I'm not sure if it's my natural disposition, desensitization from the current political regime, or advanced age, but I'm not that easy to surprise. I was listening to today's 20VC podcast episode, and like all popular podcasts, there's a few minutes of advertisements.
To my surprise, the second ad was for Harvard Management Company, advertised as a "truly exceptional partner and savvy investors" who are looking to partner with both emerging and established venture investors -- so just reach out! It's the first time I've heard an ad from an LP targeted at GPs (but it's also very possible it's been a growing thing I'm ignorant of).
On the one hand, maybe it's a stroke of marketing genius? As institutional investors of all sizes have crowded into venture, the first-movers (the Yales and Harvards) are having to fight their way into top VC fund allocation more and more. (See also: Yale's recent Prospect Fellowship.) Harvard is also a $56.7B endowment; whatever the ad costs is negligible, especially if it brings in a few investable leads.
But, ... to me, it feels more like a debasement of the vaunted Harvard name. What does it say about HMC if they are resorting to the same marketing techniques as growth-stage start-ups? If more university endowments copy HMC's strategy here, am I going to start getting more ads from these LPs? (I imagine a dystopian world where my Netflix commercials alternate between drugs I don't need and LPs I won't invest with.) More worrying, perhaps it signals an upper limit on the sourcing strategy (or network effects of the Harvard name) of the current HMC venture team.
Of course, my concerns could be entirely misplaced. It could just be a creative experiment, part of an early trend that has legs. I don't typically see things that surprise me -- especially not in the endowment space -- so this at the very least is an interesting new strategy to the age-old sourcing problem.
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