Jamie Rhode, Principal at family office Verdis Investment Management, on how to drive the most meaningful returns in early-stage venture as a LP

Welcome back to the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast.

On today’s show, we bring the institutional family office perspective to private markets. We talk with Jamie Rhode, a Principal at Verdis Investment Management. Verdis is a single family office based in Philadelphia that was built on the rich legacy of the family, a major business family, that has spanned over three centuries.

At Verdis, Jamie is focused on venture capital, private equity, and hedge fund investment sourcing and due diligence. She joined Verdis from Bloomberg, where she held roles in both equity research and credit analysis. Verdis is an active investor in the venture capital ecosystem, leveraging a data-driven investment approach that Jamie spearheads to allocate to mainly smaller and emerging managers. They’ve taken a very thoughtful approach to asset allocation, particularly venture, and have had a number of valuable insights on asset allocation come out of that process.

Jamie and I had a fascinating discussion about the allocator’s perspective on venture capital and smaller fund managers.

We discussed:

• Why Jamie believes that 90% of investment returns come from asset allocation strategy.
• Why smaller funds often drive the best returns.
• Why illiquidity and duration are so critical to producing outsized returns, with Verdis finding that the last 20% of the hold period of a fund producing 46% of the returns.
• Why Verdis believes in the strength of the YC network.
• The perfect fund size and portfolio construction.
• Why former operators may not make the best fund managers in Jamie’s view.

Thanks Jamie for coming on the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast to share your wisdom and data-driven perspectives.