Sapphire Partners Takes Over CalSTRS Early-Stage Venture Fund Mandate
Beezer Clarkson · Beezer Clarkson: Are LPs Open for Business & Why Do LP Incentive Mechanisms Need to Change? | E1073 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings · Oct 18, 2023 · at 59:17
Beezer Clarkson leads Sapphire Partners' investments in venture funds. She details Sapphire's deal with CalSTRS (California State Teachers' Retirement System) to manage its early-stage emerging venture fund portfolio.
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“We announced this about two weeks ago that we've taken over the early stage venture fund mandate for CalSTRS and what this means. So for folks that aren't familiar with CalSTRS, they're the world's largest educator pension fund in the world, which is Pretty cool. And they've been, to their credit, running an emerging manager program now for decades. And back in the day when they started it was a mix of private equity, some healthcare, some venture. And going forward, they had now picked us to work with them on the early stage venture fund, and they have pivoted to focus on specialized managers, and we're their venture specialists. Which means we now are going to take their money, which we're very grateful for them trusting us with, and deploy it into U.S. Early stage venture funds. Emerging, so that's funds one through three.”
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