How we think

Sarah, Sam, Nancy, and I could not be more excited to announce Asymmetric Capital Partners and our debut $100 million fund.

As Founder and Co-CEO of Catalant, I was lucky to partner with several world-class venture firms: Highland Capital, Greylock Partners, and General Catalyst, among others. However, other founders I know have not been quite so fortunate. Since 2006, I’ve been studying and participating in private capital markets, from academic work on drivers of returns, founding and leading a venture-backed company that raised more than $100 million, investing capital in later-stage growth companies, to now leading early-stage investments and even hatching a few startups.

We designed Asymmetric to replicate the best aspects of firms we respect while reimagining other parts of the industry we believe can be improved.

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What We’ll Keep:

• Authentic focus on backing key, societally-relevant innovation in large markets: as the costs of technology continue to fall and information gains compound over time, some of the largest markets on earth – from real estate to health care – will continue to experience profound change. We will invest behind these trends when we have conviction the future will not look like the past.
• Desire to invest behind world-class founders: seeking founders whose integrity, business insight, decency, and work ethic are extraordinary is the best way we have come across to source compelling investment opportunities. Treating founders the right way creates a compounding reputational advantage over time.
• Thematic orientation to deal generation and sourcing: we believe best-in-class industry thought leadership allows for advantaged deal generation and targeted sourcing. We will invest in our research capabilities as a result.

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What We’ll Add or Modify:

• True operational expertise and persistent sounding board involvement: we believe our backgrounds in private equity, consulting, and investment banking align perfectly to help advise/assist with the core growth and management challenges inherent to early stage companies.
• Efficient but thoughtful due diligence process: we believe that by investing in forming a point of view on a sector before we meet companies, we can eliminate much of the aimless, death march diligence that has historically characterized the industry.
• Authentic founder friendliness: building something from nothing is a challenging task. We understand that, and deeply respect the founder journey. We will measure our success as a firm in part by how often we are a founder’s first call when issues arise.

We’re thrilled to be launching, and know we will continue to iterate on our philosophy.  Looking forward to keeping you all posted on our progress!