Welcome to The Alternatives Mason: Building Alts Knowledge Brick by Brick. Banrion Capital Management uses technology to help independent advisors scale and educate themselves on alternative investments. Since education is such a big piece of the Banrion mission and business, we are excited to kick off this series to dive into the nits and grits of the alternatives space. Episode 3 "Democratizing Access to Venture Capital" features Dave Thornton, Co-Founder, CEO & CIO of Vested, one of Banrion Capital's partner asset managers.
Vested is pioneering index-like exposure to the VC asset class, across company stage, sector, and founding year. Vested acquires its exposure by providing funding to the departing employees of VC-backed companies, who find themselves in the acute distress of having 90 days to find the money to exercise their expiring stock options. This revolutionary approach allows Vested to provide liquidity for startup employees and along the way democratize access for investors to access the beta of venture capital unlike it’s ever been done before.
Dave is Vested’s Chief Executive Officer and Chief Investment Officer. For the last 11 years, Dave has been a serial entrepreneur. His most notable accomplishments include the founding and successful sale of PatientFinder, and his collaboration with Emilio Seijo (a Principal Quantitative Strategist at Vested) in the creation of a real-time illiquid asset pricing model which is algo-trading a $300M book at a name-brand bank. Dave also spent time building the systems at a hedge fund within Citigroup, and worked as a Program Manager at Microsoft. Dave received a BAS in Computer Science from the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Engineering and Applied Science and a BS in Economics with a concentration in Decision Processes from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. Dave earned a JD from Georgetown University.
Learn More About Vested: Vested Investor Site
LinkedIn: Dave J Thornton