EQUIAM Closes Second Quantitative VC Fund and Ramps Up Hiring

New hires will expand data-powered, portfolio management capabilities

SAN FRANCISCO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–#VC–EQUIAM, a data-powered, venture capital manager with a mission to democratize venture investing, has announced the close of its second private fund, the EQUIAM Private Alpha Fund, with assets under management of $50 million. The Private Alpha Fund uses the EQUIAM Systematic Ranking (ESR), which applies a suite of proprietary algorithms to distill approximately 10,000 private companies and 10 million data points into an evolving, ranked list of approximately 30 investment targets. In addition to offering diversified access to growth and late-stage companies, the Private Alpha Fund deploys capital faster and allows for a comparatively shorter fund duration and a faster path to liquidity than most traditional venture capital funds.

“EQUIAM’s Private Alpha Fund marks a new era in growth and late-stage venture investing, where data-powered investment signals replace gut feel,” says Ziad Makkawi, Founder and CEO of EQUIAM. “The interest in our pioneering, quantitative approach from both institutions and individual investors shows that quantitative, risk-managed investing is the future of venture capital, where data availability continues to grow exponentially. We expect demand for VC 2.0 to continue growing, and we are building out our investment and distribution capabilities to meet it.”

EQUIAM adds to investment and operations teams with three new hires

Laxus Tat has joined as Investment Engineer with experience automating and optimizing portfolio management using a variety of technologies, building dynamic asset allocation models, analyzing investing strategies and controlling portfolio exposure for different risk factors. Tat’s previous experience includes AssetMark and Los Angeles Capital Management. He holds a Masters of Financial Engineering from the UCLA Anderson School of Management.

Samantha Chow has joined as a Senior Associate, Operations, bringing experience in fund operations, reporting and accounting. Her previous experience includes Goldman Sachs Asset Management and Northern Trust Hedge Fund Services. She is a graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Later this month, Shachi Shah will begin her role as Director, Strategic Operations, drawing on experience managing business operations and leveraging data analytics to accelerate start-up businesses. She joins from Plug and Play Tech Center and previously held roles at ICICI Bank and as a founder of Craftsy. She earned a postgraduate diploma in management from the University of California, Berkeley and an MBA from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay.

About data-powered, risk-managed venture investing

The EQUIAM Systematic Ranking (ESR) engine drives EQUIAM’s investment process. ESR draws information on an investable universe of more than 10,000 private companies and generates investment signals designed to identify companies with ample, high-quality data, well-established revenues, efficient use of capital and a higher probability of outperformance. ESR is designed to enable EQUIAM to consider a larger opportunity set and construct larger, more diversified portfolios than most traditional venture capital (VC) funds. ESR signals are also designed to avoid overvalued companies during portfolio construction and identify poor performing portfolio constituents for potential divestment.

EQUIAM’s operational model seeks to deploy capital faster than many traditional venture capital funds resulting in a comparatively shorter fund duration of four years and a relatively short two-year reinvestment period, and liquidity from any exit afterwards. To access the companies highly-ranked by the ESR algorithms, EQUIAM has built broad sourcing capabilities that include private secondary marketplaces, issuers, VC firms and primary funding rounds. The EQUIAM Funds also have lower minimum investment than is often required for venture capital fund investments and provide exposure to some of today’s most sought after late-stage private companies.

“Our approach has attracted the interest of larger institutions who see the parallels with data-powered investing in the public markets,” continued Makkawi. “Individuals and many family offices, on the other hand, have typically been unfairly locked out of venture capital investing until now. These ‘unventured’ investors recognize that extensive value-creation is taking place today during the decade or more that the average company remains private. The booming secondary market for private companies demonstrates this increasing investor interest, and we believe the market is in the beginning stages of exponential growth.”

About EQUIAM

EQUIAM is a data-powered VC manager that has pioneered a quantitative approach to constructing risk-managed portfolios of growth and late-stage private companies. EQUIAM funds are designed to offer diversified access, faster capital deployment and a shorter path to liquidity than many traditional venture fund investments. EQUIAM’s first fund, the EQUIAM Private Tech30 Fund held its first closing on February 15, 2019 and its final closing on June 30, 2019. Given the success of the EQUIAM Private Tech30 Fund, EQUIAM launched the EQUIAM Private Alpha Fund. The recently closed Private Alpha Fund uses the proprietary ESR process to analyze the investable universe of growth and late-stage private technology companies. Combined, the two funds represent almost $90 million in assets under management as of June 7, 2021. A third fund is planned for late 2021.

Disclosures

The material herein is for informational purposes. Nothing contained herein constitutes an offer of services or a solicitation to purchase or sell securities in the EQUIAM Private Tech30 Fund, the EQUIAM Private Alpha Fund, or any fund managed by EQUIAM (each, an “EQUIAM Fund”). In fact, the offering periods of both the EQUIAM Private Tech30 Fund and the EQUIAM Private Alpha Fund have expired and neither of these EQUIAM Funds is holding any further closings.

The information contained herein does not purport to be complete and is qualified in its entirety by reference to the more detailed discussions contained in the EQUIAM Funds’ offering documents. Any offer to sell or solicitation of an offer to purchase an EQUIAM Fund’s securities shall be made only by formal offering documents which contain additional information not set forth herein, including certain risks of investing, which such additional information is material to any decision to invest in an EQUIAM Fund.

Readers should not construe any of the information contained herein as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice. Prospective investors should consult with their own tax, financial and legal advisors before making any investment decisions with regard to an EQUIAM Fund.

The past performance of EQUIAM, the EQUIAM Funds, EQUIAM’s principals, or employees is not indicative of future returns of any EQUIAM Fund.

There is no guarantee that EQUIAM will be successful in achieving any EQUIAM Fund’s investment objectives or that the ESR will perform as anticipated. An investment in an EQUIAM Fund contains risks, including the risk of complete loss of an investor’s commitment.

No information is warranted by EQUIAM or its affiliates or subsidiaries as to completeness or accuracy, express or implied, and is subject to change without notice. Forward-looking statements contained herein, including observations about markets and industry and regulatory trends, reflect EQUIAM’s views as of the date hereof with respect to possible future events. Forward-looking statements may be identified by, among other things, the use of words such as “expects,” “anticipates,” “designed,” “believes,” or “estimates,” or the negatives of these terms, and similar expressions. Actual results could differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements as a result of factors beyond EQUIAM’s control. Investors are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such statements. No party has an obligation to update any of the forward-looking statements herein.

The information herein should be considered current only as of the date of publication without regard to the date on which you may receive or access the information. EQUIAM maintains the right to delete or modify information without prior notice.

Statements made herein that are not attributed to any third-party source reflect the views and opinions of EQUIAM.

Additional information is available upon request.

© 2021 EQUIAM

Contacts

Kerstin Österberg

The Neibart Group

347-866-3032

[email protected]