Alt Investments
New York RIA Explains Venture Fund Approach

The founder and CEO of a wealth management firm that recently launched a venture capital fund explains its strategy.
GoalVest
Advisory, a female-founded RIA operating from the World Trade
Center in New York, in October launched
its Venture Growth Fund, aimed at high net worth investors. And
in a recent interview, the firm’s CEO and founder explained the
strategy.
The fund follows the firm’s approach of using multi-channel deal
sourcing, covering market trends such as AI, climate technology,
defense, software-as-a-service, certain consumer sectors, and
fintech. GoalVest expects to raise at least $50 million for the
closed-end fund.
The new fund represented an important move for founder and CEO,
Sevasti Balafas (pictured).
“We are looking to invest in names with a return potential of
about three times over two to four years,” she told Family
Wealth Report.
“We believe long-term expected returns in private markets are
going to be in the double digits of returns vs single digits of
returns for public equities in the next decade,” she said. “Part
of the increase in return potential comes from the higher growth
potential mentioned above along with an illiquidity premium we
see in private markets.”
GoalVest has already put money into scores of firms. It has
invested in mid-to-late stage VC-backed companies in prior funds
including: OLIPOP (soft drinks), CoreWeave (cloud computing),
Anduril (defense), Insomnia Cookies (baked foods), Klarna
(fintech), Apollo.io (sales tech), Redwood Materials (batteries),
Armada Systems (supply-chain logistics), Shield AI (aerospace and
arms tech), Aplazo (payments), Cents (business management
software), Cargomatic (logistics), and Animoca Brands (game
software).
As for the firm’s end-clients, there is a concentration of them
in New York, Kansas and Texas but also California, New Jersey and
several other states in the US.
To take part in the fund, investors must be Qualified Clients.
For the purposes of this fund, a QC is a person that (1) has at
least $1.1 million in assets under management with the investment
advisor immediately after entering the advisory contract or (2)
has a net worth in excess of $2.2 million immediately prior to
entering into the advisory excluding primary home. The fund has a
minimum investment threshold of $250,000.
Balafas explained why VC is important.
“There is high concentration in public equity markets. One third
of the market cap of the S&P 500 is in 10 individual names.
Given the high concentration, investors should be looking to
broaden their equity exposure beyond the S&P 500 and public
equities. The growth rate these top companies have seen is not as
high in the next decade as it was in the last decade.
“The opportunity set for private markets is growing and the
opportunity set for public markets is shrinking. 20 years ago,
there were over 8,000 US public equities available. Now there is
less than half that number,” she continued. “Growth-oriented
investors able to take on some illiquidity should be looking at
that broader opportunity set.”
Another reason for holding private market investments is that
companies are not only staying private longer but more of their
growth is happening while they are private, Balafas said.