How I Invest with David Weisburd
EP135: How to Access Top Quartile Venture Capital Funds w/Mel Williams
04 Feb 2025
In this episode of How I Invest, I have a conversation with Mel Williams, Co-Founder and General Partner at TrueBridge Capital Partners. We dive into TrueBridge’s pivotal role as Forbes' data partner for the prestigious Midas List, its strategic approach to venture capital fund-of-funds investing, and how the firm consistently identifies and backs the top-performing fund managers. Mel provides a masterclass on portfolio construction, risk management, and scaling a successful venture investment platform. Whether you’re an institutional investor, a fund manager, or simply intrigued by the inner workings of venture capital, this episode is packed with essential takeaways.
Full Episode
We're not distracted by what's happening in other asset classes. And as a result, we think we're simply broader and deeper in the asset class than many other investors are. We've been generating best-in-class returns for our investors for almost 20 years.
All of our mature funds are generating somewhere between a 3x and a 5x TVPI, or total value to paid-in capital multiple, and a 3 plus x DPI, or distributions to paid-in capital multiple. We believe we have one of the best networks across the venture industry, which increases our insight and our access to the best performing investment opportunities.
And then finally, we've got a team of over 14 investment professionals with over 100 cumulative years of experience investing in the top performing venture managers and the best performing venture companies in the industry. Tell me about the story about how Truebridge got involved in the Midas list.
Forbes started publishing the Midas list back in 2001. And in 2009, they stopped publishing the list as a result of the global financial crisis and the pressures it was putting on the publishing industry, including Forbes. We reached out to Forbes in probably 2010 to begin a conversation with them about how we could be helpful to them in relaunching the Midas list.
And today we're really the part of the data partner to Forbes for the Midas list. And what that means is we collect all the data, We confirm all that data with the best performing GPs and the CEOs of the companies that are really driving performance in the Midas list. We generate the list through a model that we manage every year with Forbes.
We work with Forbes to kind of vet the list every year with a blue ribbon panel of industry experts and industry advisors and consultants. And then Forbes publishes that list and we help publish additional content around and about the list. But that's the genesis of the list and our role in the list. We've been the data partner to Forbes on the list since 2011.
The Midas list, the number one list for VCs. Does that give you an unfair advantage when it comes to accessing GP, talking to LPs? And talk to me about that.
Our role as a data partner in the compilation of that list certainly gives us access to a level of information that other limited partners might not necessarily have access to. It's very granular deal performance and deal attribution data that other limited partners may not necessarily have access to. We certainly think that helps us make better decisions and be better investors.
Tell me more about TrueBridge's fund-to-fund strategy. Sure, so I think the most important thing about TrueBridge is that number one, all we do is venture. That's our entire focus. We have five distinct investment strategies on our platform. We have a core fund-to-fund investment strategy where we build a concentrated portfolio of very best, well-established, high-performing fund managers.
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