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Mark Pattis

General Partner at Riverside Ventures & Part of the Founding Team at Hampton

Who is Alex Pattis?

Alex Pattis is a General Partner at Riverside Ventures, a venture fund and angel syndicate with over 10,000 LPs and $200 million+ in assets under management.12 He has an extensive background in both operating early-stage startups and venture capital investing.

Operating Background

  • Spent nearly a decade scaling early-stage startups, focusing on growth and commercial strategy4
  • Joined Market Access Transformation (MAT) as the first employee, pre-launch, heading up business development4
  • MAT raised capital from Silversmith Capital Partners, before being acquired (9 figure exit) by Genesis Research/GHO Capital Partners4
  • Was part of the founding team at Hampton, Sam Parr's founder community2

Venture Capital Background

  • General Partner at Riverside Ventures, investing in early-stage startups4
  • Has deployed $70m+ invested across 300+ companies4
  • Enthusiastic about playing a support role to entrepreneurs in the early innings of their business4
  • Co-founder of Last Money In Media, producing an actionable VC newsletter focused on Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) in the venture capital ecosystem3

Alex Pattis' LinkedIn profile can be found at https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-pattis-1709011a.5

Highlights

Sep 14 · linkedin

Operators that regret launching a seed fund should start a syndicate.

I agree with Harry Stebbings in that there are likely many fund managers who regret raising a fund and making that decade long commitment, especially those who are operators and realize they like operating.

Here are a few reasons I think Syndicates/SPVs can be great for these folks:

  1. You can run a syndicate in addition to operating/your day job (I personally have and most do).

  2. You can be more flexible on check sizes and allocation versus a fund. Harry makes the point the deal flow does not continue when you raise a fund but as a syndicate lead, I believe it can. I believe it can increase if you work with other scouts and share carry.

  3. The fund management is way lighter when running a SPV than a traditional fund. There are different ways o go about it, but every deal is a new opportunity with a new set of LPs, which makes the management a very different game than a traditional fund.

  4. It allows you A TON of flexibility in that a fund would not provide. You can do a pre-seed deals one week and a series B/C growth round the next week and your LP's get more decision making power.

  5. Deal-by-deal carry... your biggest winners returns are unaffected by the rest of the portfolio outcomes.

Not everything about running a syndicate is better obviously, but these are a few that stick out for those who have the skill set to run a venture fund but might not want to, yet are still interested in investing and working with LPs in a different capacity.

While there are many similarities, syndicates are a different game than a traditional venture fund.

Aug 29 · linkedin

Syndicate Deal Machines → 2 Pros for LPs

  1. More Deals for LPs to Evaluate

This one is quite obvious. When you are an LP in a syndicate that is hyperactive, you are going to get more deals to review/diligence and explore investing in or passing. After all, sourcing is the lifeblood of a syndicate, critical to a traditional venture fund, and also critical to individual angels. You need to be able to see tons of deals to narrow in on the few that are the right fit for you to invest in.

As an LP in a hyperactive syndicate, you are going to get to see a lot of deals and I imagine you will pass on the majority of these deals, however  passing on tons of deals is a good thing (more on this later). Remember, the alternative is not seeing the deals at all and missing out on those data points, trends in VC, startups etc.

Generally speaking, the more deals you have to evaluate, the more deals will fit your investment thesis and therefore be able to deploy capital into, and build a portfolio. If you don’t want to see more quality deals, then perhaps it's best to back a fund or set of funds (versus a syndicate) to get venture exposure.

  1. Great way for LPs to Build a Portfolio

If you are actively looking to build a portfolio versus going very deep into just a few deals, backing hyperactive syndicates will likely play a key role in supporting building your portfolio. Again, the obvious is more quality deal flow/opportunities will lead to more actual investments.

When I was getting started as an angel I leveraged this as well. In 2017-2018, I backed Jason Calacanis’ syndicate.  I was extremely motivated to build a portfolio to:

  • Diversify smaller personal checks across different Series A or earlier stage companies
  • Be able to start to point to a true portfolio versus 2-3 companies I’d invested in at the time
  • Ramp up the number of quality investments opportunities to learn from and have more deals to compare
  • It felt like a good angel investor foundation to build off of… which is exactly what I did

-- Powered by Sydecar and Forge, Last Money In Media is the most actionable venture capital newsletter. Written by Zachary Ginsburg and Alex Pattis, the global syndicate leaders with 800+ SPVs invested.

Related Questions

What are some of the most successful investments Alex Pattis has made at Riverside Ventures?
How did Alex Pattis transition from operating in startups to becoming a venture capitalist?
What is the "Last Money In" newsletter about, and how does it contribute to Alex Pattis' investing strategy?
Can you explain the significance of the Hampton community for Alex Pattis and Riverside Ventures?
How does Alex Pattis source deals and engage Limited Partners (LPs) at Riverside Ventures?
Mark Pattis
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Experience

General Partner at Riverside Ventures & Founding Team at Hampton
Advisor at Thunder, Advisor at Efficient Capital Labs, Director of Commercial Development at Market Access Transformation, Director of Sales at Context Matters Inc., Associate Sales Representative at Ethicon Endo-Surgery

Education

University of Arizona

Location

Austin, Texas, United States