Welcome to AGM: The meeting place for private markets
Alt Goes Mainstream is a content platform that delivers the latest developments in private markets directly to your inbox. There is everything from blog posts to podcasts with industry leaders to keep you up to speed with the latest trends in private markets.
2020 and 2021 saw a seismic shift in how people think about investing. No longer do people expect to have a traditional 60/40 portfolio. They want to invest in everything from startups to cars to crypto to trading cards as culture collides with finance. Alts have gone mainstream (become a larger part of investors’ portfolios) and downstream (available to more investors).
We cover why and how we think the world is changing and draw on our experiences from building and investing in some of the foundational platforms and companies that are part of this groundbreaking trend.
Alt Goes Mainstream will keep you up to date on the future of finance.
Why subscribe to Alt Goes Mainstream?
If you are …
A founder who wants to build a company in the alternative investments space.
A VC who wants to understand what companies to look out for and invest into the alternative investments space.
An individual investor who wants to learn about the companies and strategies that can help you build an investment portfolio for the 21st Century.
A wealth manager who wants to learn how to approach investing in alternatives and have something interesting to talk about with your clients.
A finance professional at a financial institution who wants to see what the coming wave of disruption looks like in FinTech.
Or just anyone who is excited by the ground-breaking innovation happening in alternative investments.
About Me
Over the past 12 years, I’ve been lucky enough to have a front row seat as the alternative investment space has evolved from its roots in peer-to-peer lending (Lending Club) to trading cards (Alt) and collectibles (Rally Rd). How far we’ve come in just 12 short years.
I’m a Co-Founder and Partner at Broadhaven Ventures, an early-stage FinTech VC that has been early investors in Carta, MoneyLion, Republic, Nowports, Covalto (fka Credijusto), Kovi, Liveoak (acq. by DocuSign), 73 Strings, Alt, Bitso, Allocate, bunch, Brassica, CoinList, Shakepay.
Broadhaven Ventures is affiliated with Broadhaven Capital Partners, a market leading FinTech investment bank that has advised on over $90 billion in transaction volume, including a number of landmark deals in trading and technology (ICE, CBOE, BATS), asset management (Franklin Templeton / Legg Mason $6.6B merger, Franklin Templeton’s $1.75B acquisition of Lexington Partners), and alternative investments (Cambridge Associates, Wilshire Associates, Angelo Gordon’s sales).
I’ve been an early investor in some of the online investment platforms, like iCapital, Republic, Forge (IPO), 73 Strings, Alt, CoinList, Allocate, Sorare, bunch, Brassica, AltExchange, Passthrough, Caplight, Capchase, Syndicate, and others that are enabling alternatives to go mainstream.
I’ve been an operator as an early employee at two online investment platforms that have pioneered access to alternative investments.
I was the first sales hire at Oakland-based Mosaic, a Warburg Pincus-backed company that has raised over $300 million in equity, which enabled retail investors to invest into home solar loans and has originated over $14B in home solar loans since inception.
Then, I moved to New York City and was pre-product, employee #8 at iCapital Network, where I helped build their investor network / sales team from a blank sheet of paper. At iCapital, we built a platform that has enabled the HNW community to access alternative investment funds at low minimums. We grew the platform to almost $3 billion in AUM in under 3 years before BlackRock invested into the company. iCapital is now the critical industry infrastructure for banks and wealth managers to access alternative investment funds, enabling over $170 billion in AUM to flow into private equity, venture capital, and hedge funds, and has raised over $700 million in equity from leading investors like BlackRock, Blackstone, Goldman Sachs, Apollo, WestCap, Ping An, Carlyle, and others.
I started my career as an investor at Goldman Sachs on their Principal Strategic Investments team, investing into FinTech and capital markets infrastructure, which has helped shape my view that alts (and crypto) are the next asset class to undergo a market structure evolution as equities and fixed income have done in the past.
Join the crew
Be part of the movement that helps Alts Go Mainstream.
I’d love to hear your comments, questions, or feedback, so don’t hesitate to reach out to me on email at michael.sidgmore@broadhaven.com.
You can also find me on Twitter @michaelsidgmore or LinkedIn — feel free to reach out with any thoughts or questions! I’d love to hear from you.