How to Raise a VC Fund Today, Traits of Top Emerging Managers, Why Everyone is Selling Secondaries, Triple-Layered SPVs | Samir Kaji, Co-founder and CEO of Allocate
The Peel with Turner Novak
Turner Novak
4.6 • 11 Ratings
🗓️ 19 June 2025
⏱️ 102 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
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Summary
Samir Kaji is the Co-founder and CEO of Allocate.
This conversation is a deep dive into the private markets, the evolution of venture capital as an asset class, and how there are now 10x more private investment firms than public companies.
We also unpack why 90% of venture funds simply can’t raise capital right now, advice for anyone raising a fund today, how to stand out as an emerging manager, why secondaries have become a primary driver of liquidity in venture, and how to navigate SPVs as a GP and LP.
We also talk through the AI products they built to evaluate fund managers at Allocate, and how AI is changing venture and company building.
A special thanks to Bolt and Warp for supporting this episode.
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Timestamps:
(5:31) Evolution of the private markets
(17:55) VC markets post-2020
(21:09) Risk / return profiles of various fund sizes
(24:04) Secondaries will drive future venture returns
(33:17) Creative ways to return capital
(36:27) “Curiosity Revenue” in AI
(41:52) Allocate’s Beyond Summit
(43:42) Samir's AI fund analyzer
(46:15) Fintech only 1% of financial services revenue
(50:13) Triple-layered SPVs
(54:50) Breaking down returns in venture
(58:27) How to gauge a fund manager’s access
(1:00:14) Determining appropriate fund size
(1:05:02) 90% of venture funds cannot raise right now
(1:09:50) How to raise a fund today
(1:15:37) ChatGPT roasts Banana Capital
(1:19:56) Traits of the best VCs
(1:22:41) Vetting grit, hustle, and obsession
(1:31:12) Why using AI is table stakes
(1:36:49) Value of podcasts
Check out Allocate
The Peel episode with Eric Vishria
Samir’s Venture Unlocked Podcast
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | So you're sucking a lot of the LP capital out right now. |
| 0:04.0 | And the people that do benefit are the people that are very obvious, |
| 0:07.8 | you know, merging to establish everybody else. |
| 0:10.5 | It is a grind. |
| 0:11.2 | It's not uncommon to see fundraisings for an emerging venture fund to be two years. |
| 0:16.3 | And that's why we see the mortality rate from a fund one to fund to be 50%. |
| 0:23.0 | Fund one to fund four being, you know, what, 20% of firms that start a fund one |
| 0:28.4 | even get to a fund for. |
| 0:30.2 | And that's probably going to be the case until we start to see the liquidity problem, |
| 0:33.9 | start to, you know, resolve. |
| 0:35.5 | Welcome to the Peel. |
| 0:36.7 | I'm your host, Turner Novak, founder of Banana Capital. |
| 0:39.6 | Today's guest is Samir Khagi, co-founder and CEO of Allocate. |
| 0:42.6 | We work with over 250 wealth advisor firms, some large family offices, and we cover everything |
| 0:49.2 | from venture, private equity, and really kind of provide the whole tool set. |
| 0:52.8 | Our conversation is a deep dive into the evolution of the private markets and how there are now |
| 0:57.1 | 10 times more private investment firms than public companies. |
| 1:00.5 | Almost 90% of companies, they're doing over $100 million in revenues, are privately held. |
| 1:06.0 | The private markets are as important as public markets today. |
| 1:09.0 | In fact, it's just one big continuum. |
| 1:15.4 | We talk about how the venture market is evolving. Oftentimes in Twitter, I'll see the demonization of like big firms. And it never actually takes into account that the risk profile is just |
| 1:19.2 | fundamentally different. Why 90% of venture funds simply can't raise capital right now and advice |
... |
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