Dec 16, 2021 · 54m · capital-allocators
Jarrid Tingle and Henri Pierre-Jacques – Harlem Capital (Manager Meetings, EP.24)
Henri-Pierre Jacques · 16m spoken Jared Tingle · 14m spoken Jason Klein · 12m spoken Ted Seides · 5m spoken
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this episode of Manager Meetings, Memorial Sloan Kettering CIO Jason Klein interviews Harlem Capital managing partners Jarrid Tingle and Henri Pierre-Jacques on their firm's evolution, institutional underwriting discipline, and commercial strategy to drive top-tier venture returns by backing diverse founders.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Ted holds 13% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Ted as informed peer 3.4 Guest teaching 4.8 Guest disagreement 1.2 Ted pushing back 1.1
speaking balance: gold is Ted, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 23:52 Pushing back on the impact fund classification
Henri explicitly rejects the impact fund label, explaining how such categorization artificially limits allocator capital buckets and imposes an unfair double barrier on diverse founders.
Hardest push from Ted ▶ 5:59 Ted challenging allocator objectivityTed directly pushes Jason on how institutional allocators maintain disciplined evaluation standards for follow-on funds when dealing with managers that are exceptionally easy to root for.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 19:05 Jared dissecting venture demographic mathJared schools conventional VC narratives by pointing out that firms claiming to back the best founders ignore 70 percent of the demographic population by concentrating 96 percent of funding elsewhere.
Ted holds their own ▶ 9:50 Jason framing emerging manager position sizingJason exhibits deep allocator expertise by explaining the exact risk-adjusted sizing methodology used to enter emerging manager relationships at half size while structuring for long-term scalability.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Ted as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Ted pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Allocator Perspectives: Evaluating and Sizing Harlem Capital | 7 | 3 | 1 | 3 | Ted Seides probes Jason Klein with sharp institutional allocator questions regarding underwriting emerging managers, the Silicon Valley talent ecosystem, and position sizing without multi-cycle track records. | |
| Origins of Harlem Capital: From Syndicate to Fund I | 3 | 5 | 1 | 1 | Jason Klein initiates the manager dialogue, allowing Henri to recount the firm's origin from an angel syndicate formed at ICV Partners to raising Fund I during business school. | |
| Navigating Startup Risk and Early Fundraising Challenges | 3 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Jared explains the early turmoil, personal debt fears, and pitching strategy when launching an inaugural venture fund without an established institutional track record. | |
| Investment Philosophy: Structural Inequities and Market Opportunity | 3 | 7 | 3 | 1 | Jared delivers an analytical breakdown of market inefficiencies, noting that underrepresented founders receive 4% of venture capital despite representing 70% of the population, reframing mainstream VC meritocracy claims. | |
| The Harlem Capital Flywheel: Building a Broader Ecosystem | 3 | 5 | 1 | 1 | Henri details their flywheel mechanism of intern pipelines, operator networks, and angel programs designed to build an ecosystem outside conventional Silicon Valley networks. | |
| Venture Returns vs. Impact: Closing the Racial Wealth Gap | 4 | 6 | 3 | 2 | Henri firmly rejects being pigeonholed as an impact fund, explaining how impact categorizations restrict allocation pool sizes and place double barriers on diverse founders. | |
| Sourcing Dynamics, Brand Building, and Founder Value Proposition | 3 | 5 | 1 | 1 | Jared outlines competitive edge in deal sourcing, highlighting brand equity, hustle, and fast execution over larger legacy seed firms when competing for diverse founders. | |
| Sponsor Message: Ridgeline Investment Management Platform | 3 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Jared explains their criteria for founder assessment, balancing qualitative metrics like grit and financial pragmatism with core technical capabilities. | |
| Post-Investment Support and Community Value Creation | 3 | 5 | 1 | 1 | Henri explains their post-investment support architecture, emphasizing peer founder networks and corporate partnerships rather than unscalable partner-centric models. | |
| Follow-On Strategy and Managing Pro-Rata Allocations | 4 | 6 | 1 | 1 | Henri details their follow-on philosophy, exercising pro-rata systematically to avoid false signaling created by compressed Series A timelines. | |
| Investment Committee Dynamics and Partner Voting Systems | 4 | 6 | 1 | 1 | Henri articulates the mechanics of their numeric voting system, demonstrating how consensus requirement suppresses risk-taking in early-stage venture. | |
| Diligence Evolution: Prioritizing Ownership and Execution Speed | 3 | 5 | 1 | 1 | Jared explains the operational shift from private equity-style exhaustive diligence to frontloading critical metrics to maintain competitive decision speed. | |
| Organizational Architecture, Talent Pipeline, and Team Culture | 3 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Jared reviews team composition and culture, noting that full-time investment professionals are cultivated entirely through their internal internship program. | |
| Target Verticals, Emerging Technologies, and Global Expansion | 3 | 5 | 1 | 1 | Henri and Jared review sectoral target areas and global expansion, discussing their first deal in Kenya and identifying founder density in fintech and software. | |
| Personal Passions: Music, Reading, and Athletic Pursuits | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | The conversation closes with personal reflections on music, athletics, and foundational values learned from parents. |
Statements from this episode (20)
Klein: MSK backed Harlem Capital for returns, not purely diversity
“And we didn't approach them as a diverse manager per se. We approached them as a manager that was going to make a lot of money and had a good objective, a good strategy, a good philosophy.”
MSK sizes early-stage emerging managers at half a typical allocation
“We tend to size that at about half the size of where we would size an initial relationship, all things equal.”
Pierre-Jacques: Only one or two firms backed diverse founders at scale in 2018
“Essentially there was like one or two firms Three years ago that we're doing this at scale.”
Tingle: High correlation exists between investor demographics and funded founders
“As we did more research, we found that there's a really high correlation between the race and gender of check writers and banners that get funded on a percentage basis.”
Diverse founders are 70% of the population but get 4% of VC
“The biggest stat that we saw was that women and people of color get about four percent of VC funding, but are 70% of the population.”
VCs backing the best founders cannot ignore 70% of the population
“And so I don't believe what any VC says, hey, we're backing the best founders when you're only investing in 30% of the population.”
Harlem Capital's internship program placed 18 people into venture capital roles
“You know, we've had 70 interns and 18 of them now work in venture.”
Pierre-Jacques: Silicon Valley's ecosystem does not exist for diverse founders
“Silicon Valley exists for other founders, but doesn't exist for the founders that we're serving.”
Being categorized as an impact fund drastically shrinks LP capital allocations
“Just from what we've seen from fundraising, once you get grouped into an impact bucket, usually their magnitude smaller than the main buckets. And so I think it changes how many dollars you get allocated.”
Tingle: Harlem Capital ignores deal terms outside of economics and control
“We don't spend time on things that aren't economics or control.”
Harlem Capital prefers to back spiky founders over well-rounded ones
“We're not looking for founders that have everything. We're looking for people that are exceptional on those critical dimensions.”
Pierre-Jacques: Harlem Capital leads probably 80% of its deals
“I mean, we lead probably 80% of our deals and then help our companies fill the rest of their syndicates.”
Harlem Capital automatically exercises pro-rata rights unless a startup significantly underperforms
“We typically do pro rata for most of our companies. I mean, unless you fall off a cliff, we're going to do pro rata, and we signal that to the founders. Part of, hey, we're leading Your seed round, we're going to be supportive in your seed plus or your series …”
Partners shared positive conviction on only two of 28 Fund I deals
“Of the 28 deals we didn't fund one, I think two of them, maybe three, Jerry and I were both positives.”
Harlem Capital caps partners at seven deals annually to manage deployment
“Fund two, it's pretty similar, but now there's three partners, so seven deals per partner per year is kind of the max, and four of those seven deals, it can be a single partner positive for the deal to go through, and then three of the deals, you have to have …”
Top-performing venture deals frequently lack consensus conviction among firm partners
“It's really hard to get two or three people to have the same conviction on similar deals, but it doesn't mean that the deals aren't great because a lot of our winners were deals where we weren't both positives.”
VCs must buy early ownership to avoid unrealistic exit math
“If you actually look at how much enterprise value you need to return your fund with an implied median ownership, the numbers can get really wonky, and so you're better off buying up ownership when it's the cheapest, and being able to have diversification with …”
Harlem Capital hired its entire investment team from its intern program
“All of our investment team has came from our intern program, so having that ability to take this huge filter for talent Work with them for three to six months, and then hire them means that we know these people tremendously well.”
None of Harlem Capital's team had prior VC experience before joining
“No one who's worked with us has done VC before, but they're incredible, capable folks.”
Pierre-Jacques: Diverse founder density is highest in e-commerce, fintech, wellness, enterprise software
“I think from a, where we've seen density for diverse founders has been e-commerce
Fintech, wellness, enterprise software, and now we're diving into crypto as well, which I think it's undiverse, but we're hoping it does become more diverse.”