Peter Levine Quotes

I think this is also a great time to invest in private equity, helping companies grow from the ground up.

So much of venture capital is pattern recognition.

I think one of the key differentiators I bring to the table as a venture capitalist is a solid understanding of the public markets and how they operate.

There's a final exam in venture every four to six years. The scary thing is you need to get an 'A' in every discipline. You need to be on generational planning, need to be on great deal flow, need be on great outcomes, you need to be on great company building.

I have definitely refocused Lowercase Capital on later-stage deals and my existing portfolio.

I was involved with Wells Fargo Bank as a consultant in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when I suggested to them that they develop a product that has become known as index funds.

The ability to select stocks, manage them over time and know when to sell them is incredibly difficult, even for professional fund managers.

One of the things that has been truly incredible to observe though, is the amount of venture investment that has gone into early stage security technology.

I already have enough apparel businesses that are either doing well or not really doing anything at all, and I'm looking to broaden my portfolio.

I started a business with two guys I played with, Ronnie Lott and Harris Barton: Champion Ventures, it's a fund of funds. We have $400 million or so under management.

Internally, when we manage portfolios, we figure out what works in large cap, what works in mid cap, what works in small cap. Generally speaking, large cap stocks want earning stability, strong cash flow, margin expansion.

I'd been a great angel investor, but professional venture capital was clearly not the right thing for me.

I keep anywhere between 5-10 percent of my net worth in venture ideas.

I've been a customer of the top venture capital firms, so I know exactly what they do and don't do.

Many of the best firms historically in venture capital have been multi-sector.

If I were to leave and raise a venture fund, I would have to find 10 or 100 LPs. They would all give me a bunch of money, and I would take a percentage of that to pay myself. They would expect me to invest that over the next three years, and they want that money back in seven or eight years.

I invest in funds myself even though I run my own fund for my daughters.

I wanted a CFO with public company experience; I needed an HR department, new office space, and a board which could help me grow the business. Insight, the private equity firm I chose, helped me with all that.

Successful hedge funds will be entrepreneurial; it is the essence of the craft.

Start small; get to know the landscape. We take risks but not major risks. We always started with small capital - €4m in Holland, $10m in Russia - and as we get to know the landscape of a country, we think about other businesses.

The philosophy to 'buy and hold' is a philosophy that I use to manage funds.

I'd stay away from investments in a variety of sectors that are capital intensive. Anyone who says we need $100 million before we know if what we're doing makes sense and the customers want it - that's not going to work.

People want to make sure there is flexibility to reallocate assets. They are trusting us to make the asset allocation decisions.

I'm sometimes accused of being hostile to mutual funds. That's not fair, really. There is a place for them. Still, I am hostile to one thing, which is trying to use funds to time your way in and out of the market. That's a recipe for very bad results.

The Interros strategy toward various assets generally depends on the stage of their development and level of their maturity.