Episode summary
LP Destroys ‘Fees on Fees’
Swimming With Allocators
· · 40 min · Hosts: Alexa Binns, Earnest Sweat · Guests: Dan Fordyce, Roger Vincent, Shane Goudey
Summary
The guest traces his path from Baltimore and Cornell’s operations research program into endowment investing, saying the appeal was always a mix of quantitative work, people, and a long-term way to make an impact. He describes early exposure at the Cornell endowment, a formative stretch at Summit Rock, and how those experiences led him to co-found Summation with Roger after seeing a gap for a more modern allocator built around relationships and consistency.
Summation’s model is a single open-ended vehicle that invests globally across venture, growth equity, and buyout funds, plus selective co-investments. The guest argues that traditional “fees on fees” fund-of-funds structures are broken, and says Summation tries to align better with LPs by earning carry only when it outperforms liquid equity benchmarks and by using direct investments to help offset its fee load. He emphasizes staying disciplined on vintage years, avoiding concentration in hot names, and maintaining roughly equal exposure across the three strategies.
The conversation also focuses on the current private markets environment: AI hype, late-stage mega-rounds, SPVs, secondaries, and the growing power companies have over cap tables and investor rights. The guest says access still matters, but he is skeptical of crowded, overvalued rounds and argues that reputation, partnership, and being useful to people without a near-term payoff matter more than ever as information becomes commoditized.
Key takeaways
- The guest says Summation is built as an open-ended, endowment-style private equity allocator that invests across venture, growth equity, and buyout funds.
- He argues that “fees on fees” fund-of-funds structures are outdated and that direct co-investments can help offset the fee burden.
- The guest says the firm follows vintage-year discipline, targeting roughly two new names a year in venture, growth, and buyout rather than chasing hot markets.
- He is skeptical of crowded late-stage AI deals and says many “same 10 names” portfolios look overowned even if the companies are strong.
- The guest says relationships and reputation are more durable than information advantages as private markets become more transparent and AI-driven.
Notable quotes
“we are trying to bring what we call true endowment style private equity out to the the real world in heavy air quotes”
“we are, you know, alpha seeking fiduciaries for our LPs. You know, we want to do true long-term outperformance”
“In what other area of the world are we still using 70s or 80s technology, especially in one as important as, you know, the fundamental layer connecting who has the capital with the people deploying the capital”
How the episode opens
Welcome to Swimming with Alligators, — The VC podcast from the LP perspective — With your hosts Alexa Bins — And Ernest. You ready? Let's dive in. — Dan, it's it's great to have you on the show. Thanks for being on. Um, — Of course.
One thing that I wanted to uh talk to you about that I was interested from our pre-con conversation was how you came from Baltimore. I'm not gonna stop there because it' be like how did you get out of Baltimore? No. How how um you know your background from Baltimore to Cornell and how you first got pulled into finance and private markets. I just want you to share that story.
Yeah. So, um you know, I was born and raised right outside of Baltimore and I I came out of the womb immediately knowing I want to allocate to venture and private equity funds. You know, my my first word was uh actually it was an acronym.
It was LPA. Um, no. Uh, no.
In all seriousness, um, I, you know, always loved kind of, you know, it was classic story, you know, math and science, uh, and reading kind of sci-fi and all of that. My, my, my dad was, uh, recently retired actually, but, he was for 37 years worked for the DoD, um, in the as an engineer. So, you know, blowing stuff up, what h blowing stuff up and seeing what happens is literally about all I know of his job.
So I kind of always been, you know, cognizant of, you know, the kind of, you know, tech broadly. So, you know, everything from the, you know, computer games and Runescape back in the day to, you know, my dad being an engineer, you know, I'd always kind of thought about that.
From the episode’s captions: roughly the first two minutes, lightly cleaned. Keep watching on YouTube →
Topics
- fees on fees
- endowment-style private equity
- open-ended fund structure
- venture spvs and secondaries
- ai hype cycles and late-stage rounds
Companies and tickers mentioned
- Summation Capital
- Sidley Austin LLP
- New Enterprise Associates
- Summit Rock
Watch the episode
Watch “LP Destroys ‘Fees on Fees’” on YouTube
Summary, takeaways and quote selection by Octagon. Quotes are short excerpts; the full conversation is in the episode.
More from Swimming With Allocators
Swimming With Allocators, this episode and its artwork belong to Earnest Sweat, Alexa Binns. Octagon is not affiliated with the show; this page is an independent summary.
