Chris Douvos 🇺🇸

A super fun podcast with my old friend @tseides! #Investing #VC #OpenLP itun.es/i6d85Vb #iTunes

@jfcgib @Evan_Schiller I got a tour last year and Gil was talking about how they needed to find distance … that #6 tee sets up a shot across #5. Added maybe 30-40 yds. Such a cool hole. The inverse bunkers (like NGLA) on 7 are cool

@Evan_Schiller Anyone notice the new 6 tee box between the trees?

Yale GC...this Macdonald & Raynor gem is set to reopen following its restoration by Gil Hanse. Having played over 200 rounds at Yale, it holds a special place in my heart. I had the opportunity to capture some photographs last fall & look forward to shooting it again this spring.

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗛𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘆 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗬𝗮𝗹𝗲 𝗚𝗼𝗹𝗳 𝗖𝗼𝘂𝗿𝘀𝗲 Past to present — this is our story. 𝙐𝙥 𝙉𝙚𝙭𝙩: How to Restore a Golf Course

@moorehn I grew up on Church and McDonalnd (Church Ave on the F train) in the 80s. When I tell people stories, they tell me I sound like a character from a Jonathan Lethem novel. LOL

Cannot stress enough that Brooklyn in the 90s was considered sketchy and mostly impassable. Even in Park Slope, which is now one giant playground for bourgeois parents, you had to be careful on 5th Avenue and most of 7th Avenue. Brooklyn Tech kids would get mugged constantly around Hoyt-Schermerhorn. "Flatbush Avenue" was mostly heard on the news paired with "there was a shooting today on"

@Hawksian @Top100Rick @S_HennesseyGD There's a whole maintenance endowment aimed at keeping the course in great shape. It'll be university employees + automation + contractors and will hopefully suffice

@Top100Rick @S_HennesseyGD I agree with you about the cart paths, however, if Yale is going back to having the university employees do the maintenance then the less work they have to do the better and concrete cart paths for the cart jockeys will help.

Some early photos of Hanse and Wagner's restoration work at Yale have dropped. (Courtesy of Yale) yalebulldogs.com/galleries/yale…

@yoheinakajima @pavelprata Haha - thanks for the shout-out!

@pavelprata if you can get cendana or ahoy, i assume you’ll have no trouble filling the fund

Been noticing a “golden touch LP” dynamic around first-time managers. One recognizable LP commits and suddenly other allocators stop underwriting from zero – they’re mostly trying to understand what that person already saw. Very similar to startup rounds where a known lead collapses diligence for everyone else, and sometimes that single signal ends up closing most of the fund. What’s the most famous “golden touch LP” you’ve ever heard of?

@WFAN660 @BrandonTierney @sal_licata Really enjoyed listening, gents! It was drive time for he here in Cali and I'll miss it

BT and Sal sign off as they wrap up their final show 🫡 @BrandonTierney @sal_licata

@BigJohn043 @endowment_eddie Ugh. No. Ropes is far, far, far better if you're in PE world. In VC, Cooley is the most "fair"

@endowment_eddie K&E form is as close to industry standard as you are going to get....

Fund lawyers are the absolute worst. In so many terms negotiations, GPs have no idea what their counsel actually put in their docs. Carry gross vs net of fees, fee step down provisions, transfer of interest. List goes on. We need industry standard documentation.

@KiteLakeStudio @interesting_aIl Haha - I was wondering the same thing and plugged it into AI and got this once it calculated the force: 19,406 newtons (N) is a substantial force, roughly equivalent to the weight of a large passenger vehicle or a small elephant. LOL

@interesting_aIl If the car has a mass of 2 kg, and it hits your ankle at 217 mph, how much of an ouch is that?

Electric tether car reaches 217 mph

@patrickjkoenig @LouStagner Not sure what's more impressive, Patrick: that amazing stat or the fact that you had the patience to play the inevitable 6 hour round at Crystal LOL (j/k. I enjoy Crystal, but don't love the 9 min tee time interval. That course backs uppppppp some days)

This is nuts. I once hit all 18 greens and all the par 5's in two shots at Crystal Springs golf course in Burlingame. I am 0 for 16,987 lifetime on Hole-in-one attempts.

@chrisfralic @pavelprata @firstround @joshk @btrenchard @robhayes @phineasb @Uber @Square @Roblox @doubleverify @AppNexus The coolah for the Moolah, baby!

@cdouvos @pavelprata @firstround @joshk @btrenchard @robhayes @phineasb @Uber @Square @Roblox @doubleverify @AppNexus Gotta put that Moolah in the Coolah

Look at @firstround Fund II ($125M). @joshk @btrenchard @robhayes @chrisfralic @phineasb backed Seed rounds that generated $290BN in market cap: @Uber ($180BN Market Cap) @Square ($45BN Market Cap) @Roblox ($62BN Market Cap) @doubleverify ($2.5BN Market Cap) @AppNexus ($1.6BN Acquisition) @WarbyParker ($2.2BN Market Cap) @moat ($850M Acquisition) @HotelTonight ($465M Acquisition) 1 fund. 8 category-defining companies. This is the Seed stage blueprint.

@endowment_eddie We used to say at Old Ivy: 15% compounded forever is a lot of money!

Long term investing is about winning at the margin. A 12% versus 10% compounded return results in a 44% difference in total value after 20 years. $10k turns into $98k instead of $67k. Probably makes sense to celebrate it.

@bryce 😂😂😂 Harvard (1636) William & Mary (1693) Yale (1701) Princeton (1746) Columbia (1754) U of Penn (1740) Brown (1764) Rutgers (1766) Dartmouth (1769) Coll of Charleston (1770) U of Georgia (1785) Franklin & Marshall College (1787) Georgetown (1789) annnnnd . . . UNC (1789)

What’s older than unc?

@edsuh First Round has a ton of engagement across their portfolio and high NPS among entrepreneurs (at least the ones I've spoken to)

Other than YC, is there a single example of a VC firm that’s truly built a community around their brand? So many VCs boast about their “community building” efforts with their founders. Yet all that amounts to in most cases is a handful of generic events (dinners, conferences, retreats), generic content (blog posts on GTM and hiring, mediocre podcasts no one listens to), and Slack channels that die after a few posts. YC is the only firm I’ve seen that’s built a real community which has become self reinforcing, broad, and yet still feels exclusive. Founders and alums who stay closely connected, who go out of their way to help each other, invest in each other, who for years after the program ends proudly display their batch year on all their social profiles. There is an intense sense of belonging, akin to school spirit, which continually spreads and elevates the YC brand globally. VCs who throw around that term, take note: what YC has done is real community building.

"May you be blessed with a weak benchmark" - D Swensen

@alexklein0x @TrueBridgeCP @jbkupperman @PlexoCapital @GEMCapitalCY @RecastCapital @PartnersCap @johnbeil @UW @CalPERS @VanderbiltU This is a good list 😉

top search firms obsess over top multistage giants. im building nucleus to support the emerging and on-the-way managers building tomorrow’s top 10. my take: at least 5 new funds crack every list by 2030, replacing legacy platforms bleeding their best partners to back them properly, we’re curating a network of lps who actually support ems, especially at fund i and ii. goal is to build through recs from trusted folks who’ve raised recently, but i’d love to meet any lp who backed an em in the past 12 months. ems, who are the lps you’re proud to have behind you? drop names. this will be a good one :) (ps- there’s a section for funds under $20m and one for larger. will matrix out as it grows to keep it useful. community goes live on the nucleus site in august.)

@lennysan Speakman shower head. 10/10 life improvement

What’s something you bought (or were gifted) that’s under ~$200 that makes you very happy?

@west4thstreet @endowment_eddie Would love to catch up! Shoot me a DM!

@cdouvos @endowment_eddie Also, hey, Chris! Been a long time - like 11/12 years! Hope you’re well!

My favorite LP is the $2-400M family office doing VC fund of funds, pays an advisor, and has an in-house CIO/team. VC fees: 2.5/25 Fund of fund fees: 1.0/5 Advisor fees: 0.30/0 In-house staff: 1.0/0 5% and 30% on a look through basis. Should just park it in $QQQ. *I’m aware advisors provide add’l services and recycling can negate impact of fees

@endowment_eddie I think the real lesson of the "Yale case" is "don't try this at home" but what people actually took away was that you need to be 20% private equity, 15% emerging markets, etc etc (or whatever the numbers were on page whatever) LOL

@cdouvos Yeah, with you. For me, I tend to think in terms of net/net returns and process. Don’t be Yale is a real thing—many LPs would benefit from more efficient team/process/portfolio construction.

@endowment_eddie asymmetric payoff = "hey, you never know" and optionality = "you gotta be in it to win it". LOL

@endowment_eddie Indeed - lots of levers. I do agree that the (vast?) majority of VC LPs are better off buying the Q's, although someone sometime read Pioneering or got seduced by the venture-industrial complex and is out there using lottery slogans with ivy league veneer