About this episode

In this episode, Samir Kaji and Dave Engel discuss integrating venture capital into private client portfolios and the evolving landscape of venture investing.

Welcome to The Private Markets Playbook, a podcast for wealth advisors and CIOs navigating portfolios beyond the traditional 60/40. Hosted by Allocate, the show features candid conversations with allocators, asset managers, and industry leaders on building modern, programmatic portfolios—spanning private markets, portfolio construction, and the systems required to manage complexity at scale. In this episode, Samir Kaji sits down with Dave Engel, Partner and Head of Venture Capital at AlphaCore, to unpack how a wealth advisory firm can thoughtfully bring venture capital into private client portfolios. They trace Dave’s journey from building and selling startups to Palo Alto Networks to now running an endowment-style VC program inside a wealth platform. The conversation dives into what it really takes to access top-quartile venture returns, how to diligence the flood of emerging managers (including spinouts from brand-name firms), why education around illiquidity and risk is so critical for advisors and clients, and how AI-driven innovation—from healthspan to the physical world—is reshaping the opportunity set. Along the way, Samir and Dave explore secondaries, the impact of…

People in this episode

Host: Samir Kaji

Guest: Dave Engel

Topics covered

• venture capital
• private markets
• portfolio construction
• wealth advisory
• AI-driven innovation

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: AlphaCore, Palo Alto Networks, SpaceX, Anthropic

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