Wed Nov 06 2024

This week on Swimming with Allocators, Earnest and Alexa welcome Christina Drake, a seasoned LP and Partner at Renaissance Venture Capital. Christina shares her journey from an accidental entry into finance to her current role at the Michigan-based Fund of Funds building out the local startup ecosystem. Christina shares lessons learned from seven years at Bridgewater working with the likes of sovereign wealth funds and six years as an investment advisor to major non-profit institutions including adopting marketing and client services best practices in venture. Also, Nick Talwar explains why financial institutions, like PE/VC funds, investments banks and fintech startups, are opting to build custom AI model training with the help of his agency Bottega8 rather than use over off-the-shelf options emphasizing how custom models allow financial institutions greater control, privacy, and cost-efficiency compared to big tech solutions.