Aram Verdiyan is a Partner at Accolade. Previously, he worked on the investment team at Andreessen Horowitz. Before that, Aram worked in BD, sales and marketing at Aviatrix, a cloud native enterprise software company. Aram worked at Accolade from 2012 to 2015 as a Senior Investment Associate and at Deloitte Consulting LLP. He holds an M.B.A from the Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) and a B.S. from the George Washington University.
You can find Aram on his socials here:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/aramverdi
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aram-verdiyan-8099186/
And huge thanks to this episode’s sponsor, Alchemist Accelerator: https://alchemistaccelerator.com/superclusters
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also watch the episode on YouTube here.
Brought to you by Alchemist Accelerator.
OUTLINE:
[00:00] Intro
[02:36] How did Pejman Nozad influence the way Aram thinks about people
[04:06] Aram’s ‘distance traveled’
[05:45] What did imposter syndrome look like in Aram’s life?
[06:36] How Aram cold emailed his way into Accolade Partners
[09:03] The first case study Aram did at Accolade
[10:10] When track record is NOT just TVPI, DPI, or IRR
[15:05] The case for concentrated fund of funds’ portfolio construction
[22:42] Telltale signs of “great” deal flow
[26:32] When does due diligence start for prospective funds for Accolade?
[27:50] Primary sources of data for Accolade
[29:00] The variables that impact fund of funds’ team size
[30:24] How many fund investments should each individual FoF partner have?
[35:13] The case for consistent check sizes
[36:20] The common mistake GPs make when it comes to LP concentration limits
[41:27] How Accolade started investing in blockchain funds
[44:52] Blockchain engineering talent as a function of bear markets
[47:15] Time horizons for blockchain funds
[50:38] Luck vs skill
[53:41] Aram’s early fundraising days at Accolade
[57:38] Thank you to Alchemist Accelerator for sponsoring!
[1:00:14] If you enjoyed the episode, drop us a like, comment or share!
SELECT LINKS FROM THIS EPISODE:
- Accolade Partners
- Equal Ventures
- Wonder Ventures
- Notation Capital
- Mucker Capital
- Amplify Partners
- Preqin Special Report: Private Equity Fund of Funds (Nov 2017)
- Andreessen Horowitz
- Armenian General Benevolent Union (AGBU)
- Pejman Nozad
- Pear VC
- S1E8: Samir Kaji
- S1E6: Ben Choi
- Electric Capital
- Ethereum
- Software development kit (SDK)
- Formula 1 (F1)
- Lu Qi
- Baidu
- Charlie Chaplin
- Mike Tyson
SELECT QUOTES FROM THIS EPISODE:
“[When] you’re generally looking at four to five hundred distinct companies, 10% of those companies generally drive most of the returns. You want to make sure that the company that drives the returns you are invested in with the manager where you size it appropriately relative to your overall fund of funds. So when we double click on our funds, the top 10 portfolio companies – not the funds, but portfolio companies, return sometimes multiples of our fund of funds.” – Aram Verdiyan
“We don’t have varying levels of conviction.” – Aram Verdiyan
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