Ignite VC: Ben Black on Turning LP Chaos into a 2x DPI and Building Akkadian Ventures | Ep177

Ignite: Conversations on Startups, Venture Capital, Tech, Future, and Society

Ben Black is the co-founder and managing director of Akkadian Ventures, a pioneering secondary investor with a career spanning over two decades in venture capital. With a track record of building innovative investment strategies and founding the Raise Global Summit, he offers unparalleled insights into secondaries, fund management, and the evolution of the venture ecosystem. In this episode, he shares his journey from early-stage investing to creating one of the most respected platforms for emerging managers, and what he’s learned from decades in the game.

In Today’s Episode We Discuss:

00:55 Ben’s early VC journey and Round Zero origins

03:28 Breaking into venture at Rosewood Capital

04:45 Launching New Cycle Capital and early seed fund challenges

06:55 LP default during the credit crisis—and how he turned it into a win

08:22 Why Ben left seed investing and turned to secondaries

10:46 The first secondary deals: DocuSign, Splunk, and a 6.5x DPI

12:16 Building Akkadian Ventures to scale small secondary deals

14:06 The evolution from SPVs to a $300M fund

17:06 How Akkadian works with founders, CFOs, and companies

20:22 The profile of companies Akkadian invests in

22:42 Advice for fund managers: liquidity, DPI, and when to sell

26:03 How to sell positions: rofers, timing, and GP strategies

29:35 Navigating company permissions and secondary deal mechanics

33:01 What’s happening in the secondary market today

35:10 Pricing discipline vs. hype in AI and SaaS

36:56 The MongoDB deal Ben regrets passing on

40:12 Portfolio theory: betting on trends vs. picking winners

42:44 Liquidity discipline: Ben’s 5x rule and early DPI

47:45 The power of recycling in fund strategy

51:01 Fund admin mechanics and returning capital to LPs

55:06 The story behind Raise Global Summit

57:30 How Raise grew into the leading LP-GP platform

59:57 What makes a great deck—and what LPs ignore

01:07:57 What GPs get wrong about LPs (and vice versa)

01:12:35 The future of Raise and the shift away from mega-funds

01:13:42 Closing thoughts and where to find Ben

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