fund 1s. But I’d say it was quickly realized that it wasn’t just a one-off solution. It was solving structural problem for GPs and LPs to fully realize the opportunity. They had to bring in a dedicated team of full-time allocators so myself and my two partners, Lisa Cawley and Layne Johnson.

Each of us have over a decade of institutional experience to build and scale the platform, expand beyond fund 1s to support the full life cycle of emerging managers. So fast forward to today, ScreenDoor is a full-time team of three investors supported by 14 GP advisors, so established GPs in the ecosystem. And we have an engaged LP base of institutional LPs and a growing portfolio of emerging managers, many of whom are quickly becoming sought after by traditional LPs. And I would really say that it’s such a joy to help shape the next generation of enduring firms where you get to back them early, help them grow up, and then they get to move on and our LPs get to double down in those funds as they meet the needs of our LP base.

Kasper Wichmann
I’d imagine that it’s almost like you’re doing venture investing into venture funds, right? So you’re helping them succeed just like your venture funds help their underlying portfolio companies succeed. You said that the structural deficiencies for both LPs and GPs, what do you mean by that?

Jamie Rhode
I would say some of the managers we back, the smallest fund we’ve ever backed is a $13 million fund. And so if your average check size as an LP is $10 million, that just structurally doesn’t make sense at the same time. But then that $13 million fund shouldn’t have raised $50 million to begin with, just given the background, the track record, the investing muscle. And so sometimes the opportunity set may be ripe for alpha.

But there’s a mismatch between what the GP should raise today and what the LP is able to deploy. Additionally, and I’m sure we’ll dive into this, and this is a crucial part of the value add that Screendoor offers GPs in the ecosystem, but half the job is investing and half the job has nothing to do with investing. There’s operational management pieces of running an institutional venture fund and LPs require that. And sometimes early on in your journey, you don’t know that and you’re learning on the fly and LPs cannot take that type of risk because they require K-1 reporting on time. I mean, if you’re a taxable LP, you have to pay your taxes and that needs to be done properly. You also need transparency. You need quality auditors. You need quality management and tracking of your companies. And so sometimes there’s this structural mismatch between what a GP can provide and what an LP needs to even make an investment.

Kasper Wichmann
You said, because I read up on it, real innovation risk in venture is ignoring fund one, not backing it. Why do you think then that LPs still hesitate despite data supporting that emerging managers don’t outperform? And what does that say about how capital is allocated in the venture space?

Jamie Rhode
Yes, I love this question because I would say for me on my venture journey, it took time for me to truly understand this, but there’s a huge misunderstanding when it comes to investing in venture and it actually has nothing to do with performance. From my perspective, it all has to do with timing. So if you look across 42 years of fund data, especially within early stage VC, sub $150 million tech-focused funds, which is where Screendoor focuses. The pattern is clear. Other private asset classes, let’s call it buyout, credit, real estate, the DPI plateaus around year seven. But in venture, the DPI continues to grow deep into years 12 through 15. The final stretch of a fund’s life often produces the most meaningful gains. And that is not a fluke, it’s actually a feature of the asset class.

Early Stage Venture is explicitly designed to compound capital over time, not return it early. And for long-term investors, the trade-off, delayed liquidity in exchange for structurally higher capital multiples can be a powerful lever in an asset allocation. And yet, many LPs still hesitate, particularly when it comes to backing fund ones or emerging managers, because there’s a perception that these early funds carry more risk. But in truth, the risk is ignoring them completely. Some of the highest performing funds I’ve seen are Fund 1s because they’re built by operators or spin outs with differentiated access, sharper sourcing, real skin in the game. so capturing that compounding isn’t necessarily about just conviction or patience. It also demands access and infrastructure. This part of the market does not scale easily and capital is limited. Check sizes are smaller. Timelines are longer.

So what’s really interesting is you can’t even just be a great picker. You have to see enough of the population to have a shot at even just picking well. And so in a power law environment like venture, missing top quartile returns is often less about skill and more about visibility. So without a deep high quality top of funnel, your ability to allocate effectively is structure- limited. So I think a lot of LPs that don’t have the right network, don’t have the right time, don’t have the right dedicated resources, just ignore the asset class as a whole, along with, I’m going to say the dirty word out there, how are LPs paid? You need patience and the DPI is not going to come till later. The DPI can be significant, but most institutional capital is optimized for scale and predictability. And that bias is going to steer you naturally towards buyout, credit, real estate, and in venture, it’s just different. You need to be okay with duration and you need to do the work. You need to believe in asymmetric upside of compounding, even though it’s going to take a full decade to materialize it. So from my perspective, you can’t just stumble into this market and throw a couple of darts at the board. You have to prepare for it, build the system to access it and stay patient.

Kasper Wichmann
Jamie, I want to touch upon three points. The first one: should institutional LPs then be backing early stage venture capital managers if they’re not really set up for it and don’t really maybe fundamentally understand it?

Jamie Rhode
Yeah, I would say it depends on what your goals are from a return standpoint. Now, from my past experience and some of my partner’s past experience, some of us had payout needs and some of us didn’t have payout needs. Are you a taxable LP or are not a taxable LP? I think that venture capital, in particular the early stage, the long-term returns are highly compelling. The market that Screendoor plays in, the average return over that 42-year time span is a 3.1x net.

That’s net of fees. And so that compounding can really be significant for LPs who need to compound the asset base and meet payout demands. And I think that it could be an internal debate of do you hire someone professionally? Do you outsource it to a fund of funds? Do you start to build a core satellite approach where you do early stage, maybe you jump in at series A to start building in that exposure?

But early stage venture offers returns you can’t find elsewhere. So the returns are compelling. You just need to find a structural way to access it properly, whether that’s through using a fund to fund and building a portfolio on top of yourself or needing to hire a dedicated team to really access the space.

Kasper Wichmann
The second point I wanted to touch upon was exactly this about DPI first occurring later on in life. I’ve been an allocator for 20 years and I remember that and anecdotally people would always say look “lemons ripe early” you have to wait for the great returns.

The past decade, maybe decade and a half, where we’ve seen sort of, know, seed to IPO in three to five years, especially coming out maybe of Asia, is that an anomaly? And does that actually mean then that LPs, and maybe even some venture managers, parenthesis in Europe in particular, that their expectations are not realistic?

Jamie Rhode
Yeah, I think that as a fund to funds allocator and coming from working for a family office that’s been around for a very long time, I think about investing over multi periods. I’m not investing for the short term. I think that now there’s been a lot of hard lessons learned in early stage venture, particularly for emerging managers where I’ve seen those lessons learned in other asset classes many years ago. And so these emerging managers are finally having to think like institutional investors that hedge funds have had to be thinking about for many, many years. And so to be a high quality manager, it’s not just about investing. You have to now learn how to think about secondaries, how to think about liquidity, how to think about managing the portfolio and do it, take some points off the table and optimize for secondaries.

Where I think in 2021, candidly, a lot of LPs were not pushing for secondaries. A lot of LPs were pushing for unrealized TVPI. Keep it going, keep it going, you know, straight up and to the right, to the moon. But now with hindsight bias, all those LPs are like, why didn’t you sell? Why didn’t you sell? You could have four extra fund DPI-wise. And so I think that was a great time period for emerging managers to truly learn that there’s more to this job than just investing and I need to be thinking about multiple things along the pathway to year 12 and fully exiting then. And that’s where a lot of our GP advisors at Screendoor help with that mentorship piece where if there’s a scenario where you have a company that’s at a series C raise sitting at 850 million and your fund size was 25 million, taking 25 % off the table, does that return the whole fund? Is that what your LPs need? Like you have to go through that cost benefit scenario analysis to understand is the upside for the next three years greater than me selling some today. And so I just think that there’s now more avenues to an exit and GPs are required to stress test their own portfolio and think about how to leverage those different exit pathways.

Kasper Wichmann
I think those are really wise words for any manager listening out there that yes, LPs would like you to take some capital off the table. And those of us who remember back to the GFC, that was exactly the same thing we saw back then, start taking money off the table when you can return the fund. The rest is now upside and everybody’s gonna leave very, very happy. The last point I wanted to touch upon in this particular question was: is there some kind of misalignment between LPs and their incentive to invest into emerging managers, whether VC or any other type of manager, when they want to command the same types of fees and the same types of structures, as say the more established managers who’ve got a proven track record? Why should I take a 2 and 20 model as an LP?

Jamie Rhode
Yeah, I would say that when you look at a lot of those established managers and you take 2 % times their AUM, there’s not much incentive for the carry. When you take 2 % times the average fund size from the Screendoors original vehicle is 42 million. So 2 % times 42 million is not significant over a fund life for a GP. They’re really in it for the carry. And I think

Kasper Wichmann
Very true.

Jamie Rhode
A hard lesson learned for me over my career is when investing in venture buyout real estate public markets is to always analyze the opportunity on an after fee basis. And if you’re a taxable LP on an after tax basis. And so that’s where the analysis needs to be done. And so that quote I mentioned earlier of that 3.1 X net over 42 years, that’s an after fee basis. And that’s the to market return for the space that Screendoor plays in. And so I think that’s the proper way to be thinking about things is always on a net-net basis when you’re making investment decisions.

Kasper Wichmann
I tend to agree with that actually. I think the idea that early stage venture should be returning 5 to 10x gross I don’t believe in that. I think if you can do 3.1 net of everything over 42 years, you can take that to the bank pretty much any day of week.

Jamie Rhode
And what’s to me the most interesting thing is so the benefits of leveraging a fund of funds or the benefits of building a structurally diversified portfolio in house that’s going to capture venture capital returns every single vintage year allows you to really maximize your returns. So over that timeframe, I mentioned the CAGR for early stage ventures close to 18%. So if you were to invest in every single vintage year and keep compounding your capital, that turns into a 1,154 multiple. That’s a MOIC that’s huge. In real estate, it’s a 26x. In buyout, it’s a 981x. But the real kicker here is if you were to miss the best three vintages in venture,
or in real estate or in buyout, your venture return goes from a 1,154X to a 421X because venture is all about capturing the winners. And if you miss, then you’re wrong. Go buy an ETF and call it a day. In real estate, if you miss the best three vintage years, you go from a 26X to a 25X. In buyout, you go from a 981X to a 944X. So that just showcases that if you’re going to do venture, you need consistent vintage year exposure, and you need to be structurally diversified to capture those winners.

Kasper Wichmann
I love the numbers. It’s really great when these things are quantified because I think that venture especially is one of the spaces where there’s a lot of discussion without a lot of data backing it. I don’t want to jump into that rabbit hole. I just want to mention we’ve got David Clark of Vencap coming on in another month or two. And he also believes very much in the power law.

But their investment strategy is very different from yours and I won’t get into that now because you focus exclusively on first institutional funds. And so my first question to you is what do you mean by institutional quality because typically we wouldn’t think of institutional quality in fund one and then how do you assess it? A 15 million dollar fund or 25 million dollar fund one or two versus a 50 million dollar fund two.

Jamie Rhode
Yes.

Yeah, it’s a great question. And I would say that specifically for the emerging manager space where Screendoor originally started backing first institutional funds, and we still do that today, but we’ve expanded the platform to cover the whole space. So more than just Fund 1s but what’s really interesting is the question we asked about a GP’s lived experiences and how that gives them the right to be the best at sourcing, selecting and winning. That can help you get to the investment conviction side of the house. But again, it’s what I mentioned earlier. It’s the whole other half of the job. And a lot of times when I talk to Fund 2s or Fund 3s I ask them, how much time have you spent investing since you started your firm? And they tell me maybe about half, and that’s usually the biggest surprise to them. So there’s a certain mindset there that we’re looking for around are you structuring your LPA to be of institutional quality or have the institutional framework, or maybe it’s not there today at Fund 1 because it doesn’t make sense, but by Fund 2 you’ve already had that pathway set up, so your red line of Fund 2 is not much. And then are you bringing in outsourced service providers that are of high quality, that are going to report on time? Are you potentially thinking about in the future hiring an outsourced CFO? Are you potentially bringing in a junior employee to help manage certain aspects where you can spend more time with your superpower, which is investing and not the other nuanced pieces of running a venture fund? And then I’d say another interesting scenario is a Fund 1 that we’re in late diligence with, you know, she’s young in her career, but is a really fast learner, has built insane networks, and has shown ability to access top 1 % founders. But we went through exercises of fund deployment and fund model. I require a fund model to make an investment, and then I go and stress test it. And I say, OK, you’re investing today, but let’s say the market environment changes a year and a half in. How are you going to adapt? How are you going to adjust?

If you have to now write a larger check to win your allocation or to get your ownership, how is that going to impact the fund model? How are you going to return the fund? Let’s talk about pathways to exit. So it’s really being able to work with the GP to stress test their model, their investment strategy, and make sure they understand the market change constantly and that they need to adapt and evolve with it. So sometimes we see managers being able to raise $50 million because of some network they have, they have the right friends, they came out of XYZ brand firm, but they may have no experience or knowledge base on the second half of the job. And if they don’t have an interest in being open to learning and having the right people around the table, you may not be able to properly manage a fund, especially because there’s going to be a problem that occurs.

Kasper Wichmann
So first point on that, I’d love to speak with the general partner of that fund that you just mentioned, as and when. Number two, do you find it a little bit strange, almost schizophrenic, that the very things that you’re helping the GPs think through are actually the very things that they’re helping startups arguably think through?

Jamie Rhode
Yes, and it’s so funny that so many people can’t take their own advice. And I think that it’s also easier when you were at a brand firm, when you had a lot of platform support, to just hand it to a founder and say, you need these types of services or you need these types of help. My brand firm has this. When you go out and start your own firm, that’s typically not available to you and you have to build out your own value add and your own unique edge, which you’re coming to us with, but it’s a change. And so it’s just additional responsibility that GPs typically haven’t had before if they’re spinning out. Sometimes if you were an ex-operator, you’ve worn many hats and you get it. And sometimes your ex-operator turned investor and maybe not out of a brand firm, but now you’re starting your own firm. And so each GP has their own background and experiences, but it is ironic when they can’t take their own advice. That tends to be a red flag.

Kasper Wichmann
You’ve reviewed over 1,000 emerging managers. When you look across that landscape, what truly makes a manager stand out and what kind of signals would you be very fast in dismissing them on?

Jamie Rhode
Yeah, I really try hard to not have hard and fast rules for dismissing anyone outright. I try to focus more on factors that I believe directly impact outcomes and venture. So some of them are structural, stage, sector, geography, network. There are consistent outliers that emerge from specific ecosystems and certain relationships. And it’s really important to recognize how much that context matters.

But what really makes a manager stand out is a combination, I would say, of earned access and strategic alignment. I look for GPs who can consistently win allocation in top 1% of deals. And I want to understand, as I mentioned before, how their lived experiences give them the right to win. So that shows up in how they source, how they build conviction, and how they construct a portfolio. But it also has to align with fund size and strategy, which I think over the past few years, people haven’t really thought about that. And so does that phone size and strategy reflect their strengths? Is it aimed at a part of the market that can actually produce venture scale returns? And the benefit of my team at Screendoor is we come from a multi-asset class background. So we’re grounded in the idea, not everything should be venture funded. You can be a great investor, but if the model doesn’t support asymmetric returns, it won’t matter. We are not investing for buyout-like returns and we can typically spot that relatively quickly. The last piece I would say is humility goes a really long way. In an asset class where only 2 % of startups become the real winners, even the best managers will be wrong more than they’re right. So if you look at the top series A firms, they have an average outlier capture rate of 1 to 3%.

So the ones I trust the most are grounded enough to know the line between skill and luck is always a bit blurry. And that staying great means having self-awareness, having curiosity, and to always be open to evolving.

Kasper Wichmann
I think I can share that having invested in a bunch of managers myself, that those are actually the best ones. Those are traits that you want to look for. And it takes us back also to said, you dismiss people fairly quickly if they don’t have a little bit of humility about what they don’t know. We can all learn. You kind of touched upon it, but I want to double click on your advisory network as a unique layer. How does this work in practice?

Jamie Rhode
Yes.

Kasper Wichmann
and how does it impact the trajectory of the managers that you then back?

Jamie Rhode
So we’ll never back a first-time investor, We’ll always back a first-time fund manager. You need to have the ability to attract and win top 1 % founders. We’re not here to help you be a better investor, but we’ve all seen that the journey from going from investor to fund manager is really, really hard. Especially in the market environment evolving today where it takes more than just being a great investor to succeed in this asset class. And so the key part about our advisory network is they help with the sourcing piece. They’re in the market doing deals and so lots of people come to them. They’re also woven into our underwriting so we can leverage them for certain key aspects of the underwrite just because they are able to give us perspective on certain networks that a GP plays in, certain founders that they’ve backed before, and just getting that hybrid approach of institutional LP established GP. Then post-investment, each portfolio GP gets paired with one to two of our GP advisors. And that’s where that mentorship really comes in, whether it’s having discussions around secondaries, having discussions around, my gosh.
The market environment has gotten so hot. I’m putting money down at a $20 million post. And then the next thing I know, the round’s about to close at $40 million post and I’m pulling out because that doesn’t make sense for my fund model. How do I deal with that? Do I need to raise more money or like, you know? And so we have these established GPs, have these conversations, calm them down, get to stress test the portfolio live and say, let’s make adjustments. Let’s go a little bit earlier.

Can you do the pre-seed? Can you close on a specific dollar amount and then go out and fundraise the rest with the founder? So it’s just really interesting to see the different dynamics that come into play and how we can pull different GP advisors who have experience in different scenarios to help the underlying portfolio. And I think at the end of the day, it just helps them be more efficient. It helps them get to the right decision faster because they have a trusted mentor with them that understands the problems that they’re going through because they’ve been there and they’ve done.

Kasper Wichmann
So avoiding the rabbit holes that arguably their own founders also jump into and where they try to guide them to avoid the rabbit holes. It’s kind of neat that the ecosystem sort of is in a full circle here. You’ve also, sorry.

Jamie Rhode
Exactly.

And candidly,

I would say they teach us. So we get to talk to them constantly and they’re informing us of these new networks. Even though media is telling you this is a really interesting space, it’s not deep enough. It’s not worth your time. You know, these are just headlines. They’re not quality. And so they’re giving us those real time market insights that just help shape the direction we sometimes take when making investment decisions.

Kasper Wichmann
That’s very true. I always thought of early stage venture capital investing as sort of the headlights into the future. I love going to the AGMs and hearing about what’s going to come down the pipe that you’ve never heard about. It’s an absolutely fascinating asset class to invest in. Jamie, you said a good fund of funds can beat direct VC, even net of fees. That’s a bold statement, I think, for a lot of LPs. I’d agree, but nonetheless.

Jamie Rhode
go.

Kasper Wichmann
What’s your advice to LPs weighing in direct? Because that’s much more interesting, obviously much more sexy or closer to the fire versus fund-a-funds exposure at the early stage.

Jamie Rhode
Yeah. And I mean, some of this is what I touched on a little bit earlier, but it comes down to venture is a power law asset class. 80 % of returns come from just 20 % managers. And in the early stage segment that we focus on, I had mentioned before, but the average long-term return is a 3.1x net. And achieving that is really crucial because that’s where you can compound that capital and really build wealth. But you need to have a high quality, wide top of funnel to even see the managers capable of driving those outcomes. And in early stage VC, unfortunately, that access is limited, it’s opaque, and it’s relationship driven. And to capture that upside, you need meaningful exposure across enough funds, enough vintages, enough sectors, and enough manager types. And that’s really not easy to build. A direct program at this scale requires sourcing, diligence, capital calls, reporting, legal review, ongoing GP engagement, back office infrastructure, managing all of those K1s, and that’s across many fund relationships year after year after year. And without that proper structure, you risk drifting towards the median return, which is a 1.6. And that may not even be from poor decisions. That just could be from simply missing the funds that matter because your top of funnel is not high quality.

And so that’s where our fund-to-fund shines. A single commitment can provide curated diversified exposure to potentially high performing, often hard to access managers in a much more capital efficient and operationally streamlined way. It also guards against the vintage timing risks that I had mentioned before. Missing just the three best vintages in venture reduces your cumulative MOIC by 65% versus 6 % in real estate and 4 % in buyout. It’s really why fund-to-funds work in early stage venture, because venture is extremely sensitive to getting the exposure right. And importantly, it’s really odd, but the structure doesn’t just increase the chance of upside, it also reduces your downside risk. So through diversification across managers, strategies, and cycles, a fund-to-fund can smooth out the volatility and reduce the likelihood of a concentrated underperformance portfolio, especially in a market where manager dispersion is extreme. And I would really say the biggest negative that I hear about fund to funds is this misconception around they underperform due to fees. But in early stage VC, the fee drag is far smaller than that of a performance drag due to missed access and insufficient diversification.

So, in short, for LPs without full stack venture infrastructure, a fund-to-fund actually is not a workaround. It’s often the most efficient, risk-aware, and scalable way to get venture exposure right. And it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re outsourcing the whole book. You can put a venture fund-to-funds in your book and then leverage those relationships, leverage those networks to start building out your own portfolio yourself. Or you can take a barbell approach, just given on what your own needs are, where early stage venture, it really offers great compounding capital, more of a MOIC TVPI focus where at late stage it can offer great IRR and return profiles. It’s just different risk return reward and it’s up to the LP to know where their strengths are and where they should outsource those needs.

Kasper Wichmann
So a core satellite approach is what you’re talking about there at the end.

Jamie Rhode
Yep.

Kasper Wichmann
And then to all the CIOs out there listening, what you’re saying is, if you do want to play venture, especially earlier stage venture, you probably want to take a risk adjusted return approach to this, which probably means outsourcing a chunk, even though the investment teams may find this very interesting, for the simple reason, as you said, look, you’re taking outsized risk, probably for lower return, you’re going to have to run a much bigger program than you’re set up for, arguably, and then you still have to have the people to actually deploy the capital and put it into the right managers.

very, very hard to do.

Jamie Rhode
Exactly. And we understand that just coming from being allocators ourselves. Hence why the Screendoor ethos is to really democratize access to the space, provide actual transparency into the portfolio, help the LPs build direct relationships with those underlying managers because we recognize that they want to double down. They want to invest it, whether it’s a Fund 2 or a Fund 5 whatever their operational needs allow them to do.

We want to help them build that portfolio themselves on top of the Screendoor allocation.

Kasper Wichmann
Looking ahead, 2025 and beyond, or the rest of 2025 and beyond, what are you most excited about? And are there any structural risks that we’re not seeing out there or that we should be considering or maybe underestimating when allocating?

Jamie Rhode
I mean, I get most excited when I talk to a GP that hasn’t said the word AI or deep tech in the first five minutes of a conversation. I’m like, great, you were looking in another area of the market. Well, 90% of the people are all looking in the same spaces. I mean, that excites me most when I talk to GPs. I also think that we’ve had these discussions too, where it can sometimes be a little bit challenging to thread the needle between when you’re meeting with an emerging manager, especially a Fund 1 are they still in the ideating phase? Are they still trying to hone in on the exact strategy, the exact portfolio construction, the exact fund size? And I shouldn’t judge them or I shouldn’t pass on them as a ‘no’ just because they’re still ideating? Or is this the actual strategy and this is how they think and they’re kind of all over the place and what’s going on? And so I think that’s a challenge that a lot of LPs face when investing in Fund 1s and they’re just going to dismiss that manager. But they may just need one to two conversations of help to get the strategy concise, to get the strategy right. And if you say no too fast, then you may miss because a month from now they may be ready to truly show you what they offer. And I think that LPs don’t have the patience or the nuances to thread that needle to understand where the manager is in their own journey

Kasper Wichmann
So there’s already good advice, feedback and learning for emerging managers there. I hope you don’t get overrun now by inbound requests. So please look at my strategy and my deck. We have time just for a few quickfire questions, Jamie. The worst pitch you’ve ever heard from a Fund 1 GP

Jamie Rhode
Someone that touted their network to be so strong that they were essentially guaranteeing me returns and if I wanted to make the investment I had two weeks to write a check.

Kasper Wichmann
Wow, okay, yeah, no, that’s probably a hard no and very fast. Specialist or generalist.

Jamie Rhode
hard no. This is a Fund one, but I always lean generalist. I want it to be the founder that’s telling me where the next big wins are coming from.

Kasper Wichmann
So you buy into the thesis again of the power law that is not about sector or size, it’s about the founder being able to find the correct founders underneath.

Jamie Rhode
I want coverage of all the sectors today and all the sectors tomorrow. And if I go sector specialist always, then I’m going to miss out on the sectors of tomorrow.

Kasper Wichmann
Fantastic. I think we’ll leave it there, Jamie. This was a really sharp and insightful conversation about how emerging managers are building enduring firms and why backing fund 1s or fund 2s may actually be the smartest bet that LPs can make. Thank you very much for joining us, Jamie.

Jamie Rhode
Thank you. I had so much fun and I love talking about asset allocation, venture investing and all things.

Kasper Wichmann
We could go for days and if nothing else maybe we should have both you and David Clark from VenCap back at some point. I think that’d be a fun conversation.

Jamie Rhode
I’d love it. I’ve known David for a handful of years and we always have fun data conversations.

Kasper Wichmann
I do the same. Finally, thank you to all our listeners for joining us on this episode of Balentic Edge. Stay tuned for the next one.