If you sit out a few venture vintages, the relationships might not be there when you come back.Frank Tanner · on why LPs cannot sit out vintages
They all show up in this deep dive with Frank Tanner, Head of Early Stage Venture at Morgan Creek Capital Management, a firm born out of the UNC endowment and now managing capital across private equity, real estate, and venture for institutions and family offices alike.
Frank is helping build one of the most thoughtful and structured early-stage investment programs in venture, grounded in access, long-term thinking, and a portfolio theory approach to alpha.
This episode unpacks:
- Why family offices are embracing alternatives, and how venture fits.
- How Morgan Creek builds diversified early-stage portfolios using "power law math".
- Their 5 S framework for evaluating VC managers: source, select, secure, support, signal.
- Why solo GPs and micro VCs offer asymmetric upside, if you back them right.
- PE vs. VC for allocators: what's driving the shift (and where venture wins).
- Why now might be the best time to invest in early-stage, even if DPI hasn't shown up yet.
We also explore:
- The legibility bias in early-stage and where contrarian opportunities lie.
- Why emerging managers often outperform, and how Morgan Creek filters them.
- Tactical vs. programmatic investing in private markets.
- What LPs get wrong about risk in venture (hint: power law is everything).
- How allocators should think about barbell strategies across growth and seed.
FIRMS & INSTITUTIONS
Morgan Creek Capital Management
Founded in 2004, out of the UNC endowment.
Morgan Creek Digital
Direct investments into blockchain infrastructure, digital assets and data plays; the funds were launched in 2017–2018.
UNC, Notre Dame, Stanford, Duke
The endowment heritage of the firm, including the CIO's previous seat at Notre Dame.
Source for the 30 firms that raised 75% of venture capital last year.
PEOPLE
Frank Tanner
Leads early-stage venture strategy and manages the private investment platform at Morgan Creek; attended UNC, where he played basketball.
Investments thought leader, Big Book of VC.
CONCEPTS
The five S's
Source, select, secure, support and signal, the first-principles test applied to any manager, specialist or generalist.
Legible founders
Founders whose university, employer or prior exit pattern-matches to past outcomes; the opportunity for pre-seed investors is the non-consensus ones.
Barbell strategy
Beta through multi-stage platforms, with upside stacked through early-stage bets.
Solo GPs and micro VCs
Former operators, angels and tier-one spinouts writing first checks pre-product-market-fit, never one or two on their own, but as a basket.
Private Markets Allocation: Investment Advisor Perspectives →
The full written snapshot of this interview on the Rethink site.