How they scaled the Angel Syndicate to 10,000+ LPs!?🤯 - Alex Pattis, GP, Riverside Ventures

And I think there's a really big TAM there of folks who do want access to this asset class, but being an LP doesn't make sense and getting the deal-by-deal looks does.

So. Hey everyone, this is Prashant and I'll be your host for the VC 10x Podcast.

And today we have Alex Pattis with us.

Alex is a general partner at Riverside Ventures, a venture fund and angel syndicate with over 10,000 LPs and $200 million plus in assets under management. Alex is also a founding team member at Hampton, a private and vetted community of founders and CEOs by Sam Parr and Joe Spicer. Alex also writes Last Money In newsletter with his partner Zachary Ginsberg, where they share weekly data-driven insights on venture capital and syndicates. In this episode, we'll talk about how they scaled Riverside Syndicate to 10,000+ LPs. How they source deals and engage LPs at Riverside. The significance of co-investors. The early days of Hampton. Insight into what it's like to be a member of the Hampton community. How investing in bridge rounds has helped Riverside get 10x outcomes. Tools and processes they use at Riverside. And lots more. So without wasting any time, let's dive straight in.

Hey Alex, so good to have you on the VC 10x Podcast. How are you doing?

Very well, and great to be here and chatting with you, Prashant.

Yeah, it's a pleasure having you on. To start things off, can we have your story and how you started investing? Yeah.

So for me, my path was really started on the operator side, right? So I spent 8 years operating in early-stage startups across 2 different healthcare tech firms. Yeah, I think like the more interesting part was the second company I joined. So I joined a company called Market Access Transformation, joined as the first employee, pre-launch, kind of pre-anything other than just this product vision. And the CEO was actually a previous customer of mine. So it was a great business, right? We built this market research platform that we sold into life sciences companies, mainly pharma and biotech. And bootstrapped the business for about 5 years, ended up selling a large stake in the business to a private equity firm. And then 15 months after that, ended up selling outright to a strategic. Yeah, I can't necessarily share the number, but I north of $100 million for sure. And yeah, for me, that was just an awesome experience, right? Going through that startup of phase zero through acquisition. And along the way, I kind of had this realization that all of my network was really invested in the success of one single company. And I got interested in diversifying that for obvious reasons, despite the company being successful. And yeah, as I had had all this early-stage experience from the operating side, got interested in participating in other deals, other early-stage startups as a small angel investor, right? So I think dating back to 2018, I started doing that, right? I wrote a handful of really small personal checks, some that were through SPVs where I was an LP, others through kind of friends of friends, folks in the New York startup ecosystem. And I guess in doing that, right, I kind of got this investment or investor bug of wanting to do more deals. I also wasn't high net worth, right? So I didn't have a lot of personal capital to put to work. So I wanted to navigate other ways to write more meaningful-sized checks, but also leveraging folks in my network, other LPs to do this all while as a side hustle currently operating at an early-stage startup. So I can get into more of the details, but that was kind of the quick background to the intro to venture capital.

Yeah, yeah, that's very interesting story. And I think there's a very little interesting piece there about you being a founder of a really successful startup that had an amazing outcome, right? $100 million plus exit. So, and even after that, you think that, okay, maybe I should be an investor and diversify my bets. Understandable, of course. Like, when you're doing a startup, you're focused on one thing. But if we try to compare the two in terms of just financial aspects, right, of course, 2 very different games, investing and building stuff, right? But if you're building just one thing and you're good at it and it works out, I think the outcome in that case is far more greater in comparison to you being an investor or a VC and investing in 20, 30 different companies. Even if your portfolio works out, it's still hard to get to that level of that founder who had an amazing exit, right? What do you think? Totally.

I agree with you 100%, right? I think like, you know, most of the billionaires that we know and see, you know, they were founders, they started a company, and they grew their net worth through a massive outcome or building a massive business, whereas you don't see that as frequently on the investor side. However, it's a much kind of safer route, right? To my point about diversifying the outcomes, you know, if you hit 100x as an investor, That's not as meaningful as hitting that 100x as the founder. However, investors got portfolios of 50, 100, 500+ companies. So you've got the power law kind of working for you there. And I would say find it easier to get to maybe that millionaire or multimillionaire status, but totally agree with your point there. That's why I like doing the best of both.

Yeah. Absolutely amazing. Awesome. So I've learned that between you and your partner in riding last money in, you have around $200 million plus in assets under management and have scaled to more than 10,000+ LPs, right? So tell us that journey of scaling the syndicate to these amazing numbers and also the story of how it— the syndicate got started at Riverside Ventures.

Yeah, yeah. So essentially where I kind of left off with the last question on being interested as an angel investor and trying to figure out, you know, how can I scale and do more deals without having a whole, you know, a bunch of personal capital. So was an LP in a handful of syndicates and decided I wanted to try and do this on my own. So essentially at the time I had okay deal flow. I don't think it was impressive, kind of based on where I am 5+ years later. And I was navigating, kind of getting introduced to some of the best pre-seed and seed stage founders, and then also really working my network, right? Folks that I thought might be interested in the venture capital asset class did not necessarily have access to deals, but certainly were interested to take a look on a deal-by-deal opportunity. and put capital into companies that they were excited about. So started doing that. I wasn't all that successful at first. I think there was like a 1, 2-year ramp-up of just navigating, right? How do I actually grow the LP base to where it will support doing $100K+ in an SPV? And then also, how do I navigate getting into the right deals? In the earliest of days, I spent a lot of time networking with VCs, one, to learn from them, and then two, to source deals their way, try and be helpful as this hustle deal flow guy out there, but of course, stay top of mind for a lot of the deals that they were leading. And I think that multi-year investment upfront was pretty helpful and provided some unique access into deals. And I definitely had to swing and miss at trying to put an SPV together for the right amount of capital. It's not like the first deal I did, I put together half a million and everything worked amazingly, right? But over the years, I think as we got into late 2019, I started getting some kind of good access into some of these seed deals. I think I had built the LP network in a healthy position to kind of support that. And I would say there was definitely a slowdown as the pandemic hit, but as kind of things picked back up, yeah, we were able to probably— I mean, in total, we've done, I think, 280+ deals across Zach Ginsberg and— sorry, across Zach Ginsberg and myself, who I write Last Money In with. We've got a portfolio of over 500 companies, $200 million AUM, and there was just a lot of interest from individuals to get access to these deals. I kind of joke that running a syndicate is similar to social media, right? It's like the more you post, the more followers you're going to get. I think this is somewhat similar in doing syndicates, right? It's like The more deals that you do that are quality, the higher chance your LPs are going to loop in other LPs. So you can't necessarily rely on that. But I think that was helpful to us in addition to, in the earlier days, spending quite a bit of time sourcing LPs, trying to get introduced to folks who wanted to participate in deals on a deal-by-deal basis. And I think there's, look, there's a lot of pros and cons on running SPVs versus traditional venture funds, but there's a lot of individuals out there who don't necessarily want to commit to a venture fund and not get access to the specific deals or decisions where syndicates provide a really nice opportunity. So I think we did a pretty good job of capitalizing on that market and that kind of way of investing in early-stage companies.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that's great perspective on why syndicates might be preferred over VC funds as well, because like you said, there's a big proportion or a big part of the population that is capable to invest in startups, but they maybe do not want to trust a manager to, you know, make those decisions on their behalf. Instead, if they are getting that deal directly to them and they take the call on it, that where their money is actually going, then they might do it. And I think that's a huge chunk of people right there.

Yeah, especially the folks who, you know, aren't necessarily writing $50K, $100K checks into, you know, to be an LP in a given fund. And I think there's a really big TAM there of folks who do want access to this asset class, but being an LP doesn't make sense and getting the deal-by-deal looks does. So just one small piece to add there.

Absolutely. And if you can give us an insight, because there are 10,000+ LPs, so what would be the average investment amount that an average LP puts in in any deal? In maybe a span of 1 year, let's say.

Yeah, you know, it ranges so much, right? We have folks that can come in on a particular deal with as little as $1,000, right? But then we have folks that are writing $25K, $50K, $100K. I think the, maybe the largest we've done is like $250K to $300K on a specific investment. So I'd say the bulk of these folks are writing, you know, the $5K to to $10K, $20K checks to amount to an SPV of $80K, $75K on the low end, $250K, $300K on the high end there. And then in terms of volume, there's individuals that might do 1, 2, 3 deals a year. We've got folks that will do 20 to 40 deals a year with us. I think You know, it makes sense to do, to spread out the dollars and do a lot more deals, right? To kind of optimize for the power law there. But everybody kind of all, you know, when we have thousands of LPs with all sorts of different backgrounds, they kind of look at this asset class quite differently.

Absolutely. And I'd love to understand about the deal flow and how you filter that deal flow. Are you like sector agnostic, looking at everything and anything that's possible early stages? Or is it more sector-focused? So give me an insight into that.

Yeah, I'd say we lean toward generalists, but super early stage. We like to do pre-seed and seed, typically $5 to $15 million valuations. A couple of things that are important to us given the way we invest, right? First and foremost, the founder's always the most important thing. by far, right? Like, we invest in people and, you know, some of our largest markups are investing in the right people and the wrong idea who pivoted and navigated kind of choppy waters to find a much better business. So very strong believer in that. You know, we do wanna invest in big, large, and also growing markets that we think have tailwinds behind them. Also for us, given we do not lead rounds and we do not set terms, we do like to invest alongside good institutional investors that we know, we've done deals with, or we think highly of. So constantly spending a lot of time of sharing deals with other funds, trying to stay close and be friendly and value-add to other funds because, you know, that is kind of the way that we operate as a syndicate, as most do. And then in terms of category, yeah, I said kind of generalist, really like B2B SaaS. fintech marketplaces. I'd say we're a little bearish on consumer internet deals, but still possible for us to do that. And kind of, I wouldn't say the door is completely shut, but that's kind of the category we think about super early stage before there's significant traction, if not any traction at all.

Yeah, absolutely. And I'm curious about the filtering aspect. So Let's say you get 1,000 deals coming your way every month, then what percentage of that do actually get through in front of the LPs?

Yeah, so I think I've been a lot more harsh of recent on kind of founders I talk to. I think in the earlier days, I would talk to a lot of founders, was ramping up, was kind of, I guess, learning, but also wanting to meet more people. I think now, I like to be smarter about kind of my time and how I leverage it. So I'm probably talking to, I'd say, 7 to 10 founders a week. In terms of number of deals we're doing in this market, we're probably doing about 50 deals a year. So it's still high volume versus like your traditional institutional fund. Some of those we will co-syndicate and partner with other syndicates, which could mean that we've got the allocation and we're looping in some of our syndicate partners into the deal, or it could mean vice versa, that they've got access and might be looping us into the deal. So given that dynamic, which I can explain a bit more, I think it helps us do more deals than a traditional venture fund would.

Absolutely. And I'm also curious about the LP engagement aspect because LPs are here, maybe are probably just interested in a single deal that they found interesting. Maybe a friend called them in that, okay, look at this deal and they're in. But how are you ensuring that your LP base is actually engaged and looking at the deals? That's one aspect to keep them engaged. And the other aspect is about leveraging the LP base as well because they come from very diverse backgrounds. Maybe you can use them for due diligence, maybe You can use them for value-add as well, right? So we'll have an insight into that.

Yeah, I think to answer the second piece first, like we really try to leverage our LP base similar to the way a community would operate, right? We've got a lot of awesome folks who are operators, founders, you know, CTOs, heads of sales, folks from family offices, individuals in real estate. So there's, there's all sorts of different knowledge and value-add folks that exist within the LP base. And we try to work with them a lot on sourcing, definitely on diligence, right? So if there's folks that I think would be relevant and helpful for diligencing deals, we'll send those their way as well. And then I also think, yeah, there's actually probably more value that we can add post-investment through the LP base versus pre-investment, right? So whether it's a creator who can help amplify a brand or a business, or a founder who's really well versed in a given category and can help introduce to partners or customers, like these are the things we're always trying to do and think of to, you know, not to be value-add post-investment. I think like Early on, I used to sell myself more than I necessarily needed to, to get into a deal. And I think as I've built a portfolio and seen kind of post-investment what value-add looks like, where it's relevant, where it's not relevant, I've become better of one, not overselling, and two, ideally underselling and overdelivering in just like key to-the-point ways that investors can be value-add to founders and in the context of, you know, not taking a board seat, leading round, setting terms, right? Where we act a little bit more like angels post-investment than, you know, an institutional fund on your cap table.

Certainly, and I think that's an important thing for founders also to remember that if you're getting an SPV on your cap table, then one of the greatest benefits of that is to leverage that LP base that the SPVs have, even if they're not leading the fund, you can always reach out to them and ask, okay, I'm struggling with this particular thing. It may be in marketing, maybe in sales, maybe in product. It's likely that they would have an LP who would be willing to help out. So totally, that's something I think founders—

Yeah, at the least, right, you're by working with SPVs, you're getting a lot of walking, talking brand advocates or company advocates. And then on the kind of more value-add side, you're getting folks who out of the blue will reach out because they wanna introduce you to somebody who should be a good customer or a good partner. Or a fund that maybe is interested in leading your next round or whatever it may be.

Absolutely. And I think there was a recent post on LinkedIn that you made about co-investors and the importance of even co-investor brands. So I would love to learn more on that aspect. How do you think about which are— who are the co-investors that you're working with, sharing deals with, and they're sharing deals with you? So, and how is that important in how that investment pans out? In the longer run. Yeah.

So when you say co-investor, are you referring to co-syndicating with other syndicates or co-investor in terms of like the institutional folks who are typically leading the rounds that we participate alongside?

Either way, either way.

So syndicates are unique in the sense that, right, we're a lot more flexible when it comes to ownership, right, and allocation for a given deal. So the ecosystem, in my opinion, is less kind of sharp-elbowed and more collaborative where, you know, I think I've co-syndicated deals with like 20, 30 different syndicates. I can't say I love working with all of them, but there's a, you know, a select group that I really like working with, and they've been really helpful to either one, help us fill allocations, right? Like, as a syndicate, you're requesting an allocation, and then you're filling it with your LP base and going back to the founder to highlight, hey, we've raised the exact capital we said we were going to, or we haven't raised enough. And therefore, we'd either like more time, or the check size might be smaller. Or, hey, the demand was super high, is it possible to get more allocation? I think we're flexible on all. That's kind of the art of a syndicate lead of working with that founder there. But in those scenarios where you think you can get more allocation, it might be helpful to work with another syndicate partner to loop in them, their capital base, their LPs, work together. And really, it's kind of a long-term game of expecting and hoping that they'll be returning the favor on an interesting deal in the coming month, year, or whatever it may be. And I think That kind of networking forward mentality has been really helpful in a unique deal flow channel that not many VCs kind of see, or angels see for that matter. And in my opinion, I actually don't think people were doing this more than 3 years ago, right? So it's fairly new. It's certainly evolving. But it's something that we've very much leaned into to try and optimize our deal flow, find good partners that we can work with long term, and focus on getting into the best deals.

Yeah, absolutely. That's great. And to change tracks a little bit, another very significant thing that you've been involved with is building Hampton, which is a founder community, a really high-level founder community. Not everyone can get in there, right? It has to, there is some kind of filtering there. So would love to learn more about what is Hampton. And since you were a part of the founding team, what were the early days like, you know, the planning and strategy and bringing it up from the ground?

Yeah, great stories here. So Hampton is a private, highly vetted network for founders and entrepreneurs. It's really meant to be that place that founders and CEOs can come to speak openly about anything and everything related to being a founder, right? know it's lonely. We're trying to build a community that has like-minded individuals who are ambitious and looking to kind of level up, learn from each other, but also pay it forward and support one another on the journey ahead. So the story of my involvement with Hampton, I had met Sam Parr and Joe Spicer maybe like 3-ish years ago. And after Sam had sold The Hustle to HubSpot, he and Joe teamed up to launch a syndicate. So I met them in the syndicate world. We co-syndicated a bunch of deals. They were awesome to work with. Founders were super excited to get them on their cap table, and they had gone quiet. I was sending them deals, kind of like, hey, you guys have been super quiet. Are you guys investing anymore? What's the deal? And then they had shared that they were starting Hampton, this private founder community. And I just got super excited about the opportunity, right? Like, I saw a clear need for this. I, you know, there were founder communities, but I think not either as thoughtful or more like tech-enabled, digitally native companies. And I thought there was a massive opportunity for that. I knew that they were the right people to run this. So I ended up getting involved in I mean, essentially the earliest of days at Hampton. And it was interesting and fun, right? Because at first, I think, dating back to September of last year, the plan was to grow in stealth. You know, Sam, who's got a pretty sizable personal brand, he wasn't talking about it, he wasn't making it public. So it was this funky business of trying to grow with the right people, but also being so quiet about what we were building. And we did that, I guess, to get further along, but also just understand the business, understand the community, what was working, what wasn't working, what was the right way to structure these meetings, this connection virtually versus in person with everybody. And got to a position where we felt we had a pretty good playbook and we were ready to launch more widely. Which is what we did at the end of March this year. And yeah, it's been super exciting since then, right? We've got all sorts of like exciting opportunities and challenges like any startup. I joke, I'm like, you know, the pre-launch company was a different company than the post-launch company and talking about everything kind of out loud and seeing it go quite viral and attract really awesome founders who are in there today. Yeah, it's been a great experience and it's honestly such a fun company and fun Internal team and then group of founders to meet, learn from, hang out with, build friendships, kind of all the above.

Absolutely. But like, what is Hampton? Is it a free community? Is it a gated community? Or is it actually a syndicate behind the scenes? Or is it a business? What is it?

I'm pushing on the syndicate, but they're pushing me away for now. I want to focus on the core community business. But yeah, so it's It's a private founder membership. So essentially folks will apply, those who are doing minimum of either $1 million in annual revenue or have raised $3 million in outside capital or have a previous exit as a founder of $5 million or more in enterprise value. They meet the threshold who will then interview with the Hampton team. So you'll then get scheduled for a 30-minute interview. And then from there, you'll either be invited to join or not. For those who are invited to join, it's $8,500 per year. So that's the annual membership fee. And then there's kind of a whole host of opportunities to learn, engage with folks virtually, digitally, kind of within the community.

That's pretty awesome. How many members are in there right now?

So I think we're right at 600 now.

Okay.

You know, we did this, we were growing really quickly. I think these community businesses are delicate, right? Like you don't want to just grow too quickly. So we kind of made that decision to purposefully slow down the growth, think about the kind of longer-term infrastructure and ways to kind of keep the bar super high and keep the quality super high. So yeah, we've kind of purposefully slowed down growth a little bit and are just now kind of starting to ramp back up with a little bit more kind of long-term thinking of the experience within Hampton and how we'll group folks within Hampton.

Absolutely. Give us an inside view of Hampton. Like, how's it structured? Are there different groups for specific types, maybe marketing or maybe sector-wise, something like that, investment opportunities, things like that? And what are the kind of conversations that happen there?

Yeah. So the conversations can be anything from, I'm looking to sell my business or I'm looking to buy a business and want support there versus how do you founders spend your time on the weekends so that you can spend optimal time with your kids and your family, right? It's everything from like strategic business to the personal side and life of a founder and entrepreneur. And then on the inside, yeah. So one of the key things that we do is group everybody up in what we call core groups. So every member will be in a core group with 7 other founders, 8 founders in total. And it's really an opportunity for them to speak to other folks where they can be more open than in any other environment. Because they're with founders who kind of understand them, are also in their shoes on the journey trying to build and grow their business. And a lot of these founders, it's just, you're not getting that opportunity, or it's a different conversation that you're having with your investor, board member, employees, family who look at things from a different perspective. And the way that we group them, so similar stage businesses, right? So everything kind of growth-related, we look at to make sure it's relatable across companies. We've got some groups that are a little bit more focused on like the same category or industry. And then we've got other groups that are a bit more diverse. So we work with our founders to identify kind of what they're looking for in terms of a core group as well.

Yeah, that's awesome. Some good community engagements inside there. Awesome. And one recent— so switching back to investing now. So one of the recent posts was also about bridge rounds. You said that in whatever bridge rounds that we have invested in, it has returned great for us and sometimes even 10x. So would love for you to give us an insight into how is it faring out for you investing in bridge rounds, and also how does that compare to if you have an insight there? Investing in follow-on rounds?

Yeah, I think it was, it was an interesting post, right? Our, our take is that there's, especially right now, there's a lot of interesting bridge rounds that are taking place, right? And when I say interesting, I mean, there's a lot of great bridge rounds, and there's a lot of terrible bridge rounds that, that makes sense, right? When, you know, you've got founders that are maybe looking to push the goalposts a little bit and raise capital so that they can raise their priced seed, A, B at a higher valuation, or they feel that they need to hit these certain metrics that they're not there yet, despite rapid, great growth. We're seeing a lot of opportunities for a quick, small sum of capital where they're not as sensitive to dilution because it's a smaller round. It's a little— it's not as meaningful as the upcoming price round that they're optimizing for. So there's a host of different reasons why, you know, these bridge rounds would be taking place. And I think, you know, when you're either an investor already in the company and you've seen kind of post-investment, you've got to know them and see how they are or are not executing on specific milestones. it becomes more apparent on how bullish you are on this team or this business. So from the insider's view, it's a little bit easier, right? Should a bridge round arise, what's the rationale for it? Also, like, are all the insiders going to reinvest, right? There's a lot of different ways to kind of tell, you know, is this a really great opportunity and sometimes a steal as an inside investor? To put more capital to work. Um, you know, and there's great opportunities as an outsider. It's a little less obvious because you haven't been as close to the business. But, um, I guess to sum it up, there's, there's been some really good opportunities over the, uh, the past couple years that, um, either I've got in as part of Riverside, Zach has got in as part of Calm, and also great examples where we've, we've co-syndicated together, um, as well. So like One example, it was a kind of tech-enabled retail business. COVID, despite great growth pre-COVID, it put that business in a really bad position. I think we kind of had this longer-term view that things would be coming back. And for us and for this business, it was an opportunity to invest it I don't really remember, probably like a 70-80% discount of what they would've raised at sometime previously. So certainly a risky bet, but we came in, we did a, you know, for us, a sizable SPV. I think it was like $300,000-$350,000. And that company in pretty short order, I guess in a year later, they raised the Series A to 7x from there and have raised another note Probably putting it at like, actually, yeah, at a 10x as well. So a lot of interesting rounds out there. The ones that make sense and there's great rationale for that infusive capital are great steals, and the founders are less dilution sensitive given the small round to help optimize for a larger price round for whatever the round may be.

Absolutely. And that's also something to learn for even SPVs right there, that you still have opportunities to invest in later rounds. And if you look at these smaller opportunities which are bridge rounds, and even sometimes maybe follow-on rounds as well, because if it's a small VC investing at the very early stages, maybe 7, 8 years down the line, they will not be in a position to exercise their follow-on rights. If they have them, right? And in that case, you can maybe partner up with an SPV which has the capacity to exercise that on your behalf and maybe have a share of the carry, right? Something like that can work out.

You know, and I think that's actually a great point for syndicate leads and SPVs because, right, our checks are, they're meaningful at pre-seed, they're meaningful at seed. As you move to Series A and later stage, they're a lot less meaningful. So like, Optimizing upfront and getting as much allocation as you can is meaningful for these businesses that continue to accelerate, right? And I've got examples of some of my best portfolio companies where we invested at seed, at A. Luckily, we got in at B, even though our check size was so insignificant compared to that. Whereas Series C, you know, we didn't get in. It just didn't make sense for them. I totally get that. So I think Yeah, again, doubling down early on is just going to be a lot more meaningful, especially as the later stage rounds become less easy for us to come in and our check sizes make less sense.

Absolutely. And now coming on to my last main question before we go for the rapid fire round to close this out. And this one is about what are the key tools and processes you use to keep the syndicate running?

Yeah, you know, we really don't use a ton of tools. We have, I think, internally really great tracking when it comes to like our LP base and understanding how many deals they've done, how many deals they've been invited to, how much they've invested, right? What's their average check size? I think one of those, like using that data is super important to us as we think about which LPs are we going to invite to specific deals, right? Because to no surprise, some of these deals are quite sensitive and we're not going to send that to every LP in the syndicate, right? We're going to send it to those that we know, we trust, they've done more deals with us over time. So that's one of the most important things kind of on our end. You know, I use some of like the data providers to just understand recent rounds that have taken place, who's raising what from who. Kind of all of that. But we run this pretty lightly and agile from our side. So I don't have too many great shoutouts of awesome providers out there. But as I, you know, would potentially become a larger institutional fund, I'm sure there'd be more tools to utilize.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Awesome. Awesome. Thanks for sharing that. And now let's do the rapid-fire round wherein I'll ask you 5 quick questions. about the investing that you're doing at Riverside Ventures, and you have to give 5 quick answers. Sounds good?

Sounds good.

Awesome. So the first one goes, what are the sectors and regions you invest in?

Sectors, most excited about B2B SaaS and fintech right now. Regions, primarily North America, but we've probably done deals almost all over, right? We've done Healthy Mountain, LATAM, India as well, but primarily focused in North America, US.

Awesome. What's the typical stage of investment?

Pre-seed and seed, $5 to $15 million valuation.

Awesome. And what's the typical check size you put in?

Anywhere from $50K to $250K, $300K. It's a bit of a wide corridor. I'd say on average we're doing $100K across our small micro fund and potentially layer on SPV capital as well.

Where can founders apply for funding in case there's a direct way?

Yeah, so I don't necessarily have an application apply. You know, I really like warm intros, right? I think it's important. And this is not just for me, but for anybody. I think it's important for founders to be crafty in figuring out, right, how to get introductions and be kind of presented in a positive light. However, I do respond to cold outreach on LinkedIn, but you'd have to make it pretty attractive, right? Higher bar there, but I've certainly done it.

Absolutely. I think this one got in through a cold invite via LinkedIn, so certainly you can get— There you go.

I do it. Yeah.

Awesome. Awesome. Last one. Where can our listeners follow you?

Yeah, I'd say On LinkedIn, that's where I'm most kind of active. And then also you talked about my newsletter, Last Money In, where we kind of talk about SPVs within the larger world of venture capital. So yeah, you can follow Last Money In. It's lastmoneyin.beehive.com to follow along on the newsletter as well.

Awesome. It's an incredible newsletter out there, so I would recommend everyone to subscribe, and the link will be there in the show notes below. Uh, thanks so much for making time for this, Alex. It was great having you on, and happy investing.

My pleasure. Really enjoyed the conversation.

Thank you so much. Likewise.