How I Invest with David Weisburd

Why do so many GPs misunderstand what institutional LPs actually care about?

David sits down with John-Austin Saviano, an Backing & Building Challenger Investment Firms and Former Endowment CIO, argues that one of the biggest mistakes GPs make is overemphasizing track record. Great LPs care less about the headline returns than how those returns were generated. They want to understand the investment process, whether it is repeatable, and whether the people and market conditions that produced past performance still exist today.

What if the biggest edge in private equity isn’t finding better deals, but designing better incentives?

In this episode, I sit down with Jack Purcell, Managing Partner at Ridgemont Equity Partners, to unpack how alignment helped turn a Bank of America spinout with fewer than 15 people into a private equity firm managing more than $11 billion. Jack explains why Ridgemont invests significant GP capital alongside its LPs, why more than two-thirds of the team participates economically in its funds, and how a nine-person unanimous investment committee uses a proprietary 40-point scorecard to evaluate deals.

What if the biggest AI investment opportunity isn’t AI companies, but the infrastructure required to make AI possible?

David sits down with Stuart Waugh, Managing Partner of Northleaf Capital Partners, to explore why the AI boom is creating massive demand for power, data centers, communications networks, and other essential infrastructure. Stuart explains why Northleaf estimates roughly $40 trillion of infrastructure investment will be needed across its addressable markets over the next decade, and why governments increasingly need private capital to help fund it.

Venture capital was designed around a relatively simple model: invest in a startup, help it grow, and eventually exit through an acquisition or IPO.

David sits down with Benjamin Black Powerlaw Corp. (Nasdaq: PWRL), Akkadian Ventures, Ben invests in growth-stage technology companies while providing alternative liquidity to founders, employees, angel investors, and venture funds.

In this episode, Ben and David unpack the evolution of the venture secondary market, why great companies staying private longer creates an entirely different opportunity set, how sophisticated investors price illiquid private-company shares, and why liquidity itself is becoming a critical piece of venture capital infrastructure.

The result is a different way to think about private markets: the investment opportunity doesn't end after the primary financing round.

Most venture firms think AI is another productivity tool.

David sits down with John Melas-Kyriazi co-founder and CEO of Standard Metrics—the AI-native portfolio management platform used by leading venture capital and private equity firms—to discuss how AI is transforming every stage of investing, from sourcing and diligence to portfolio management, follow-on decisions, and firm operations.

John explains why the best venture firms are becoming AI-native organizations, how investors are using large language models today, why every investment memo should be "red teamed" by AI, the rise of MCPs, when firms should build software versus buy it, what Standard Metrics is seeing across more than 12,000 portfolio companies, and why human judgment will become even more valuable as AI automates everything else.