Beezer Clarkson leads Sapphire Partners‘ investments in venture funds domestically and internationally. Beezer began her career in financial services over 20 years ago at Morgan Stanley in its global infrastructure group. Since, she has held various direct and indirect venture investment roles, as well as operational roles in software business development at Hewlett Packard. Prior to joining Sapphire in 2012, Beezer managed the day-to-day operations of the Draper Fisher Jurvetson Global Network, which then had $7 billion under management across 16 venture funds worldwide.
In 2016, Beezer led the launch of OpenLP, an effort to help foster greater understanding in the entrepreneur-to-LP tech ecosystem. Beezer earned a bachelor’s in government from Wesleyan University, where she served on the board of trustees and currently serves as an advisor to the Wesleyan Endowment Investment Committee. She is currently serving on the board of the NVCA and holds an MBA from Harvard Business School.
Chris Douvos founded Ahoy Capital in 2018 to build an intentionally right-sized firm that could pursue investment excellence while prizing a spirit of partnership with all of its constituencies. A pioneering investor in the micro-VC movement, Chris has been a fixture in venture capital for nearly two decades. Prior to Ahoy Capital, Chris spearheaded investment efforts at Venture Investment Associates, and The Investment Fund for Foundations. He learned the craft of illiquid investing at Princeton University’s endowment. Chris earned his B.A. with Distinction from Yale College in 1994 and an M.B.A. from Yale School of Management in 2001.
You can find Chris and Beezer on their socials here.
Connect with Beezer here:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/beezer232
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elizabethclarkson/
Connect with Chris here:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/cdouvos
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisdouvos/
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
[03:07] Beezer’s childhood dream
[04:29] How Chris was let go from his $4.15 job at Yale
[08:09] Concentrated vs diversified portfolios
[09:30] First fund that Beezer and Chris invested
[11:42] Funds that CD and Beezer passed on and regret
[16:07] Favorite term in the LPA? Or not?
[19:18] What piece of advice did a GP in their portfolio share with them?
[23:15] What’s something that Beezer/CD said to a GP that they regret saying?
[28:06] What’s the most interesting fund model they’ve seen to date?
[33:20] What fund invested in 2020-2021 inflated valuations that they’ve reupped on?
[40:18] Events that they went to once but never again
[44:24] Life lessons from CD & Beezer
[54:02] The founding story of Open LP
[55:02] Thank you to Alchemist Accelerator for sponsoring!
[57:58] If you learned something new in this episode, it would mean a lot if you could drop a like, comment or share it with your friends!
SELECT LINKS FROM THIS EPISODE:
- Sapphire Partners
- Ahoy Capital
- Ash Ketchum
- Pokemon
- Why You Should Be Wrong and Alone with Chris Douvos
- The Art and Science of VC Metrics with Beezer Clarkson
- Jacques Cousteau
- OpenLP
- Alchemist Accelerator
- General Catalyst
- David Fialkow
- PRINCO (Princeton endowment)
- Accel
- TIFF Investment Management
- Initialized Capital
- Garry Tan
- Harry Stebbings’ tweet on Initialized Capital Fund I (2nd tweet)
- David Marquardt
- Orrick
- Sequoia Capital
- Doug Leone
- Pat Riley
- Tom Landry (who’s actually the correct attribution for the quote: “A coach is someone who tells you what you don’t want to hear, who has you see what you don’t want to see, so you can be who you have always known you could be.”)
- Pioneer Fund
- TechCrunch: New study of unicorn founders finds most are ‘underdogs,’ and female founders are rising
- SV Angel
- YC Combinator
- Rhapsody Venture Partners
- Charles Hudson
- Precursor Ventures
- Mike Maples Jr.
- First Round Capital
- David Swensen
- Miller Motorcars
- The Creamery
SELECT QUOTES FROM THIS EPISODE:
“If you’re overly concentrated, you better be damn good at your job ‘cause you just raised the bar too high.” – Beezer Clarkson
“Conviction drives concentration, and that you should be so concentrated as to be uncomfortable because otherwise you’re de-worsified, not diversified.” – Chris Douvos
“[David Marquardt] said, ‘You know what? You’re a well-trained institutional investor. And your decision was precisely right and exactly wrong.’ And sometimes that happens. In this business, sometimes good decisions have bad outcomes and bad decisions have good outcomes.” – Chris Douvos
“Sometimes I treat GPs like I treat my teenage children which is: Every word out of a teenager’s mouth is probably a lie designed to make them look better or to hide some malfeasance.” – Chris Douvos
“May we be blessed by a weak benchmark.” – David Swensen
“Miller Motorcars doesn’t accept relative performance for least payments on your Lamborghini.” – Chris Douvos (citing hedge fund managers)
“At the end of the day, the return on an asset is a function of the price you paid for it and the capital it consumes.” – Chris Douvos
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