133 | The Investment Game Is Rigged… Here's How to Get On the Right Side of It with Mike Collins

About this episode

In this episode, Patrick Lonergan interviews Mike Collins about the venture capital landscape and strategies for building wealth through startup investments.

What if the most powerful wealth-building investment on the planet has been deliberately kept out of reach, until now? In this episode of the Vital Wealth Strategies Podcast, host Patrick Lonergan sits down with Mike Collins, founder of Alumni Ventures, one of the most active venture capital firms in the United States, for a conversation that will fundamentally change the way entrepreneurs think about building and growing wealth. Mike brings over three decades of venture capital experience, starting at TA Associates in Boston in 1986, and has spent the last 12 years cracking open access to elite startup deals for everyday investors, the same deals backed by Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia, and Benchmark and making them available to a community of 25,000 individual investors through Alumni Ventures. Patrick and Mike go deep on exactly how venture capital works, how it differs from private equity, and why a diversified portfolio of startups may actually be one of the most prudent moves an entrepreneur can make with their wealth. They unpack the explosive opportunities emerging right now in AI, defense tech, nuclear energy, and biotech drug discovery, and reveal why 2026 is shaping up…

People in this episode

Host: Patrick Lonergan

Guest: Mike Collins

Topics covered

• venture capital
• wealth building
• investment strategies
• startup deals
• diversified portfolio
• emerging opportunities
• tax advantages

Keywords

• venture capital
• wealth building
• Alumni Ventures
• startup investments
• tax advantages
• QSBS
• Roth IRA
• biotech
• AI
• defense tech

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Alumni Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia, Benchmark

Places: Boston

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