Friday, 23 September 2016

Charlie Jadallah – Venture Capitalist on Funds of Funds

Charlie Jadallah is one of Silicon Valley’s leading venture capitalists. As part of Darwin, his expertise revolves primarily around venture capital, business development initiatives, and e-commerce. Jadallah understands the power and upward energy of venture capital and is committed to providing his clients with as many resources as possible.

There are pros and cons to funds of funds, the upside being that the investor is completely reliant on the investor. Funds of funds are multi-tiered investment spaces made up of a large set of other funds. Generally, they have lower minimums and are a smart approach to investing in hedge funds with a wide range of diversification. Sometimes, funds of funds are invested in hedge funds with several differing strategies and a higher rate of diversification, while others, named single-strategy, will invest in an arrangement of funds containing the very similar or even the same strategies.

The benefits in the fund of funds approach is that they provide the investor the ability to instant diversification in a collection of hedge funds, which can be quite beneficial for an investor with a portfolio big enough to invest in types like hedge funds, but are still too little to have access to the proper diversification that is directly linked to hedge funds. For example, with general hedge fund minimums beginning around the one-million range, it would be hard for a prospective investor with a two-million dollar account to ‘diversify’ their portfolio of these hedge funds. The max amount of hedge funds they would be able to invest in is 2, meaning it would be a beneficial strategy. A fund of funds, on the other hand, that is spaced out in fifteen to twenty hedge funds, with a smallest investment of 500,000 dollars. This will let the investor get access to alternative types of investment benefits without it being detrimental to the overall health of the portfolio.

Funds of funds can be single-strategy funds, while the other types of investments in funds can be used by utilizing differing strategies. The multi-strategy funds give wider diversification and unrelated returns in relation to the underlying funds. In this situation, the investor leans on the expertise of the fund manager to find the portfolio to the correct strategies and to monitor and shift the portfolio when it is needed. An investment in a well-strategized multi-fund of funds is also good for investors who don’t have the ability or resources to know which approaches are attractive in the current investment milieu.

Fund of funds with only one strategy, contrastingly, needs an investor decision to put exposure on a certain strategy. Generally, this investor must have the resources to evaluate and allocate this fund after a very deliberate investigation of the entire portfolio.

Charlie Jadallah utilizes the fund of funds strategy, an approach that avoids investing in stocks and bonds. As is mentioned, this approach is beneficial in several ways. A careful utilization of the fund of funds approach in venture capital can bring out extensive gains. Darwin has already brought in 323 million from its small host of clients and is rapidly growing.