LA Venture Podcast: Sinai Venture's Founder Zach White On Independent Thinking

On this week's episode of the L.A. Venture podcast, hear from Zach White, partner at Sinai Ventures, about what it's like managing Sinai's $600 million Fund II. We talk about investing in Pinterest, buying secondary shares and independent thinking in the venture business.

Key Takeaways:

• Sinai has done 85 investments out of a 2017 fund one worth $100 million. Pinterest is one of them and when it went public, the investment was briefly underwater. But Sinai stuck with them because they believed in the company, and it ultimately has paid dividends.
• White sees a lot of opportunity in secondary markets, where there's lots of money to be made — and lost.
• White and his partner Jordan Fudge are L.A. natives and want to provide the city's startups with bigger checks, something they see as much needed in L.A.'s current environment.
• Healthcare, technology and B2B have been Sinai's best-performing investments so far.
• Sinai has a $100 million fund for New Slate Ventures, a film and television production arm.

"Our general perspective is that when you're writing checks of this size, it's equally as important to fundamentally look for the compounding of social change as much as there is the compounding of your dollars." — Zach White

Zach White is partner at Sinai Ventures.

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