Henri Pierre-Jacques, Managing Partner at Harlem Capital, breaks down market norms for debut venture capital funds during a debate on portfolio construction.
Opinion
Pierre-Jacques: Calling Yourself a FinTech VC Specialist Is Meaningless
“Like, how can you be a specialist for 30 to 40% of the market? Like, being a FinTech investor doesn't mean anything. Like, there's multiple verticals. There's multiple differences.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Harlem Capital aims for consistent 3x-5x net returns over single outlier wins
“And so for us, like we're not targeting to be that one coin based outcome, that one stripe outcome, like we're saying over time, how do we get LPs to know that we can consistently generate three to five X net returns.”
Insight
Institutional LPs prefer consistent 2x fund returns over volatile high peaks
“They don't care if you have one, five X. Right? Like, they'd rather take a two X over 10 funds consistently than a five X, one X, three X, two X, right? They want to know, do you know how to institutionalize and operate and have processes that allow you to bes…”
Assertion Partly supported
Pierre-Jacques: Diversity VC Funds Pre-2020 Focused Exclusively on Gender, Not Race
“You know, six years ago, diversity meant gender equality, right? Before George Floyd in America, all the diversity focused funds were women focused funds. There was no racial lens for, you know, investing.”
Assertion Supported
Pierre-Jacques: 99% of VC Funds Lacked Black Partners in 2017
“I didn't want to work for a firm that didn't have black partners, which was 99% of all VC funds.”
Insight
Pierre-Jacques: Venture entry pricing only matters relative to fund size
“Ultimately, the price only matters based on the fund size, right?”