Podcast Summary: How I Invest with David Weisburd — E254: How to Build a 100-Year Venture Firm
Release Date: December 3, 2025
Host: David Weisburd
Guest: Mark Peter Davis
Episode Overview
In this in-depth conversation, David Weisburd interviews veteran VC Mark Peter Davis about building a hundred-year, enduring venture firm. The discussion blends practical insights on risk, liquidity, and incentives in venture capital (VC) with philosophical principles, operational practices, and the vital importance of grit and long-term thinking. Davis draws on two decades of experience, including co-founding 15 companies, nine unicorn investments, and creating a world-class institutional venture platform.
Key Topics & Insights
1. Evolving Philosophy of Venture Investing
(00:00–03:25)
- Long Cycles and Pattern Recognition: Venture is a long game; it takes 10 years to see outcomes and develop a nuanced approach. Early excitement (“TechCrunch Punch”) often overshadows the more prevalent reality of medium-sized (eight- or nine-figure) outcomes.
- Quote: "If you over manage risk, you can find yourself with low yields. So the balancing act is a little different than in some of the other asset classes." — Mark, [01:19]
- Balancing Risk & Power Law: The core challenge in VC is balancing risk management without eliminating exposure to "outlier" (unicorn) returns.
- Quote: "The balancing act is a little different than in some of the other asset classes." — Mark, [01:36]
2. Power Law vs. Portfolio Management
(03:25–05:12)
- Winners Carry the Day, but...: Outliers are crucial, but so is achieving consistent performance across fund vintages.
- Managing Fund Volatility: Many VCs have boom-bust cycles. The key for staying power is to combine pursuit of outliers with risk-managed plays and liquidity from non-unicorns.
- Quote: "It's not just the top 10% of the portfolio that carries a role in contributing to a yield, it's the top 80% of the portfolio." — Mark, [05:00]
3. Liquidity Strategies for Venture Portfolios
(05:12–09:49)
- Who Buys Non-Outlier Companies? Most liquidity comes from M&A and IPOs, but a vibrant secondary market (including both GP and "up-round" secondaries) is emerging, offering real opportunities for earlier returns.
- When to Sell? Decision Framework: Analyze fundamentals at the time of the offer, estimate IRR vs. fund targets, and use rules of thumb (e.g., sell half in "tweener" cases).
- Quote: "We look at each bespoke deal as a unique opportunity and redo a complete underwriting as if it's an initial entry into the company." — Mark, [09:08]
4. Incentive Alignment and Institutional Endurance
(09:49–13:18)
- GP/LP Incentive Misalignment: VC economic incentives (often MOIC-focused, low-preferred rates) can be misaligned with LPs seeking realized (DPI) returns.
- Quote: "One could say that some GPs might come into this business knowing that if they can raise a couple of large funds in a row, they'll be retired before the results are in on those funds." — Mark, [10:22]
- Building a Hundred-Year Firm: Mark’s firm is optimized for institutional alignment and legacy, prioritizing long-term returns and sustained LP relationships over short-term gains.
- Quote: "We're trying to build this long-term hundred year firm in New York... the calculus is very different." — Mark, [11:48]
5. The Power of Narrative and True Signals
(13:18–14:35)
- Narratives vs. Substance: VCs are masterful storytellers, but smart LPs cut through the stories and watch fund size, GP commitment, and operational behavior.
- Quote: "I think about narratives like sales or like plastic surgery... If somebody does a really good job selling you, you don't think of them as a salesperson." — David, [12:29]
6. Brokerage vs. Institutional VC Models
(14:35–18:07)
- Two Structures: Some VC firms operate on a "brokerage" model (deals are partner-driven with little cohesion), while others operate institutionally with deep founder and LP service orientation. Mark prioritizes the latter for durability and value.
- Quote: "There's a shift from merely kind of moving money around to building an institution..." — Mark, [14:09]
7. Crafting a Winning VC Niche
(15:08–22:06)
- Dominant Non-Lead Partner Strategy: Mark’s unique edge is being the institutional, high-value, non-lead Series A partner—a niche where most competitors are smaller, less resourceful firms.
- Quote: "We are the, I like to say, the humble Robin to everyone else's Batman. So we never compete with Sequoia or any of the great firms in the market. We are their partner." — Mark, [16:58]
- Winning Allocations: Their operational support, proactive diligence, and long-standing goodwill yield strong access to competitive deals, and entrepreneurs often proactively seek them out.
- Quote: "...portfolio comes together. But just to focus on the first part, we have developed a proprietary deal flow. Again, we operate like a lead firm. We do all the non scalable content production..." — Mark, [20:20]
8. Founder Support and Operational Value
(22:06–31:09)
- Entrepreneur as Customer: Not competing for lead positions avoids conflicts and lets the firm offer value-add without sharp elbows.
- Operational Platform: Their background in building service companies translates into real, on-call help for startups (talent, finance, PR, etc.).
- Quote: "At our peak, we were servicing about 1 out of every 10 venture backed company in the country." — Mark, [32:16]
- Therapist Role: About a third of VC involves founder therapy—helping founders process pain points and unknowns quickly.
9. The Limits of Academic Learning & the Power of Experience
(33:31–38:30)
- Doing Trumps Knowing: Deep insight comes from hands-on experience (and mistakes), not just classroom learning.
- Quote: "You cannot learn entrepreneurship in a classroom, unfortunately...The emotional stresses, the human dimensions, it's complicated." — Mark, [31:21]
- Integration of Learning: Academic frameworks gain meaning after real-world unlearning and then reintegration into advanced practice.
- Quote: "When I could finally see the patterns in the underlying companies and dynamics...the frameworks actually worked, but I couldn't see how to put the frameworks into practice in reality." — Mark, [35:24]
10. Endurance, Grit, and Timeless Advice
(39:19–42:58)
- Stay in the Game: Success comes from staying power—grit leads to compounding results over time, especially in slow-cycle domains like VC.
- Quote: "Simply having the endurance and humility and a commitment to the craft...with enough time will give you success." — Mark, [39:32]
- Work-Life Integration: Design your environment so that intrinsic motivators (people, city, mission) help you stay the long course.
- Quote: "I adore the people I work with. That's huge. It gives me psychological fulfillment to walk in the office every day. I'm not dreading it at all. I love it." — Mark, [42:16]
Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments
-
On VC’s Long-Game:
"Until you're 10 years into the venture game, you still haven't seen kind of the back half of how things operate, how to manage exits over time." — Mark, [00:43] -
On Power Law Dependence:
"The winners do carry the day... But what you see in a lot of fund managers is huge variance in yields across vintages." — Mark, [03:38] -
On Unique Secondaries:
"There are these mega funds out there... they'll issue a secondary tender for existing shareholders. The novelty of these offers is significant because they typically do not come at a discount." — Mark, [06:36] -
On Narrative vs. Reality:
"You have to really almost ignore the narrative or take it with a significant grain of salt and then look at the underlying behavior. How big is the fund size getting, how big is the GP commit?" — David, [13:11] -
On the Institutional Approach:
"There's a shift from merely kind of moving money around to building an institution and an organization that's going to have durability and depth in its value proposition." — Mark, [14:14] -
On the Non-Lead Niche:
"By staying in that backseat, we're trying to be an NBA player in the high school basketball league... it's a very big differentiator." — Mark, [16:22] -
On Keeping Founders as Customers:
"The customer, if you think about it from this side of the business, is the entrepreneur. It's not other venture firms." — Mark, [23:42] -
On Timeless Advice:
"Simply having the endurance to keep going will drastically, exponentially increase your probability of having good outcomes." — Mark, [39:43]
Important Timestamps
- [00:31] – Mark on VC’s long cycles and evolving philosophy
- [01:51] – The “TechCrunch Punch” and psychology of venture investment
- [03:34] – Reconciling power law dependence and portfolio consistency
- [05:22] – Managing liquidity: M&A, IPO, secondaries explained
- [09:49] – GP/LP incentive misalignments and long-term alignment
- [13:18] – Differentiating narrative and substance in venture
- [14:35] – Brokerage model vs operational/institutional VC firms
- [15:08] – Crafting the dominant non-lead institutional partner niche
- [22:06] – “Founder as customer,” proprietary deal flow and value-add
- [31:20] – How entrepreneurial experience shapes better VC judgment
- [39:19] – Timeless lesson: the compounded grit
Where to Find Mark Peter Davis
- Twitter: @pd
- Podcast: Innovation with Mark Peter Davis
- LinkedIn: Search “Mark Peter Davis”
- Interplay VC: www.interplay.vc
- Quote: "I have a hundred percent response rate goal in my life and I'm zero inbox, so if you reach out, you're probably going to hear something back..." — Mark, [43:12]
Tone and Style
Candid, reflective, and deeply practical with a focus on institutional durability, operational excellence, and founder-centric philosophies. Both host and guest are experienced and occasionally philosophical, weaving actionable insights with big-picture thinking.
Summary prepared for listeners seeking a comprehensive, actionable understanding of how to build an enduring, founder-focused, and institutionally robust venture capital platform.