Max Kausman is the founder and solo GP of Advance VC, Australia's first dedicated fund-of-funds with a focus on secondaries.
In this conversation, they discuss why secondaries won't "save" all of venture (only the top performers), how discounts actually work (spoiler: the average is 30-35% but it's wildly bespoke) and why vintage diversification matters as much as portfolio diversification.
02:47 – Max's first investment: lessons as a 14-year-old basketball coach
07:08 – Defining secondaries and Advance VC's unique LP fund focus
09:44 – Why vintage diversification matters as much as company diversification
13:57 – How secondary transactions actually work: the three-way deal between buyer, seller, and fund
19:24 – What Max learned looking under the hood of Australian VCs firms across different funds and vintages
24:09 – Why Max decided on a secondary Fund of Funds (FoF) model
34:16 - Pricing secondaries
42:20 – What discounts actually look like in practice
47:40 – Will secondaries save venture? The truth about liquidity and why it's concentrated in top performers
50:16 – Building Advance VC and the founder journey of becoming a fund manager
Max Kausman - https://www.linkedin.com/in/maxkausman
Advance VC - https://www.advancevc.com/
Mentioned in this episode:
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