“A manager doesn’t generally fit into their ultimate quartile until Year 6.”
Apurva Mehta is the co-founding Managing Partner of Summit Peak Investments, a fund-of-funds that boasts a portfolio of both venture fund investments and direct investments, including the likes of Affirm, Anduril, Airtable, Opendoor, and Wish, just to name a few.
Prior to starting Summit Peak in 2018 with his co-founder, Patrick O’Connor, he previously served as Vice President and Deputy Chief Investment Officer for the Children’s Hospital Endowment Portfolio in Fort Worth, Texa. From 2008 to 2011, he was the Director of Portfolio Investments at The Juilliard School in New York City. Apurva began his career in investment consulting and investment banking at Citigroup and Lehman Brothers. He was recognized for his expertise when he was named to aiCIO Magazine’s Top Forty Under Forty in 2012 and 2013 and honored as a Rising Star by Institutional Investor. He holds a BBA in Finance from The George Washington University.
You can find Apurva on his socials here:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/apurvaamehta/
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also watch the episode on YouTube here.
OUTLINE:
[00:00] Intro
[01:40] Tennis
[02:45] Lehman Brothers’ impact on Apurva
[05:28] What AI is missing in investment management
[14:26] Underestimated qualitative metrics that impact a GP’s story
[22:10] Building Cook Children’s Hospital foundation portfolio from scratch
[30:24] Moving quickly as an LP
[31:32] What does Apurva look for in the first meeting?
[37:20] Ugly sweater Christmas parties
[39:56] Apurva’s favorite ugly sweaters over the years
[41:40] Post-credit scene: What does GFW mean?
SELECT LINKS FROM THIS EPISODE:
- Summit Peak Investments
- Cook Children’s Health Care System
- The Julliard School
- Lehman Brothers
- Rahul Prakash
- NOMO Ventures
- US Open
- Wimbledon
- Andre Agassi
- Cincinnati Open
- Miami Open
- Barclays
- Neuberger Berman
- Mark Shafir
- Patrick O’Connor
- Cambridge Associates
- Pitchbook
- Preqin
- Carta
- Y Combinator
- Sequoia Capital
- Benchmark
- PayPal Mafia
- Ray Tonsing
- Caffeinated Capital
- Ron Conway
- SV Angel
- Palace Hotel
- Lattice
- Jack Altman
- Taum Sauk Mountain
SELECT QUOTES FROM THIS EPISODE:
“A manager doesn’t generally fit into their ultimate quartile until Year 6.” — Cambridge Associates
“If everybody’s running the other way—running from the fire, let’s run into it and there’s an opportunity here.” — Apurva Mehta
“When you think about the brand-name firms, they are iconic firms, iconic names. We love the fact that they’re co-invested alongside us. Even if we could build relationships with those firms, we didn’t feel like we’d get the transparency—maybe it was because of our check size, but maybe that’s just because of how they operate—that we needed to go to an investment committee.” — Apurva Mehta
“The transparency at the brand-name firm level is not as high as it is with the kinds of firms we back.” — Apurva Mehta
“Back then, everything was white space, building around network and ecosystems […] It was easier then because the landscape was less crowded. There were 150 backable or quasi-backable seed funds in 2012. 2000 to 3000 now backable and quasi-backable funds in the market. But it was easier then to figure out what we were looking for because it was just brand new.” — Apurva Mehta