JD Vance - how did he start his own fund so fast?
An article about JD Vance's VC career came out today in the WSJ. I was shocked how quickly he raised his own fund. It says he joined Mithril as a junior investor in 2016 and launched his own $120M fund in 2019. Especially for someone who didn't come from family money, this seems like a pretty insane trajectory.
How common is this sort of trajectory in VC? I'm much more familiar with PE, where you'd have difficulty raising your own traditional fund, even if you were an MD at a brand name mega-fund with 15+ years of investing experience.
Looks like he still would have been 31 in 2016 so Junior might be more of a "title"
It looks like both Mithril and His fund, Narya capital, were heavily invested into fintech and health tech space which were extremely hot pre covid. It also sounds like some of his partners had more experience then him.
Overall this doesn't sound completely un reasonable - A decade+ of experience, Good partners, in a hot market
Edit: As the comment below might suggest, he was backed by Peter Theil after his time at Yale
Here's the full timeline based on Wikipedia. He was older because he was in the Marines and went to law school, but only had ~2-3 years of VC experience before launching his own fund.
Marines - 2003-2007
Ohio State - Graduated 2009
Yale Law School - Graduated 2013
Law clerk for US District Court for Eastern Kentucky - Through 2014 (1 year)
Private practice at Sidley Austin - Through 2016 (2 years)
Joins VC firm Mitril - Joins at the end of 2016
Launches his own firm - 2019
I mean with this back ground you cover:
-Veterans
-Large Alumni bases with (Ohio State and Yale)
-Political influence/law experience
Now sprinkle in some fellow partners with longer investment records and I don't see how you don't raise a fund in 2019.
I don't think his path is that unusual. He worked for a small business before Mithril in addition to his time in law and a top graduate program. It may not be the most popular path but it does happen often enough.
https://www.wsj.com/politics/elections/vp-pick-jd-vance-short-career-venture-capitalist-b3d941e1
I think pretty much everyone has yet to highlight the fact that before that he wrote a best-selling memoir which he’s earned royalties from, and then Netflix bought the rights to make a movie based on the book. No clue how much he made in total but at the very least gained notoriety from the book.
Yup, goes without saying-- it's venture capital, of course it's all about hype and notoriety
Same reason random celebrities like the Chainsmokers have somehow raised three funds
It's not like this is a vanilla Sand Hill Road upstart approach-- his Hillbilly Elegy resentful flyover country escapee world view is pretty directly related to the beyond-Silicon-Valley investment focus at Narya and which he led at Rise of the Rest
Aside from that, it helps a lot to be political/personal buddy-buddy with guys like Thiel (an LP)
He was backed by Peter Theil who basically blessed him after JD cold emailed the guy after a talk at Yale
This
Write a NY Times bestseller first that explains the economic woes of a demographic that propelled Trump to power and suggests how the fortunes of that group might be improved with economic opportunity…make sure the book has national relevance and (eventually paves the way to a political career at the very top level of government), sufficiently impressing billionaires Thiel and Schmidt to back a new fund to implement this strategy.
Doesn’t seem an easy path at all
Saw the opportunity I suppose…
exactly. so many pipeline-produced bots on this website cannot even fathom the idea of taking the non-traditional, risky path.
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