Ali Hamed is a Co-Founder and partner at CoVenture. We cover the biggest lessons learned from scaling CoVenture to $2.5b in AUM, which asset classes hold the most exciting opportunities today, and his approach to evaluating everything from credit to LPs and early-stage companies.
Principles & Lessons:
1) Scrappiness Builds Unique Capabilities In the early part of the conversation, Ali emphasizes the value of starting out as a “fundless sponsor,” remarking that “it was a pretty horrible experience trying to get it up and running.” Yet he credits those humble beginnings for creating a special muscle of finding “something that’s differentiated, and it had to be good.” This lesson suggests that being forced to fight for every investment fosters creativity and a willingness to look beyond the obvious. It also shows how early constraint can teach a team to underwrite deals from the ground up, rather than relying on reputation or legacy asset classes.
2) Avoid Investing to Be Liked Ali points out a subtle but crucial pitfall: some investors “like being liked,” so they chase fashionable themes or hot sectors for social approval rather than focusing on raw opportunity. He says, “We never got that memo. We thought the whole time we were supposed to be like investing in interesting things that we think we’d make a lot of money on.” The key here is to avoid conflating external validation with actual value and to hold firm to rational underwriting principles instead of chasing ephemeral trends.
3) Adapt Strategy to the Vintage One of Ali’s major themes is that good investors shift tactics to match the conditions, rather than forcing the same framework repeatedly. For example, he shuttered a software-for-equity model once it no longer offered a special edge, even though that earlier fund “is like 7x to 8x DPI and marked at 30x.” He stresses that “if we want to grow really, really fast, the two things that we would do is we would hire senior lateral hires…[but] that comes with more risk.” His approach is to be intentional about matching investment styles to the actual opportunity at hand, even if it complicates capital-raising or short-term growth.
4) Uncertainty Can Create Better Pricing Ali often values “things that have some problems” over supposedly perfect scenarios with inflated price tags. In his words, “people are willing to accept almost no return for a credit that seemingly has no problems, and they’re unwilling to deploy at all, even if they’re paid a lot of money for something with a couple of problems.” This highlights the importance of determining how much a ‘risk factor’ really matters rather than running away from it. By sizing these bets correctly, small pockets of uncertainty can produce better payoffs than crowded trades that appear “safer.”
5) Multiple Strategies as a Hedge Against Poor Vintages Ali explains that being in different asset classes—venture, asset-backed credit, and hybrid capital—allows him to “always be deploying in the market that has the best relative value at any given time,” thereby reducing the pressure to invest heavily in overpriced sectors. As he puts it, “If you’re only in one asset class and your asset class is going through an overpriced vintage…you either can keep investing…or stop investing for some vintage and then your employees are going to leave.” Maintaining a broader toolset helps them pivot when certain markets become unfavorable.
6) True Discipline in Underwriting A recurring message is that genuine diligence goes beyond superficial analysis. Ali contrasts typical private credit underwriters—who assume “the future will be the same as the past”—with those who dig into real structure and risk. He gives the example of new asset classes like YouTube catalogs, describing how “we find something that’s differentiated…and then we enter a market when it’s really us and only us.” Here, the lesson is that focusing on inherent risk factors—rather than rating-agency labels or historical averages—often uncovers unique returns and protects against reliance on outdated assumptions.
7) Transparency and Reliable Partnerships Ali underscores the significance of transparency on both sides of the capital equation. When raising money, he prefers partners willing to conduct thorough diligence and share honest feedback, rather than those who jump in without questions. He appreciates investors who “want to go through the data room…want to read our investment notes…want to go through case studies,” because that signals a commitment to long-term alignment. This lesson extends to any manager or entrepreneur: thorough, high-trust relationships beat quick wins with mismatched expectations.
8) Velocity and Relentless Standards Describing his work with Michael Ovitz, Ali notes that it recalibrated his sense of urgency. He saw how a legendary operator’s “idea of Quick is completely different,” and it “just makes you sit a little straighter and walk a little faster.” Crucially, Ali stresses that people often need to feel that external nudge—“it creates like this feeling of responsibility…our diligence better rock”—to meet higher standards. The broader principle is that high expectations and rapid execution can accelerate learning, provided there is a genuine willingness to absorb new levels of performance rather than fight them.
Transcript