Episode summary
What It Takes to Win With Institutional LPs
Swimming With Allocators
· · Hosts: Alexa Binns, Earnest Sweat · Guests: Yuri Lee, Chuck Daly
Summary
Yuri Lee argues that her global upbringing shaped both her investing lens and her confidence that talent can come from anywhere. She says that belief, plus an early love of technology and online communities, makes her pay attention to what founders and managers have accomplished relative to where they started, and to stay positive about how software and AI can broaden opportunity.
At TMRS, she is helping build a new venture and growth program inside a roughly $50 billion trust with about $3 billion earmarked for venture and growth. The portfolio is split between early-stage and multi-stage managers, and she says the institution is also building an aggressive co-investment program that could eventually move toward a 50/50 mix of funds and co-invests. Her framework for managers is simple: clear differentiation in sourcing, picking, or winning; true product-market fit between edge and strategy; and the willingness to back non-consensus ideas when the portfolio needs them.
She also says most GP pitches sound too similar, so she listens for a unique insight and wants to talk about actual companies, not just a rehearsed deck. For institutional fundraising, she emphasizes that pensions bring extra legal, compliance, and diligence complexity, and that managers should think ahead about conflicts, disclosures, and marketing principles rather than trying to clean them up later.
Key takeaways
- Yuri Lee says TMRS is building a venture and growth platform from roughly $3 billion in venture/growth assets, with several hundred million dollars to deploy each year.
- She wants managers with a real edge in sourcing, picking, or winning, and says the strategy has to fit that edge like product-market fit.
- For early-stage managers, Yuri Lee says sourcing and winning matter more than picking; for later-stage managers, picking and sizing become more important.
- She says TMRS wants both consensus exposure and non-consensus managers, because consensus rounds may be cheaper but not necessarily better.
- On co-investments, she says the program is meant to lower fees, double down on winners, and fill gaps in the portfolio, but it also raises adverse-selection risk.
Notable quotes
“I think surprisingly like a lot of managers don't have product market fit where the product that they're selling doesn't match the edge that they have”
“the purpose of co-investing in the portfolio there there's a couple things. One is it blends down fees”
How the episode opens
Welcome to Swimming with Alligators, — The VC podcast from the LP perspective — With your hosts Alexa Bins — And Ernest S. You ready? Let's dive in. — Yuri, is so great to have you on today. Thanks for being on. — Thanks for having me.
No problem. No problem. Um, so during our prep conversation, I really enjoyed just hearing um really your glo global background like being born in Seoul and raised in Budapest and then later coming to the US for for school. Um, I was wondering like how did those experiences have really shaped you as a as a person and then also as an investor?
Yeah, that's a big question to to start with. Um but yeah I mean obviously it shaped a ton. Um few things that come to mind though one is um just like the deep belief that talent can really come from anywhere.
Um you know all corners of the globe like all backgrounds like all all those things. And um I think for me like when I evaluate founders or GPS or just people in general um it's it's a good reminder to think about what people have accomplished relative to where they've started. I think um you know I think in the context of founders for example like you know founder who started um in a different country and came to the US is just going to have a different experience than somebody else who may have grown up in the US.
So like things like that. Um, and so I I think about that a lot when I'm evaluating people. Um, the other thing is I think like it really did give me the love for technology.
Like I think technology is such a democratizing force.
From the episode’s captions: roughly the first two minutes, lightly cleaned. Keep watching on YouTube →
Topics
- institutional lp pitching
- venture and growth allocation
- emerging manager due diligence
- co-investments and fund strategy
- vc marketing rule compliance
Companies and tickers mentioned
- Texas Municipal Retirement System
- Sidley Austin LLP
Watch the episode
Watch “What It Takes to Win With Institutional LPs” 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.
