How I Invest with David Weisburd

What if the biggest opportunity in private markets isn’t backing companies—but backing the next generation of investment firms?

In this episode, I sit down with Douglas Beyer, managing partner and founder of Roaring Brook Holdings, to discuss why emerging managers remain one of the most undercapitalized opportunities in alternative assets. Douglas explains how anchor capital changes fundraising dynamics, why LP relationships determine whether firms survive, and how the best emerging managers build trust through transparency and execution. We also explore GP seeding, organizational durability, and why fundraising momentum matters more than most managers realize.

Can venture capital really be turned from instinct into science?

Nnamdi Okike is Co-Founder and Managing Partner of 645 Ventures, where he leads Seed and Series A investments in software and software-enabled companies. We discuss why Nnamdi believes venture investing is driven by the totality of an investor’s experiences rather than pure instinct, how 645 quantifies founder qualities, and why missionary and “non-central casting” founders can become exceptional investments. We also explore why startups need the right market inflections, how stablecoins and agentic commerce are reshaping fintech, what Nnamdi has learned across five fund vintages, and why raising too much capital at Seed can actually hurt a company.

Which competitive moats will actually survive the AI era?

SC Moatti is Managing Partner at Mighty Capital and Board Chair at Products That Count. We break down what Mighty Capital learned from mapping 550 companies by defensibility, why traditional SaaS advantages like switching costs and data moats may be weakening, and why network effects and counter-positioning are emerging as powerful AI-era moats. We also discuss why SC disagrees with the conventional power-law approach to venture, how AI is transforming M&A and corporate innovation, the Product Alpha Effect behind Mighty Capital’s investment strategy, and what venture firms must change to survive the AI transition.

Are private markets still positioned to outperform public markets?

Warren Gibbon is a Multi-Family Office Chief Investment Officer with deep experience across asset allocation, equity research, and portfolio management. We discuss why investors may need to re-underwrite their assumptions about private markets, how higher rates and growing competition have changed private equity, and why public-market earnings growth may be underappreciated. Warren also explains why he is more constructive on venture, what he looks for in emerging managers, the risks created by passive investing, and how he would deploy $100 million of fresh capital today.

What happens to financial analysts when AI can do the work they used to spend all night doing?

Chris Ackerson is SVP of Product at AlphaSense, where he focuses on applying information retrieval, natural language processing, deep learning, and recommendation systems to search and discovery. We discuss how AI is changing the analyst role, why vertical AI can outperform general-purpose models in financial research, and why proprietary data may become one of the most important competitive advantages in AI. Chris also explains why LLMs hallucinate, how AlphaSense is using AI to conduct expert interviews, where humans still create investment alpha, and why the future of financial research may look less like software and more like an AI teammate that never sleeps.