How I Invest with David Weisburd

Shane Neman, founder of a multi-entity family office and former SaaS founder managing ~$850M AUM. He explains how founder experience shapes sourcing and diligence. He discusses radical transparency in co-investing and preferring emerging managers. He outlines a barbell approach pairing deep-tech moonshots with durable businesses and how personal capital changes risk and alignment.

Tim Barrett, CIO of the Texas Tech Endowment with 30+ years in institutional investing, shares how his team finds asymmetric bets across private equity, real estate, and hedge funds. He discusses buying discounted trophy offices, leveraging governance for fast decisions, co-investment asymmetry, portable alpha mechanics, and why lower-middle-market buyouts can beat venture for consistent returns.

Alex Abell, Managing Partner at RCP Advisors with 20+ years as a private equity allocator, explains why lower middle market buyouts often beat large deals. He discusses less competition, quicker exits, and how pattern recognition and manager “superpowers” uncover repeatable returns. Conversation covers on-site diligence, benchmarking with large deal databases, and why size can hurt performance.

Nathan Cooper, founder of Barrel Ventures who turned his family’s century-old food business into a food-and-beverage focused investment platform. He discusses why concentrating risk where you have operational edge matters. He shares how LPs can be operating partners, why food is an underrated, investable category, and why family offices must move from risk-off to risk-on to preserve generational wealth.

Ron Biscardi, co-founder and CEO of iConnections who scaled a charity event into a global capital-introduction platform. He discusses how relationships and patience win capital, the shift toward deal-by-deal vehicles and SMAs, why LPs prioritize business risk over returns, and how humility, transparency, and network effects drive fundraising and platform growth.

Aris Yeager, founder of Storytime and creator known as European Kid, builds a platform that connects brands with nano- and micro-creators. He discusses scaling influencer campaigns by automating gifting and measurement. Short local activations, AI-driven creator matching, and prioritizing authenticity over follower counts are highlighted.

Danielle Poli, Co-Portfolio Manager of Global Credit at Oaktree, oversees a $20B portfolio across high-yield, loans, and structured credit. She discusses core-plus-alpha allocation, rigorous borrower underwriting, navigating AI winners and risks, spotting mispriced opportunities in stressed sectors, and why flexibility across bonds, loans, and private credit matters for risk control.

Jorge Felippe, CEO of Almulla and builder of multigenerational private markets portfolios, explains why alignment and governance dominate fund selection. He covers quick rejections, why small GP commitments are red flags, how fund size and fees shape incentives, the edge of fund-ones, and using funds and fund-of-funds to balance early-stage upside with liquidity.

Robert Koenigsberger, Founder and CIO of Gramercy and builder of a $7B emerging markets platform, explains why EMs are misunderstood. He discusses favoring structured private credit, planning entries and exits with high conviction, using local teams and collateralized lending like supplier finance, and managing currency risk opportunistically.

Chaz Englander, founder of Model ML and former YC founder who built family office investing tools, explains how agentic AI is automating reporting, investment memos, and monitoring in private markets. He contrasts workflow automation with chat UIs. He predicts 2025 as the productivity year and 2026 for AI-generated investment insight, and explains why capturing internal data and embedding engineers with teams matters.