Rob Lusk: Syndicating Deals with Sydecar [Ep 36]

This episode dives into the intricacies of syndicating deals in the venture capital space with Rob Lusk from Sydecar.

1. Democratization of venture capital is increasingly facilitated by technological innovations and regulatory changes.
2. Effective syndication involves understanding both founders' and investors' needs, emphasizing the creation of value for both.
3. Strategic partnerships and networking are crucial in venture capital to leverage opportunities and enhance deal structuring.
4. Practical involvement in SPVs offers firsthand experience and reveals areas for improvement in investment processes.
5. Rob Lusk's career shift to Sydecar was motivated by the potential to innovate and lead in the venture capital sector.

1. Introduction to Rob Lusk

Rob Lusk's background in business development and his path to joining Sydecar are highlighted. Rob discusses his previous roles and his motivation for moving into venture capital. Rob Lusk: "I spent about ten years thinking about what it means to democratize access to private markets to venture capital."

2. The Role of Technology in Syndication

Discusses the impact of technology on simplifying and enhancing the syndication process in venture capital. Rob Lusk: "It's really now this technological disruption of these traditional financial services industries."

3. Running an SPV

Rob shares his experiences and lessons learned from managing SPVs, offering insights into the complexities and strategies involved. Rob Lusk: "It's easy. Look how efficient we're making it. I finally just like dipped my finger in and tasted the Kool-Aid a little bit, the first one."

1. Understand Your Audience: Know the needs and expectations of both founders and investors.
2. Leverage Technology: Utilize technological tools to streamline processes and enhance efficiency.
3. Network Effectively: Build and maintain strategic relationships to access better deals and partnerships.
4. Engage in Practical Experience: Direct involvement in SPVs can provide invaluable insights and learning opportunities.
5. Stay Informed: Keep up with regulatory changes and industry developments to optimize investment strategies.

Thank you to Sydecar for sponsoring today’s episode! Read more about the SPV product that both Harry and Colin use for their investments below.

In this episode Harry and Colin speak with Rob Lusk. Rob leads Business Development at Sydecar and is the Founder/General Partner of Duende Ventures. Prior to joining Sydecar, Rob served as Head of Partnerships at Assure. Before focusing on the pipes for venture capital, he spent different chapters producing documentary film, playing football, and serving as a full-time missionary.

Wannabe Angels, begin your venture capital career with Sydecar--the go-to platform for those new to managing SPVs and funds. Sydecar is on a mission to make private markets more accessible, transparent, and liquid by standardizing how investment vehicles are created and executed.

To learn more, visit Sydecar's Wannabe Angels page: https://www.sydecar.io/wannabeangels

Rob has garnered attention for his innovative approach to venture capital, often leveraging his diverse background, which includes producing documentary films, playing football, and serving as a full-time missionary. His journey in the venture space includes a range of roles, from leading partnerships to focusing on SPVs and infrastructure for capital deployment.

Throughout the discussion, Rob shares his insights on democratizing access to private markets, the importance of product-led growth, and building strong teams in the venture space. He also provides advice for emerging managers and syndicate leads, drawing from his extensive experience and unique perspective on the industry.

People

Rob Lusk

Companies

Sydecar, Duende Ventures, Assure

Books

None

Guest Name(s):

Rob Lusk

Content Warnings:

None

Speaker A
It's a product at the end of the day. And when you think about this syndication business as a product, then really you think about who are your customers here? Who are you trying to tackle and access? And it's on both sides. It's the founders and the investors.

And what is your unique value prop or access differentiation that you're bringing to the table?

Harry
Colin, how are you doing today? I'm good, Harry. How are you doing? I usually encourage people to listen to our podcast, but seeing as you and I both just got fresh haircuts, I'm going to push people over to our YouTube channel today. So if you want to stop what you're doing right now and find us on YouTube, I think that could be a good way to listen to today's interview.

Sound good? Sounds good to me, though. The background that's fuzzy. I don't know, it's making my head look, you know, a little. Little weird.

Yeah. And although we didn't give today's guest the memo to get a haircut before the show, he is looking good. He's ready. I'm excited to dig in. Rob Lusk leads business development at Sidecar and is the founder and general partner of Duende Ventures.

Prior to joining Sidecar, Rob served as head of partnerships at Assure. Before focusing on the pipes for venture to capital, he spent different chapters producing documentary film, playing football, and serving as a full time missionary, which is all pretty typical experience, you know, to get into venture. Right, Rob? He's based in San Francisco and spends time in Berkeley, where he recently earned an MBA from the Haas School of Business and previously worked on research with the program for innovation in social and entrepreneurial finance. He likes to surf, snowboard, and read in his spare time, and we're excited to have him on today.

How are you doing, Rob? I'm good. Thanks for having me. Yeah. Excited to chat, and we appreciate all the support we've gotten from Sidecar.

So we figured who better to have on from than someone from the company? And, you know, you've got a cool kind of personal history, kind of doing some investments and spvs, which we'll definitely get into. But first, for those, I'd love to get a little bit more info. Can you talk about sidecar? And, you know, we mentioned a few times now on the podcast, but maybe start with kind of like, why did you join sidecar?

Why were you attracted to the company personally? Yeah. Thanks, Harry. I spent about ten years thinking about what it means to democratize access to private markets to venture capital. We've seen since the Jobs Act.

Speaker A
I was doing research, actually, at Berkeley. I think you alluded to it in the bio breakdown at the time. It was really framed up as crowdfunding, and there was a lot going on in that space about, you know, this, again, this democratization story, how are you going to pool capital, what that's led to years later? I don't think it was quite ready for it in different ways, but it's really now this technological disruption of these traditional financial services industries and these different asset classes and private markets that are now more efficient, that now have more access. Some of these things that I think everyone dreamed about when we were talking about the jobs act or when we were talking about crowdfunding several, several years back, I felt I found my way to assure where some of this stuff was starting to come to fruition.

Right. The idea of not just regulatory change or platforms, but actually some of the infrastructure that would facilitate this stuff. And so this idea of an SPV in a box piecemealing some of these services to make it super efficient, to actually deploy capital, it started to get closer to the vision. And I had a few years there really getting immersed in this idea of the pipes, the back end, to facilitate capital deployment, and they made a lot of good headway, I think they. Almost 10,000 deals.

Right. The angelist genesis, and some of those things that were really, I think, precursors to where we are now. That being said, there were still some gaps, some things missing. One thing that's always important is getting with the right people. Right, finding the right team to get on the mission with.

But I think also, fundamentally, there's a vision for how to architect something, how to execute on it. I think those things go hand in hand, and that's where the sidecar story comes in, at least for me, was I was in a unique position, external, facing partnerships. I really knew a lot about the competitors that were coming up. I had really good relationships with a lot of the communities that we're driving this ecosystem from outside as far as, you know, being really connected to. What were the customers, these emerging managers, these syndicate leads that we're doing it, even producing the podcast, for sure, actually.

So love putting this stuff out there. And so I got. I got a good purview at that time of, okay, hey, this opportunity is really exciting. It's. It's coming together, and we're kind of right.

Right on the. On the front of the wave, but also picking the horse. Right. Where's the team that I want to be with to do this and how are they thinking about it? And sidecar, there was, I was following them, right?

Social media, whatever, seeing what they were putting out, the focus on product, I think was the most intriguing thing to me. Right? It was, it was all about building from the ground up with discipline. The, this, this truly product led approach, which is so hard to do in services when you're trying to grow and you're trying to disrupt services in a bespoke industry like venture, right, where everyone thinks that they're doing it their way and their way is strategic, right? Their docs are strategic, everything is strategic.

And it's like, how do you influence a market to standardization that can enable product? Because product is the way, right, the pipes, that's the way that this thing's going to play out. The way that at least the people that I was talking to, that myself included, were really excited about. And so one of their, they dropped a press release about some funding round. And I saw like, right, the cap table, some of the names that were on there, and one of them was a partner of ours, a really good one, one of the community leaders that was up and coming, and I was really excited about, and I was like, dude, what are you doing?

You know, this is the new comp. I talked to him a little bit and it just checked out, right, with what I was seeing, his excitement for it. And I'm like, hey, you know, I got a link with, with the team. Funny, right? You're coming from like, the incumbent.

You shoot the message over and it's like, you know, is this a partnership? What's, what's going on here? But I got, got the chance to get to know them a little bit more. And so far, it's, it's, it's, it's been the best investment decision that I've, that I've made and feel really, really glad, grateful that I've been able to join forces with the team that's there. And now the team that's come together ever since I joined.

Harry
Very cool. Well, I like the way you phrase it as a great investment decision. And I know we talked a little bit offline about your personal experience investing. It sounds like you've done a couple spvs yourself now and then invested in a couple. So why don't we start there and talk a little bit about how that came about.

What was it like running your first spV? Yeah. Again, when you're talking so much about this, how easy it is to do it. I'm putting that out there. Anyone could do it.

Speaker A
It's easy. Look how efficient we're making it. I finally just like dipped my finger in and tasted the Kool aid a little bit, the first one.

And it's funny because they didn't come from the sidecar network or my job directly. And I think that was probably important just to keep it clean and manage some of the conflicts. But it was a cousin of mine who is not tied to venture, not in the same, not San Francisco, right. None of that. He was a scientist who had worked at Schrodinger for like 20 years and was making his first leap into entrepreneurship.

He got recruited to a startup again right now, early stage ideas, stage startup. And he ended up connecting me to the founder, and we started talking about what he was doing, and I was like, hey, let me help you run this spv. Yeah, founder led SPV. He and the cool thing, he already got that part of it. This was, I think, his third, his third startup.

And so he was coming into it understanding the value prop of, from the founder side, running a friends and family SPV and all those small, small checks, and was interested in sidecar just for that, for that reason. And I threw through my name in there and was like, hey, let me, let me run it for you. I won't take economics right on anyone that you're bringing in your crew, but hey, if I can bring some money into, can you carve out a little for me? And so it was low stakes, right? I was like, I'm going to come in, I'm going to prove myself out, and whatever I can bring in, I can bring in.

I didn't have that pressure to come in with a big check or whatever with my, with my SPV. Ended up getting a friend who just launched his fund solo GP. This was his first check from his fund, and he actually went through the SPV, like, with, with his fun check. So that gave me a big bump on, like, my dollars in there. Yeah.

Just turned out, turned out to be a great experience. And that got me excited about the potential for me to do this right more and more intentionally going forward and have, have done a few more since. So, Rob, you know, you ate the dog food, right, so to speak. As they stay in the product world, what tell us a little bit about, like, you using the product and what were your cringe moments that you were like, man, I can't believe we didn't do this this way or. Oh, man, that's, that's a good question.

I have a lot of them, actually. And the product team was, I think, in part, like, oh, no. Like, what have we done? Like, letting this guy see it be this side of it. On the other hand, they're super grateful, and I think that's why the team embraces it.

Right? Like, from Nick down, it's. It's this dog food thing, right. With having all of us be that intimately connected to our customers, to the product. I think it's so valuable for a startup.

And I started making lists and I started hitting up. The cool thing for me is I'm in San Francisco, which is pretty much our product team. Product and Edge team, right? So I'm the only business guy over here, and I'm in their ear now, and it's, they're now hitting me up to get into, like, early stage discovery specs, walking through, right. Some of the flows with, with the product team on our new syndicates, product that we're rolling out.

And for me, it's like, I need this. I'm trying to scale this thing up. I'm thinking about how I'm going to build this business right, from, from where it is now to going forward. And so it's really motivating for me to get it right and to try to think about how I can leverage this going forward. So it's a really cool setup.

Harry
Yeah, I mean, I think you bring up a couple things just as general startup advice, and I'm no startup expert, but having worked on a number of initiatives, especially in the ride share space with companies like Uber and Lyft, I think the two things that always stand out to me, it's like, yeah, doing the actual product or service, like, okay, being an Uber driver is a lot easier than running an SPV, I would say. But, like, I think it was amazing to me. Like, I think Uber, for, like, the first many years of the company, no one actually drove for the company. They started doing it. They're like, oh, my God, this is, you know, so enlightening.

And I think also, like, not being scared to look at competitors. Like, hey, what are competitors doing, right? Like, they might do some stuff better and they might do some worse, right? Like, is there a moat around some aspect of their product, or can we just, like, they've spent millions of dollars figuring this out. Let's just copy it now.

Like, some things they may do better, right? And I also like to, like, on the actual strategy of an SPV, one thing you mentioned, it kind of reminded me that I haven't quite done this, but I've offered this to founders when I'm doing spvs. Is kind of what I think of as like, a founder SPV. Like, hey, you've got a bunch of friends, maybe family members. Like, don't worry about, like, setting up an SPV.

Let me do that for you. Right? Like, some people getting started with spvs might not have a network or they might not have big money, but if you meet a founder who just, like, offer to run a syndicate for them, like, I think that would be pretty valuable. It sounds like you might have kind of even touched on that with one of the deals you did that. If I was going to list off a couple ideas, strategies, tactics, especially getting started, that that would be a big one.

Speaker A
That's one that I've leveraged. And not only does it reduce the pressure for, like, what your check size is, how much you can bring in from the SPV, it also will enable you to get allocations that you maybe otherwise wouldn't. You're now providing a service to this founder, right? You're coming in and now you're developing relationships with all their investors. And now, right, you get the chance to get access to people who are already writing angel checks.

Right. And this founder is not competitive with you. They're not like, hey, don't take my, my lp's in my syndicate, my fund. Yeah. Because that's just not their game.

That's not what they're doing. Right. They're going to try to build a business. Right. So it's, it's different than like a co syndication game where you have to be super sensitive about that kind of stuff.

They want you to be the face of the SPV. They want you to take that burden off of them so that you can be the one running the Q and A's, running the investor updates, doing all those things for them. So I think for me, that was like an entry point that has really worked and I intend to do that going forward, even. Right. Maybe as I am more established and food execute.

Right. Sort of standard. It's like, I just see it as a win win to throw that. I mean, I'll say typically this would mean that you're doing early stage deals, right? Even like pre seed seed deals.

Not necessarily only those, but that's typically where you'll, where you'll see this come up as, as being really relevant. But I think it's a great strategy. Interesting. You know, it's funny that I had a very similar experience early on. Like two, I think, of the eight spvs I did last year were in concert with the founder.

Colin
And like you said, its the perfect way to meet other investors but also kind of de risk it for yourself because theyre bringing in part of it and then you can go out and do smaller chunk or whatever it may be. So I really like that model personally. And sidecars made it super easy to actually share carry on that too and do it. I feel like its a little bit of a little hack behind the scenes to do it, but I love figuring that out. Overall, I agree.

Harry
It's, I like that, Colin. I kind of like to aggressively wave carry on some of these spvs, right? If someone brings me a deal, I'm like, hey, you know, you can come in with any amount and I'll waive the carry since you brought me the deal, right? Or like you were saying, Rob, like I'll offer to founders, like, hey, if you've got any, I'm going to syndicate this deal anyways. You know, if I invest from my fund, if you've got any small checks or people, you know, friends, family who you wanted to get in, right?

Like this is the perfect way, especially in like that one to $5,000 range early stage, right, where maybe you don't want them on the cap table but you would love to have them involved. So I kind of like, you know, the tactical advice, you know, and that was really one of the reasons I was excited to have you on, Rob. And that kind of leads me to my next topic. I would love to get like some insider knowledge from you about, you know, maybe this, you know, like you're working at sidecar, obviously, so you're interacting with, I mean, tons of founders and emerging managers. You know, we talked about, you know, the sort of founder SPV as one of the best ways to get in.

Like what's, what's another thing that stands out to you like that you're hearing from people like, hey, this is a great, you know, kind of unique way to get started with spvs or be involved with spvs. Is there anything else that stands out to you? Yeah, that's a great question. I think there's a couple ways to look at this, right? It's a product at the end of the day, and when you think about this syndication business as a product, then really think about, right, who are your customers here?

Speaker A
Who are you trying to trying to tackle and access? And it's on both sides. It's the founders and the investors. And what is your unique value prop or access differentiation that you're bringing to the table? And I think some people, and this more so applies to the person who's doing this on the side or getting started?

The syndicate lead concept is how are you leveraging your existing setup? Do you have access to founders? Are you an operator that has domain expertise that is connected to some of the up and coming companies? On the flip side, do you have access to potential investors that are outside of that world? I think a big part of this is being a bridge between two disconnected parties on some level and really thinking about who are going to be my ideal investors.

How am I different with my ability to reach some of these people that aren't already able to do this themselves or see the same deals or do whatever. Getting in I think is easier for these syndicate or can be again, if you have that initial relationship or access point just because of the size of the check that you're writing and sort of the role that you're playing with the overall round. So I think taking all of that and then thinking about, okay, then what is, what is the product that I'm putting out on top of the access? And I think that's where it gets fun. Gets fun for sidecar, gets fun from like a structuring perspective of, okay, what are the levers?

What are like the cool bells and whistles that I can, that I can put together. And that's where you get into things like structuring economics a certain way, putting incentives in place for engagement. Right. What happens if, right, somebody shares a deal with you and you run the deal? What happens if they bring another investor into the deal and that investor invests in their first syndicate?

We're building product to kind of facilitate these things, sharing deals amongst other syndicate leads. What does co syndication look like? Colin, you launched a fund, right? What does it mean to have like a fundamental syndicate hybrid? And what is that now from a product perspective for these people that maybe want to pick deal by deal, maybe want to just have you kind of manage their portfolio?

What are the incentives that you can put in there? So what we're seeing a lot of are these really cool structuring strategies or productization of syndicate builds and how that connects with the communities that you're building. Right. What kind of engagement can you create alongside writing the check? And what does that mean for, right, total dollars deployed, if that's like the metric that you're kind of looking at or number of deals done and I mean, you guys, you guys are doing a lot of it.

So I could flip this and get a lot of perspective from you, but we get the chance, like you said, to see some of the innovation on that front, how people are leveraging not just the sidecar product, but building a stack around it. And I think those things, along with the first part, which is, you know, something to figure out for yourself, really can separate you from the rest. You can, you can find that, that right niche and really get into a groove of doing what you're trying to do. Nice. The I have really enjoyed the fun product, and I've also learned that doing syndications alongside the fund investment is a lot of work now, but in the same spirit of it, I think Harry has a very similar model where he essentially puts the check in and then he has lp money on top of that for now.

Colin
For me, it's like, wow, I can actually anchor my own spvs in a big way, and then it de risks it for everyone else coming in, and you get larger allocations. There's just all these virtuous cycles that come from it. When I was just doing spvs by itself, I was always like, a founder would ask you, how much can you do? And you're like, well, it's going to be somewhere between zero and maybe $100,000 or whatever it may be. And now it's like, hey, look, this is happening.

This is the amount you're getting. There'll be some other amount on top of it. I don't know exactly what that'll be, but give me an allocation number and we'll try to hit it. For me, it's made early stage investing and doing syndications for early stage much easier, whereas before it was very hard to do pre seed round spvs, because people are like, there's no lead investor, there's no name on this, there's very little traction. How do I even know this is good?

Collins is telling me it's good. And so those are the ones that worked really well with, involved in the SPV and adding people. What do you got, Harry? Well, one thing you said, rob, that I liked is productizing a lot of this. I don't know if you would call it fun strategies, but literally everything you listed off, like, hey, if someone brings you the deal, you maybe cut their carry.

Harry
Or I sent a deal to a big tech alumni syndicate, and then I didn't even realize, and they ended up giving. I wrote the deal memo and they ended up giving me Carrie. I was like, oh, that was kind of a good idea. Maybe that's something I should do, you know what I mean? There's a lot of behind the scenes stuff that I think there's almost like a piece there's like, hey, that's one of the reasons why we like the podcast, because we talk about it.

We can kind of educate people on the different strategies. But I like the way you put it, incentives that people are kind of doing. And some of these are like, maybe more in a gray area or maybe even technically illegal. So I think that's one of the reasons why people maybe don't talk about it so much. And so I love the idea of you kind of productizing.

Is there anything that you guys have productized or maybe that you have, you know, see as an opportunity to productize? Like the, you know, sort of like, you know, scouting a deal, for example? Like, that's kind of a more obvious one. But, you know, that, to me is, you know, something that's kind of, you know, more obvious, I guess I'd say. Yeah, yeah, that's good.

Speaker A
I think from the sidecar perspective directly, you have a couple things that you can, you can move, you can move the economics, right? So you can change carry, you can change management fee, you can share, carry on a deal. And like you said, harry, which I appreciate you calling it out, a lot of this stuff, you have to be really aware of the regulatory environment to really push and be creative and innovate, so. Right. That's the balance to strike, and we'll be the first to, you know, I don't want to get in trouble here.

Harry
Well, I'll be the one to get in trouble. Like, someone told me that, you know, hey, you can't, like, offer, you know, you can't offer up, right? If someone, like, sends you an LP, right? You can't, like, solicit their lp's and then give them carry if they bring you the LP, right? Like, that's somewhat what someone.

I'm like, all right, there's a certain area, areas that, like, you have to be a little careful of. And I'm sure that, you know, we'll put a nice disclaimer that, yeah, please do. Please put all the disclaimers and I'll say, you know, counsel on it. But, I mean, that's what's tricky, right? Because, like, everyone's trying to figure it out and then, you know, but, like, strategies that people are doing, right, they're like, a little scared to maybe talk about it because they don't want to get in trouble.

Or there's like, eagle. So, I mean, that's the whole point of our podcast. It's like we're trying to figure these things out, right? Yeah, no, that's, that's exactly right. And that's, I think, the problem with this idea of reducing the barriers to democratization.

Speaker A
There's still, like ins, I mean, inside baseball, and there's still this insider game of where do I feel comfortable talking about this stuff? On the levels that, right. Can really open up the tactics and like, shit like Sharon Kerry, for somebody who's, who's doing something right, you can, you can share Kerry at a deal level, not on a per investor level that Carry share should technically not be applied to them bringing in money into the deal. Right. But if it's not explicit and you develop a relationship with them and they're helping you in some generic way, executing the SPV, and part of that is going out and fundraising and developing relationships with prospective investors, then you can share that, Gary, and you can then back into some of this stuff, reverse engineer it.

So, okay, if you can't give them carry, for the five investors that they brought in, what percentage of the total deal would that represent in capital? Right. If those five investors were 25% of the deal, then what's the right amount of carry to give them on the deal? And I think that's where you just, you spend some time thinking about it. You hopefully can start to develop relationships with other people doing it, right in communities where you can feel comfortable engaging and talking.

What's the follow up? Maybe that they can email you guys after the podcast episode and you can have some back and forth in a way that maybe gets into the weed a little bit or whatever kind of channels that you guys are establishing. And I think that's really the importance of building these communities and building them in a way that facilitates some of these dialogues so we can put it out there high level, and then hopefully people can run with it and get it to the finish line in a way that they feel comfortable with moving on. And so I think, right, Terry sharing, how are you even just managing the connection between sidecar as a deal execution platform and then whatever community syndicate building that you're on right now? So something that we've been working on for a while now is this syndicates product that'll sit on top of our deal execution, our core SPV product and that stuff, right, is how to leverage data, how to leverage investor preferences and some of the stuff people are building.

People have done a good job of building their own websites, building air tables, type setups, and really trying to get smart about what the community management piece of it is to hopefully increase the conversion from someone following your podcast or your newsletter or whatever to writing checks into some of your deals. And I think that's a lot of the feature build that we're on is trying to integrate with some of those processes you talked Colin about, like how to manage the allocation from both sides and how to be better at that. We're trying to build products on the soft commits. Can you get an indication of interest when you first go shop the deal, right. And then sort of put a discount on that number, try to back into it.

So earlier on in the process you can talk to the founder before. It's just, hey, how much money do we have in the SPV bank account? All right, that's, that's the amount in the purchase agreement. You know, can you guys write that in? And so it's, it's really trying to get.

We've got to a pretty good place, I think it's fair to say, being really solid with the transaction, making that pretty efficient. But now it's that operating system on top that we're looking at. And I think the other part of it is, how does that connect with the ecosystem more broadly? So something that I would call out that we're also very excited about is this capital partnership program. The first one that we launched was the capital extension program with MDSV, who's a, who's a partner of ours.

They're specifically focused on providing capital to syndicate leads for follow on rounds or deals where you can't fill the allocation that you get in.

If you think about syndicate leads, emerging managers, they're finding deals. Oftentimes they're finding the best deals, the deals that other people are trying to, trying to access, but they have a hard time building up the. Or they're, they're in the process of building up the capital networks to actually deploy where the, you know, where there might be demand. So we're trying to connect the dots. This is where I'll say we've fundamentally planted our flag as a company, not building out a marketplace like Angellist got it right.

And the way we've thought about it is your LP relationships are sacred to you as a manager. And so we want to build product that supports that vision, that idea that you're building your brand, we are the back end to support it. And as you build that brand and as you build those relationships, that's really critical to your business. And so how do we then support you in getting access to capital, developing your capital pipeline? And this is where this program is something that we're really excited about is connecting our infrastructure.

The product that you're building on with Sidecar, your brand, to potentially other capital sources, not from Collins syndicate to Harry syndicate, but from these other outside capital sources that are looking to get into these deals. And then it just becomes a matter of economics, of being able to share, carry between these groups. So we flipped the switch on that and that's something that we're going to continue to invest in, which I think will be a really important complement to your stack. Right. And you building your brand and you building, leveraging the product there is to now actually support you in getting more, more capital into your deals.

Harry
Yeah, I like the way you put it. And kind of what sidecar stands out and it's really, in kind of owning that LP, it's hard to get LP's right. So it's like you don't maybe don't want to share them, you want to have that relationship. Right. And so I think kind of like building your brand, this is really kind of like the core ethos, it sounds like, of sidecar.

So, you know, I think the last topic that I wanted to broadly ask you about, Rob, was, you know, the syndicate leads and the emerging managers who are having a lot of success on sidecar. Like what, what are they doing? What are they doing differently? Or what's something that stood out that you've seen kind of across the board from the, you know, folks in your network that are having a lot of success? Yeah, I mean, there's a couple ways to do it.

Speaker A
One is, I mean, frankly, a big trend that we're seeing is just in some of these secondary deals, like later stage deals, which is just like finding product that sells itself. So if you can get into a brand name deal, then you can leverage that to get capital start to build, build your business. We're seeing more of that. We're seeing more new, unique lp sources. So as an example, offshore capital coming into the US, again, it's sort of derivative of the same sort of brand name product, which is, could be for someone here, SpaceX or anthropic or whatever.

Harry
That's funny. SpaceX, right? Like, hey, get them into a big SpaceX secondary. Now they're in your network, now they're your lp, then you got to send them, you know, the weird pre seed, early stage startup and maybe they trust you or, you know, have that relationship. Right.

It's a lot safer, you know, route for them. Yeah. Right. Because you're, if you're introducing people to angel investing or to venture, there's a big education curve that we're all on. Right.

Speaker A
That goes beyond yourself as a manager or a syndicate lead or whatever of like, hey, I'm a good investor, I'm seeing good deals. You're. And that's where a lot of this content that we're trying to put out I think can be helpful is what we've realized is it's not just about us helping and you guys helping educate these listeners. It's how do we empower you to have a playbook and a toolkit to go educate these prospective investors on coming into this stuff? And can we give you decks that you can rebrand your own and share those with these people to understand the asset class?

And so I think one again, an entry point is you're selling the deal. The good thing about deal by deal syndication, one of the pros is that you can sell the deal. And I think if you think about that, it's a bit of a double edged sword. I think it also can lead to syndicate leads, just trying to find deals that they know they can sell versus deals that they really believe in, that are going to perform. Right.

And so I think you really want to be thoughtful about that. But it can be a tool to understand what deals are going to be more accessible, more easily understood from, especially investors that you're going to do your 1st, 1st deal with, or first few deals with. And if it's not late stage pre IPO SpaceX, then what is it? What is it that becomes more accessible? Is there another component to it that's not returns based that you can lean in on?

Where we see a lot of success is with communities that really lean into not just the types of investors that they're bringing together or the type of content that they're putting out, but also the types of deals that they're investing in and. Right. You could do that just as a sector. Oh, you like consumer, you like marketplaces, which is cool, and you can establish a niche there. You can also take that a step further and look at affinity, look at social impact, look at some of these other elements to how somebody might underwrite, so to speak, an investment opportunity, or understand what is the motivation for them holistically on top of the return profile that they're trying to see.

And again, those just provide more easy access points for somebody coming in is, you know, we're investing in women founders, we're creating this investor network of women supporting women, or anyone supporting women founders as an example. We've seen those to be really effective and sort of not dependent on the track record build and some of the other things that go into the longer term, play as you think about firm building with an eye to the future. Very cool, very cool. Well, I really appreciate. We really appreciate you coming on, Rob, and we mentioned Sidecar a couple times now, but we do have a landing page for our Wannabeangel listeners.

Harry
Sidecar IO wannabeangels, which we will direct people to. And it was really cool to hear about your personal experience and kind of why you joined Sidecar and all of the insider knowledge. Anything else, Colin, before we let Rob go? No, I just say thanks for building a great product. It's been a big part of my journey, so I've really grateful that you guys keep iterating on it.

Colin
I'm excited to see the future. Awesome. Thanks. Rob. Anything else you want to mention?

Speaker A
Thanks for. No. Yeah, I just want to say, I mean, to flip this, you guys are so representative of who we're trying to build for. And I guess on a personal level, where my focus and passion has lied for the last several years. And so I really appreciate everything that you're doing.

And this podcast is a big part of that, reflective of what you're doing, both in building your businesses as well as what you're bringing to this community and the ecosystem more broadly. So I appreciate all the work that you're doing. Yeah, definitely. Thanks for that. Thank you.

Harry
It's a fun journey, and I think we've signed up for about seven to ten years of this, so we'll keep doing it.

All right. See you, Rob. All right, guys.

Speaker A
All right, guys.