LA Venture Podcast: Why Rivonia Road Capital Focuses on 'Venture Credit'

Minnie Ingersoll
Minnie Ingersoll is a partner at TenOneTen and host of the LA Venture podcast. Prior to TenOneTen, Minnie was the COO and co-founder of $100M+ Shift.com, an online marketplace for used cars. Minnie started her career as an early product manager at Google. Minnie studied Computer Science at Stanford and has an MBA from HBS. She recently moved back to L.A. after 20+ years in the Bay Area and is excited to be a part of the growing tech ecosystem of Southern California. In her space time, Minnie surfs baby waves and raises baby people.
LA Venture Podcast: Why Rivonia Road Capital Focuses on 'Venture Credit'

On this week's episode of LA Venture, hear from Dan Zinn, co-founder and managing partner at Rivonia Road Capital. The firm provides a much more bespoke solution than traditional venture debt. We also talk about how Zinn built a billion-dollar hedge fund and small business lender XPRS Capital.


Key Takeaways:

  • Zinn distinguishes that Rivonia Road invests in "venture credit" — a phrase that hasn't yet been coined — as opposed to venture debt. That is, they bridge the capital gap for venture-backed firms that have cash flows, royalty streams and/or other tangible objects.
  • Rivonia works with companies at all levels of development, but they're particularly interested in early-stage companies that originate their assets online.
  • Rivonia offers free advice because the firm is in the business of helping business and wants to support founders -- especially in understanding the capital market — which Zinn says most founders don't understand.
  • Zinn's investment decisions have always focused on where the capital is not going— for instance: China, alternative U.S. credit markets or small business -- and then exploring them.
  • Rivonia focuses on sub-hundred-million investments.
"This is all a journey and you better enjoy it and...do some interesting things along the way because...ultimately there's no destination that I know of that is necessarily satisfying." — Dan Zinn

Dan Zinn is cofounder and managing partner at Rivonia Road Capital. He was formerly a founder and chair at XPRS Capital and founding partner, portfolio manager at Orange Capital.

Want to hear more of L.A. Venture? Listen on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

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