Building a $1.5B VC Empire on Individual Investors: The Alumni Ventures Story with Mike Collins

The very best deals find their way to the very best venture capitalists. We have over 11,000 individual investors. We have a community that is now hundreds of thousands of people. Many of them are alumni of, you know, top schools or people in position of important business jobs. So we can really help our portfolio companies by making connections. We have kind of a Rolodex on steroids. We We're at the beginnings of a very profound period of innovation and disruption and a kind of a reshuffling of the decks and potentially tens of trillions of dollars of productivity value creation. I've never seen technology that is this powerful and this broadly impactful. And moving this fast.

Hey everyone, this is Prashant and I'll be your host for the VC 10x Podcast. And today we have Mike Collins with us. Mike Collins is the founder and CEO of Alumni Ventures, a firm that's quietly built one of the most unique and successful venture capital models in the industry. Mike has scaled Alumni Ventures to over $1.5 billion in assets under management by doing something most VCs thought was impossible, that is, Building a venture firm primarily around individual investors. In our conversation, Mike shares how he validated and scaled Alumni Ventures to over $1.5 billion in AUM and over 20 active funds. Network-driven approach to deal sourcing and value-add. How their referral network generates 3.2x multiples on invested capital. How a team of 45 investment professionals manage over 20 funds. His bold predictions about the profound period of innovation and disruption we are entering, and lots more. So without wasting any time, let's dive straight in. This episode is sponsored by my own podcasting agency called PodcastNX, where I help venture capitalists, asset managers, allocators, and family offices in starting their own podcast and building a strong brand. PodcastNX is designed in a way to work well with the busy schedule of investors. Where we handle every aspect of podcast production so you can focus on investing. If you're looking to build a strong investor brand, starting a podcast should be right up your priority list. It's the only form of marketing where you can showcase your strong network— in other words, access to limited partners and founders— and grow that network further. And contrary to what most people hear, it's still very early to start a podcast. There are at least 10x more newsletters and 1000x more blogs than there are podcasts in this world. You can learn more about our podcasting services at podcast10x.com. I'll make sure to add the link in the description below. Enjoy this episode.

Hey Mike, so good to have you on the VC10x Podcast. How are you doing?

I'm great. Thanks for having me.

Yeah, it's a pleasure having you on. To start things off, can we start right from the beginnings? What made you start Alumni Ventures about more than a decade back, right? And how did you get the idea and what was that early traction, that early journey of, you know, from a spark to lighting the fire? Tell us about that.

Sure. Well, the story really goes back to 1986 when I actually got my first job in venture capital. Right out of Dartmouth College, I joined a venture capital firm in Boston called TA Associates, which is, you know, an established early venture capital player, really a tremendous firm, you know, run at the time by Kevin Landry, really one of the legends of the business. And really my entire career has been at this intersection of venture capital, innovation, technology, and entrepreneurship. Like a lot of, or at least some VCs, I've kind of flipped between being an entrepreneur and an operator and being an investor. I think there's some real advantages to that. But the genesis of Alumni Ventures was really from my own experience, which was that as an individual, it was really hard to access the quality and quantity of deals that I had come to believe is necessary to invest well in venture capital. So I have So it really came out of what product would I want to have? And underlying that was a few core beliefs. One is that the very best deals find their way to the very best venture capitalists. And so, you know, you can see charts of relative returns of the top investors, the top venture firms, and everyone else. People assume, I guess, that that's because they think VCs at these firms are smarter or change the outcome. They're obviously very smart, talented people, but I think this is more the case where a really strong entrepreneur with a really great company largely has their choice of venture partner. And so that correlation, however, is real. And those deals are largely inaccessible to individual investors. And my other point of view on venture capital is it's a power law business that You need all the data supports a portfolio of at least 50 or 100 companies. If you're sitting there doing a random venture deal every 6 to 18 months, you're doing that because it's fun and it's, you want to learn something or you want to have an impact or stay busy. But I don't believe that's really the optimal strategy. There's just too many variables, too many unknowns. It is too dynamic to believe that you can have that fine of a lens. So again, I think the fundamentals of good teams, good market opportunities, traction, valuation, But I also believe N needs to be a pretty large number. So when I set out to build Alumni Ventures, we really built it around those ideas and the early traction around communities that we were putting together. And we started obviously in the name around alumni of pretty famous schools, Dartmouth, Harvard, Stanford, MIT. We're now at 25 or 30 alumni groups. We got early traction from alumni who said, yeah, it just makes sense that we could do better. in this asset class together than we can do it individually, that this is really a team sport. And I believe they bought into that same vision of big portfolios, invest with really top-tier lead VCs, and use the power of the community and network to help our portfolio companies. So that's really the key to The key question is how do you get into the very best deals at the end of the day in venture capital? And obviously networking and domain expertise is essential. And our strategy as a co-investor is a pretty simple value proposition that we say to an entrepreneur, yeah, your lead investor is a special relationship. They're going to go on your board. They're going to be, it's like marriage. Right? Kind of thing. You're going to live with this person maybe 10 years or more, but you're always going to have other investors on your cap table. And so we believe we can be a really strong co-investor for a CEO because of the power of our network. We have, you know, over 11,000 individual investors. We have a community that is now hundreds of thousands of people. These are, many of them are alumni of top schools or people in position of important business jobs. So we can really help our portfolio companies by making connections. We have kind of a Rolodex on steroids. So that was the genesis story and really the initial opportunity we sell.

Right. Yeah, that's quite interesting. And clearly, uh, 10 years down the road, we see that it's clearly working, that thesis that you started out with. Right. And, uh, you know, there is this thing called fund product market fit as well. Right. So at what point in that journey did you feel that, okay, this is starting to work, right? I'm seeing numbers growing. I'm seeing the energy around it flow. People are coming to me, people are willing to invest and so on. What was that point for you and how did you recognize that, okay, this is product market fit for me?

Yeah, I mean, this was, uh, you know, I agree. It's, it's product market founder fit, I think is really what we look for a lot of the times in the investments we make. You know, we were starting to see that really on the, on both sides of the ledger, we would meet with alumni. And again, this was hand-to-hand combat for our first— Green D1 is our first Dartmouth fund. I think we're on Green D9 or 10 now, but Green D1 was a lot of individual meetings with fellow alums and the number of people who said, this just makes all the sense in the world I'm in. Obviously people willing to buy your product is the ultimate market signal. But then on the other side of the ledger, our ability to access really good companies, some of our first investments were companies like Sleeper, Which is, you know, was, I think Nan had 6 people when we first invested. Now they're one of the leading kind of fantasy sports companies around. You know, a company called Groups, which deals with kind of addiction clinics, was an, you know, one of our very first investments. You know, we just, we were getting signals that, you know, because of connections, And the value proposition, we were able to access kind of top-tier deals again. And that clearly said, hey, if that works at Dartmouth, that'll work at Harvard, Stanford. And now we've expanded even beyond alumni networks. So a lot of our investors now didn't go to these schools, but they have an interest in deep technology or blockchain or AI or those kinds of things. So we You know, we've now expanded to build communities just around areas of interest, not just where you went to school.

Okay. So is that only on the LP side that, okay, you're taking commitments from even non-alumni, or is it also on the deals that you're making, the people you're investing in? Has that also expanded and you're also investing in people outside the alumni network?

Absolutely. I mean, again, the way you get into deals at the very early stages of our business was usually there was like an alumni connection. But now because our network is well beyond just alumni of these schools, that yeah, we'll, we, we're just investing in great companies right now. And then, you know, again, the value proposition to an entrepreneur is that, you know, we have a, a just a tremendous network that, you know, is alumni of these schools, but It's also, you know, other people as well, obviously.

Got it. Yeah, that's quite interesting. So the alumni is now your moat as a firm in a way, and everything revolves around it. And because of the network effects, you've now sort of expanded beyond the alumni themselves and taking commitments from and also investing in people in those networks who might not be alumni as well. Quite interesting. Yeah. And how you run it, uh, run Alumni Ventures is also quite interesting. So once you found product market fit, uh, you saw that, okay, I can just replicate the same model for other schools as well. And you did that quite successfully. And what's interesting to note is that there's just a 40-person investment committee that's overseeing 20+ funds, uh, at Alumni Ventures, right? So can you tell me how does that work? Uh, because every fund I would believe would have somewhat different way of operating. Correct me if I'm wrong. Yeah. How does this same 40-person committee align with all of that and function efficiently and consistently make quality decisions, whether it's from one fund or the other?

So let me clarify a little bit that we have, you know, 45 or so investing professionals, full-time VCs at the company, and we have roughly twice that number of people in support and back office, right? Dealing with 11,000 individual investors and we're, as you know, one of the more active VCs on the planet. So we do almost a deal a day. So there's a lot of back office and support people, but the 45 investing professionals are broken into 10 teams, and that is very intentional. First of all, venture capital is a business that is about the deals you make and you want to avoid deals you miss, right? So I think 2 really good venture capitalists can look at the same deal and view it quite differently. This is not science. There is a combination of analytics and instinct and pattern recognition, So I think by having actually 10 independent teams, that is actually a huge strength of Alumni Ventures. It allows us to look at things with expansive eyes. At the same time, we have a centralized office of investing. We have a process that we go through. So you could have, and we have the Crimson team and the Blue team, right? Crimson obviously being our Harvard alumni group. But that team will use the same scorecard to evaluate deals, same due diligence memos and processes. All of our deals are reviewed by an investment committee. Our chief investing officer. But we think it's very important to look at opportunities as much as what can go right as what can go wrong. And so, you know, this isn't one big amorphous group of 45 people. This is 10 teams that have, you know, people with different levels of experience, different areas of vertical expertise, Our investment teams are actually quite T-shaped. And what I mean by that is they're all generalists. They all look at a lot of deals. They're all trained in kind of the fundamentals of being a good venture investor, but we encourage our people to develop areas of special interest where they can really Get to know the companies, get to know the KPIs, get to know the really strong lead investors. So we'll have an individual within a team who has taken on quantum computing or will take on cybersecurity or even something like having a strong interest in startups coming out of Israel. So we encourage all of our people to be, you know, they're on a team, they work as a team, but they develop in essence their own practice, which allows them to really develop some, you know, domain expertise. So, you know, if, if there's a sports tech deal, you know, everybody within AB knows to go to Keaton because that's an area that he has done a lot of work in, made a lot of investments. But we think having 10 teams is almost like having 10 venture funds within AV. So that's kind of how we do it. We operationalize it, we do it with discipline, but we use, we use a team approach.

Got it. Quite interesting. So these 10 teams are not separated by fund, but rather separated by their expertise. That's what you're trying to say, right?

Yeah. I mean, they're, they're, they're organized around specific alumni groups on one hand, but each individual within those teams has one or two areas of domain expertise. We call them practices that, that they, that they're able to pursue. So it's a, it's a blend of team-based approach. generalist principles and specific domain areas that they have a particular interest in.

Absolutely. Quite interesting. Now let's talk about the decision-making aspect, right? The people who are calling the shots on whether to make an investment or not, right? Let's say the GPs, right? So how many GPs are there? And is that like a consensus-based investment decision that, okay, let's say we have 5 GPs. If 3 say we're going to invest, 2 say we don't. we go ahead and invest, or who is in charge of making the investments? If there's like a singular person who's in charge of one fund that, okay, I'm gonna take the shots on this fund, how does that decision-making work?

Yeah, so each of our teams has a managing partner. So the team will in essence sponsor the deal, do the due diligence, and propose it to the Office of Investing. And there'll be an investment committee put around that deal who will then vote on it. So that's really how our process works. It's pretty straightforward. Each of the 10 teams sponsors their own deals. They're double-checked by an investment committee. Other MPs serve on the investment committee, as does our, you know, members of our Office of Investing. But It's a very efficient process with, I think, good checks and balances.

Absolutely. Love the way you have designed it and how it's working, right? So your referrals at Alumni Ventures generate a 3.2x multiple on invested capital, right? What specifically about this network drives such high-performing deal flow?

Yeah, I mean, I think it's, as I've mentioned, really good entrepreneurs find their way to really good lead investors. So our strategy of being a co-investor alongside really top leads, I think is part of the story there. I also think venture capital is still a network-based business. So it's really important to be very well connected. I think we have one of the stronger networks in the industry. I think that is very helpful. I think we do a really good job in monitoring our portfolio and adding value to our companies. So our ability to put more capital to work in companies that are really getting traction and escape velocity is really one of the ways you get really strong returns. And again, some of it is just a numbers game that again, if you invest consistently with discipline over time and you're a patient long-term investor, things turn out well for you. But it is also a humbling business where you're going to have companies that fail. So it's just a couple of recent investments. We were investors in a company called Rigetti, which is a quantum computing company that SPAC'd and then was really in the doldrums for years and then really had some breakthroughs and quantum computing really kind of Got under the spotlight and their technology was really valued and the stock really exploded from there. So that was a team, an investment we made, I don't know, 7 or 8 years ago. So we had to be very patient. One of our portfolio companies, Circle, just IPO'd a couple of weeks ago, right? And Again, this is a company we were in in 2018, 2019 maybe. But this isn't day trading. This is investing in teams that are trying to change the world and tackling really tough problems and have to show a lot of grit and persistence. And it's part of the job of being a venture capitalist is kind of the being focused on process, disciplined portfolio management. You do your best to put more money to work in the companies that are doing really well, and you try and be helpful to your portfolio companies. So it's, you know, there's no magic, there's no, you know, get-rich-quick ideas here, but it is a a really important part of, you know, what we try to do. You know, and we think if you do the right thing, the outcomes take care of themselves for everybody.

Yeah, absolutely. And you talk about this AUM treadmill, right? Problem and how you, how your flat fee model is designed to create a better alignment with your LPs, right? So can you talk about it a little bit?

Yeah, it's, uh, you know, obviously alignment is something that, again, over 30, 40 years in the business is really very important. Um, and so we work really hard on, on that in the, in the creating of Alumni Ventures. First of all, we're ourselves as a company privately held, you know, we're owned by the teammates who work here and by our customers actually. So there's really strong alignment between kind of LP GP where we allow our customers to invest in the company. So we think that that's a really strong alignment and kind of a long-term perspective that we really encourage in the structuring of our funds. We really encourage our investors to view this as kind of an annual allocation. The ability, you know, we think it's just good investing hygiene always to not be a market timer, whether it's public equities or real estate or anything. You know, I think it's one of the human biases to think, to overestimate their ability to kind of time things that perfectly, right? So we encourage our investors to invest, to kind of have a budget and an appropriate allocation to the asset class and then invest in it consistently over time. And, you know, I, again, I think if you're buying the S&P 500, you're better off just doing that on a monthly recurring basis over time. Kind of thing, right? So we try to encourage people to take the same approach to venture capital. So most of our funds are kind of annual vintages and we encourage people to kind of budget a certain amount and put it in every vintage. That's one way to get your number of portfolio companies to be a bigger number, which we think is a really good idea. And we try to make it really simple for people where it's like one check, one capital call, right? So if you're going to go into our AI fund or our deep tech fund or our Harvard fund, it's just one check-in. And we keep our minimums low and our funds are typically 20 to 30 companies, so they're well diversified. So The simplest way to do this, if you're not really wanting to dig in and evaluate individual deals, is just find a fund that you believe in or a family of funds that you believe in and just every year put a check in. And after 3 or 4 years, you have a really nice portfolio. And then ideally what's happening is you're starting to get liquidity and You can start to recycle things and get the advantage of compounding then over time. So I think these are well-understood principles of investing, and we've just tried to apply them to this asset class that was really designed for institutional LPs and Can seem risky or confusing to individual investors. But one of the things that I've seen also develop, which is so many companies are staying private longer, right? That there's so much value now that is just being created in the private markets that if you're just going to wait for a company to go public, At a $25 billion valuation. I mean, that's a heck of a starting point. And again, in, I think, well-meaning, but I think it may be occasionally unfortunate unintended consequences of kind of regulatory frameworks. It's just become an industry that You know, has been the purview of endowments and family offices and sovereign wealth funds. And, you know, we're just trying to democratize it a bit more by letting more people have access to venture capital in what we think is kind of a smart, simple way.

Absolutely. Yeah, that's quite interesting. On that note, are all your LPs individual investors or do you also have institutional investors as well?

No, the vast majority of our LPs are individuals and they range from people where this is their very first kind of investment into venture capital and they want to learn and take it slow to people that are actually very wealthy and very sophisticated and they just appreciate our deal flow. A lot of times they'll be on that end of the spectrum. They'll already have access to some funds, but they want to supplement it with some sectors that they don't think their funds cover very well, or they see some of the deals we're doing and they're just saying, geez, I would like to make an investment there. So we try to really meet people where they are. And if you're interested in venture capital, we probably have something of interest for you, whether it's just a beginner or somebody who wants to just kind of fire and forget this for this asset class, or people who really believe and want to learn. I mean, one thing I do believe in strongly is that venture investing really sharpens the blade for just being a good investor, period. Because you are really forced to the fundamentals and kind of the tip of the spear here. And so when we open up our deals to our investors, we share our due diligence, we share our data room, A lot of times we're well thought of by the management team, and so our funds will write a check for $2 million, but we'll be able to share another million dollars with our investors individually. We can't always do that, but when we can, we like to do it. And our investors love that, the ability to look at a deal, evaluate it for themselves, and decide whether they want to add that individual name to their portfolio.

Absolutely. Yeah, that's quite commendable, you know, scaling a firm to $1.5, uh, around billion dollars in AUM on the back of individual investors. Uh, that's quite commendable. And that also sends a note out to emerging managers who are trying to raise that there is an opportunity. If you wanna raise even from individual investors, you can raise a good sizable fund to start with. And if you perform well, even a bigger fund like yours, a great example, right? So that's how they— and on the institutional LP side, I believe all these institutions that you are covering, all these colleges that you are, you have funds around, let's say Harvard or others, they also have their own endowments as well. And I believe they're also deploying into VC funds. And I know for a fact that you are not affiliated with these colleges or institutions directly. But why would they not deploy into a fund that's focused on their alumni? Has that not happened?

I think we've been, you know, I think we've been approached by some of these groups and endowments. I think it's a matter of, you know, we know our lane. We're always open-minded. And I think, you know, over the next 10 years we'll probably expand beyond individual investors, to bring in institutions. I mean, obviously endowments make a lot of sense that, you know, I think just again, to take my alma maters, Dartmouth and Harvard, you know, we've probably invested in 300 of their alums who have founded companies. So, you know, I think it probably is in our future. But we were just kind of maniacally focused on building our retail business for the first decade. But one thing about that I've always believed when I started this business is we were really taking kind of a generational approach to building our firm. And so really the first decade was just to build out our retail business, build out our discipline on accessing the very And I think in the second decade, the 2 big initiatives are really to grow our network internationally. So we're later this year opening an office in London and an office in Tokyo. And I think we'll also move into non-individual sources of capital in our second decade. So I would not say no, I would just say it's not yet been the focus of the firm. So I think that's more in our future.

Absolutely. Yeah, that's a massive takeaway for emerging managers that so much opportunity and so much funds are out there, even in the retail market and individual investors, that even if you just focus on that, you can build a pretty sizable firm just out of it. And the fact that you're still saying that this is still in our future, that we are going to think about institutional investors, that just says that there is still more opportunity in the retail space for you to tap into. So that's a great learning there. And now talking about scaling the firm from under $1 million in burn to over $100 million in commitments, what were the biggest operational or cultural challenges you faced? In that process?

I mean, it's just a, it's a very transaction-heavy business. So by being a co-investor and by building, having really a lot of volume on both the investor side and on the deal side, there's just a lot of transactions. So really building systems was a lot of the lift. Of the first decade of the business. I mean, this spring we sent out something like 40,000 K-1s or something to individual investors. And with a 99.99% accuracy takes a lot of systems and technology. One of the great benefits of AI is actually it really helps Alumni Ventures most than versus most venture firms, which have a, they do a much smaller number of deals, much more concentrated, a much smaller investor LP base. So just a lot of the operational challenges were of a scaling fintech company. So Again, I think of myself probably 50% fintech CEO, 50% venture capitalist. And I would say most VCs would probably say they're 90% VC and 10% operator. So it's just a different ballgame. And again, where most And this is, I think, true of entrepreneurship where most people viewed that as a challenge. Why would I want to deal with an individual investor who writes a $50,000 check? That sounds like a pain in the ass, right? We viewed that as a feature. So we look for this in our portfolio companies, which is what do you do differently, think differently than the rest of the world? And, you know, this is what I did when I founded this company, is I viewed co-investing as a really important part of our strategy and building a network of individuals as an important part of our strategy.

Got it. Quite interesting. Um, how, how do you look at the current, uh, venture ecosystem? You know, and how are you, how has that influenced how you do your investing? Has that changed anything about how you are doing things at Alumni Ventures?

I mean, I think one has to start with what is the most important thing going on in venture capital right now. And just what I would just say is with artificial intelligence, we're probably That technology is probably the biggest technology breakthrough of our lifetime. And so there's a lot of noise in the system, what I would say, of tariffs and politics and these kinds of things. And I'm not diminishing them, but I'm saying in the context of AI, I think all of that stuff is noise. So I would just say we are at the beginnings of a very profound period of innovation and disruption and a kind of a reshuffling of the decks and potentially tens of trillions of dollars of Productivity, value creation. So it's almost every day now. I've never seen technology that is this powerful and this broadly impactful and moving this fast. So I think most people, including most venture capitalists, frankly, just underestimate it. And it's not just in software, but I think we're going to see profound impacts in healthcare. Just this morning, really exciting news coming out of Google and some of its discoveries around the genome. It's just going to change healthcare, I think, pretty significantly over the next 5 or 10 years. I think we're seeing huge innovation going on in energy. I think education is going to get disrupted. So I just think that it's going to touch almost every part of life. Is that over the next 2 years, the next 5 years, the next 10 years? Again, with humility, I can't kind of call that, but I just know that one has to operate their business With AI in mind, and one definitely needs to invest through the lens of AI. And that, you know, every deal we look at now, a lot of the discussion is this company going to benefit from these geometric improvements or are they potentially just going to get swamped by them? So, you know, I would say AI, AI, AI, and everything else is noise.

Got it. Totally loud and clear. And how do you think about liquidity and generating DPI at the firm? And with 10 funds running under the firm and with the venture environment being what it is, it is hard to generate that liquidity and DPI, right? So how do you think about that? How do you think about exits? And the IPO market is not very open or always open. How do you get those returns into the fund and return that capital to LPs?

Yeah, I mean, I think I'm actually quite optimistic coming out of kind of COVID in the last couple of years. You know, obviously, you know, we're very excited about some of the recent IPOs, including, you know, as I mentioned, our portfolio company Circle. And M&A activity is way up. I think that there has been no change in the number of great companies being started and the value accruing to those companies, but it has been a pretty sluggish exit market. So again, if you're taking a longer-term view, Obviously returns are what we're paid to provide, but as long as the underlying asset is continuing to compound in value, that is the most important thing, right? The second thing I would say is there's clearly been a move where a lot of really successful companies are staying private. And they're saying it allows me to think in the longer term. The ability to access large pools of capital has changed dramatically over the last 10 years, so I don't need to go public for capital reasons. And frankly, the public markets can be fairly shortsighted. And do I need to deal with that? And I think very rational, thoughtful entrepreneurs are saying not yet, or they're postponing it. And what I see happening is I see a more sophisticated secondary market evolving where the ability to take chips off the table for early investors and for employees is really evolving very quickly now. In fact, Alumni Ventures is spinning out a new company that is going to focus on that particular market specifically because a lot of our 11,000 investors would love access to some of these late-stage private ventures. And they've asked, can we provide that for them? So we're going to be announcing something later in the summer that addresses that. So I think that market will continue to evolve. I am also hoping that there is new innovation and new approaches and new thinking around what is required to be a public company. And again, I think for some companies that discipline is really excellent. It can be a really important branding event for a company to go public, but You know, it also comes with costs. And again, I think I obviously founded a business to help democratize this asset class. I think it's one of the unfortunate side effects of the public market system at the time That is discouraging companies to be public because it just makes it hard to be a participant in these wonderful technologies. So again, 15, 20 years ago, you would've had a company like OpenAI or SpaceX. Those would've been available to the retail investor. And they could have participated in that technology, but we've created a system where the leadership and the boards of those companies say, that is not the best thing for us to be public. So again, well-meaning, but unintended consequences is we've made it in a way less democratic and less public. But the market finds a way. And again, if you focus like we do on trying to just invest in great teams tackling big hard problems, we think that that'll evolve either through a more sophisticated public market. Secondaries, I think, will continue to become more accessible. But, you know, maybe there's also a third way where, you know, companies that are in these later stages have access and, and, but, but perhaps not to the, you know, daily NAV pricing and kind of short-term thinking of public stocks.

Absolutely. Yeah. Quite, quite insightful there. With that, we'll move to the rapid-fire round wherein I'll ask you 6 quick questions about the investments you're making at Alumni ventures via different funds. And so the first one is, what are the sectors and regions you invest in?

Yeah, so we're very broad-based. Obviously, you know, things like energy, defense tech, AI. We have a couple of AI funds and robotics. We have a fund, we focus on women entrepreneurs. We think that there's actually some gender arbitrage to be had. In investing. Obviously energy, huge things. One of the more interesting funds we have is a Humans First Fund. So with all this technology and AI and robotics, we also believe that there's great opportunities for kind of human-first investing. People want to physically get together in spaces. They want to do things in real life. So a lot of times when you see a trend, you'll see kind of a shadow trend. So again, because we're such a large investor, we're really investing across the horizon.

Absolutely. I completely agree with you on that, that simultaneously the human aspect of investing should not be forgotten because I think that is something that will not go away regardless of what comes up. And regions also, do you invest globally right now?

Yeah. So again, about 90% of our investments are domestically founded in the United States currently. And again, very much following the venture industry. So a lot in California, New York, Austin, Seattle, the big technology hubs, Boston, of course. But we do invest internationally. One of our portfolio companies, Oura, people might be familiar with the Oura Ring, is very popular as an international investment we have. And we have many. But again, over the next 5 years, we're looking to do a higher proportion of our deals globally. We just think there's Silicon Valley is spread from California to the United States, and it's really kind of taking over the world. So, you know, we go where great entrepreneurs are, and now great entrepreneurs are everywhere, and we plan to be there as well.

Absolutely. At what stage do you typically invest?

Yeah, I mean, we're, we invest along the spectrum, but it would be kind of a, if you were to look at a pie chart, we like to get in early. So we do a lot of pre-seed, seed deals. Obviously those are, you know, have a much higher mortality rate, but, you know, A all the way down the alphabet, you know, we'll look at kind of price, risk, return, but we'll invest along the spectrum. But, you know, with a bias toward, you know, getting in early. And then putting more money to work behind the companies really, you know, getting traction.

Right. And what's the typical check size you put in and do you lead rounds?

We never lead rounds, so we're only a co-investor. You know, at the pre-seed, seed stage, we're writing $50,000 to $150,000 checks. You know, at kind of the Series A, it's more at the million or $2 million range, and then, you know, kind of in the $3 to $7 million range if it's, you know, down the alphabet a bit.

Got it. Where can founders get in touch in case there is a direct way?

Yeah, so, you know, our website's easy to remember, whether you're a potential investor or you're an entrepreneur, it's av.vc, and we make it pretty easy on our website to, you know, send us a note. I would say for founders, it's best to come in through a connection. So, you know, an existing investor you have contacting one of our partners is probably gonna get more visibility from us than just coming in over the transom. Again, it's actually one of the tests for an entrepreneur is, you know, how can you How can you make your way to the right person? And again, just keep in mind that we're a co-investor. So a lot of times you're, you need to look for your lead first, and then we're the kind of player that can really help you round out a round. That's typically the order of operations.

Right. Absolutely. Last one, where can our listeners follow you?

Yeah. Again, I'm on social media mostly with the AV.VC handle. We also do a lot of webinars and blogs. We do masterclasses that really, we take our responsibility to educate very seriously. So I just encourage people to come to our website and sign up. Just to get our content. That's really the best place to start.

Amazing. With that, we come to the wrap and thanks so much for making time for this, Mike. I've always wanted to have you on the show and I'm glad you're here today and loved all your insights and especially loved how you built Alumni Ventures from first principles thinking in your own way, not how the industry moves. Which is quite commendable, which is rare to see. Most people follow the playbook. You did it your own way. Uh, many kudos to that. Uh, thank you for coming on and I wish you all the best and hopefully we'll have something to work on going ahead.

Great. Good fun. Very nice to meet you. Thanks for your time today.

Likewise. Thank you.

Thanks to you, Let's Move. Okay. Have a good one.

Thank you.