Jeff Joseph

About the Author

Jeff Joseph

Jeff Joseph has been been a managing partner of Prescient Capital Partners since co-founding the firm in 1999 making direct angel and venture capital investments in early and mezzanine-stage healthcare, lifesciences, internet, technology, entertainment/media, retail and hospitality companies. They have participated in a number of highly visible and profitable liquidity events. Additionally, they provide strategic consulting services to help entrepreneurs and CEOs of start-up, emerging and established companies to access the resources that they require to grow their businesses.

A former Investment Advisor, Joseph has always been a proponent of non-traditional and forward-thinking investment opportunities, asset classes and alternative strategies such as venture capital, private equity, real estate, hedged and  managed futures trading strategies and other vehicles that seek asymmetric investment outcomes.

Up until 2007, he was the managing director of Alternative Strategies for Rydex Investments, and was responsible for investment product origination, development and investment management of the firm’s proprietary institutional alternative trading strategies. The alternative investment products that his team developed included the mutual fund industry’s first multi-strategy absolute return fund and the first managed futures fund offering daily liquidity. Their new product slate attracted billions in new assets. Prior to Rydex, Jeff held managing director positions at Hedgeworld Capital Markets in Rye, NY and Hedge Fund Research in Chicago, IL.

Jeff maintains a blog (www.venturepopulist.com) for family offices, angel investors, investment advisors and entrepreneurs that addresses a variety of topics relating to private venture investment and finance. He has been a monthly contributing columnist to Investment Advisor since 2002.

• An Appetizing Investment: Second Course

  By Jeff Joseph  |  May 1, 2011

  In last month’s column we turned our lens toward one of the more populist venture investment opportunities—the restaurant business.

• An Appetizing Investment

  By Jeff Joseph  |  April 1, 2011

  An advisor recently wrote me to inquire how to best illustrate that the start-up restaurant investment his high-net-worth client was contemplating was a bad idea.

• Putting a Price on a Promise

  By Jeff Joseph  |  March 1, 2011

  Last month, we identified the typical ranges of equity that private venture investors end up with as the result of their “seed stage” investment, and the subsequent “Series A” round.

• A Great (and Surprising) Venture Investment Source

  By Jeff Joseph  |  February 1, 2011

  Recently, a wealth manager wrote that he was approached by one of his high-net-worth clients and asked to consider investing in the client’s new Web-based technology startup.

• The Good, The Bad and Reg D

  By Jeff Joseph  |  January 1, 2011

  The availability of risk capital for early-stage ventures has proven itself to be remarkably resilient.

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  One Hundred Days of Job Growth

  By Jeff Joseph  |  December 1, 2010

  In the State of the Union address earlier this year, Obama acknowledged that "the true engine of job creation in this country will always be America's businesses."

• The Price to Pay for Ibbotson’s Illiquidity Premium

  By Jeff Joseph  |  November 1, 2010

  Regular readers of this column frequently inquire as to which alternative asset classes or investment strategies may have risk-return characteristics similar to direct investments in startups.

• Exits Over Outflows

  By Jeff Joseph  |  October 1, 2010

  Last month, I spoke on a venture capital panel at a well-attended alternative investment conference in Chicago. As the former head of alternative strategies for...

• Venture Populist: Angels, Take Control of Your VC Financing With Puts and RBFs

  By Jeff Joseph  |  September 1, 2010

  Angel investors and their advisors must become more creative with their financing structures if they hope to avoid the same fate which Forbes magazine recently...

• Venture Populist: Terms of Engagement for Private Venture Advisors

  By Jeff Joseph  |  August 1, 2010

  Angel and venture investors often have the option to determine to what extent they intend to contribute professionally to their new portfolio holding. Investment advisors...