Founder of @CendanaCapital
San Francisco, California
Joined February 2008
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Today, we are announcing our new fund, @CendanaCapital 6. It was our fastest fundraise ever, and had interest well above our $400M hard cap. We added a handful of new institutional LPs–including for the first time, 2 public pension funds. We are particularly keen that a number of our LPs are mission driven–they are the financial engines for a number of world-class educational and not-for-profit organizations, and of course, public pension funds that provide the retirement benefits to their members. We are grateful for the trust and support of our LPs!
Armed with the pattern recognition built over the past 15 years, and the willingness to be both creative and open to refining our approach, we are super excited about the opportunities over the next few years. Chaos is a ladder–for most people, chaos leads to confusion, inaction and ultimately failure. If we remain clear-eyed about our mission, execute accordingly and become true partners along the way to our LPs and to our GPs, we are confident that we can lead the way.
More detail here about our focus:
medium.com/@CendanaCapital/a…
Ali is a legend and his stories over the years about painful lessons is remarkable.
I'm starting a podcast, "Confession," where I invite tech veterans to share their painful lessons.
We all connect through shared pain. Hear founders & CEOs like Satya Nadella (Microsoft), Dara Khosrowshahi (Uber), Luana Lopes Lara (Kalshi), and others share their stories and lessons learned.
Subscribe to Confession on...
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@SatyaNadella @Dkhos @luanalopeslara
According to PitchBook, @CendanaCapital was ranked second for performance by VC fund of funds. Never heard of Peakview 🫢, but like Avis, we try harder 💪🏼
We at @CendanaCapital get asked about portfolio construction by seed GPs, particularly around valuation discipline. I think LPs will want to see that the GP can identify non-consensus founders who ultimately build (and exit) consensus companies AND have access to exceptional founders at consensus valuations (and exits). These are basically the 2 buckets of founders within portfolio construction, and we believe most of the capital should go to the first bucket, but not to ignore the second. Being overly rigid about check size and ownership creates adverse selection issues.
Michael Kim retweeted
My Favorite LP! Michael was my first LP to commit to Fund 1 back in the day. What a great journey it has been ...
Michael Kim retweeted
As the largest LP in Freestyle 1, we at @CendanaCapital thank you💥 and agree with your thoughts on partial secondaries along the way. It’s being a Investor with a capital I 💪🏼
Fun milestone at @freestylevc.
In 2013, I led seed rounds in both @airtable AND @intercom.
$700K each. $7M post. 10% ownership. Same $26M fund.
13 years later — $2B+ exits, weeks apart.
But the exits aren't the story. The playbook is.
As the largest LP in Freestyle 1, we at @CendanaCapital thank you💥 and agree with your thoughts on partial secondaries along the way. It’s being a Investor with a capital I 💪🏼
Fun milestone at @freestylevc.
In 2013, I led seed rounds in both @airtable AND @intercom.
$700K each. $7M post. 10% ownership. Same $26M fund.
13 years later — $2B+ exits, weeks apart.
But the exits aren't the story. The playbook is.
Michael Kim retweeted
directionally right, but worth highlighting a few things:
1/ based on my experience, allocators are actually asking about DPI. it's the number one DD question if you're raising Fund II+ nowadays
2/ managers did find ways to give liquidity, but with the caveats from your original post (aka the bid you might not like) + a few things below:
> US direct secondaries went from $50B annualized in Q4 2024 to $107B in Q2 2026, but concentration is really high: top-20 names are 86% of trading value (h/t @PitchBook)
> venture is starting to import CVs at the top end (e.g. NEA, Lightspeed), bc the mark survives and carry crystallizes, but it's relatively small and kinda "marginal", imho
> strip sales, where pricing is pro-rata and nobody sets their own price, stayed flat
3/ this problem is more common where fee income makes carry optional (aka mega funds). many emerging managers don't have that cushion and are usually fine with a partial sale, because it often becomes the catalyst for the next raise
4/ and finally, the next 18 months will be telling. SpaceX already went out, OpenAI and Anthropic are queued, and the market is broadly optimistic about the liquidity window opening. if 2020–21 vintage DPI still doesn't move, that defense is gone
p.s. there's a great video where @MKRocks from @CendanaCapital on @TurnerNovak's podcast explains how managers should think about selling portfolio positions and early DPI:
Michael Kim retweeted
I think this is exactly right.
What matters isn’t the network you’ve accumulated. It’s whether your network is still compounding.
That’s usually a reflection of curiosity. The managers who continue learning, writing, meeting founders and building relationships tend to expand their opportunity set year after year. Those who rely on yesterday’s network eventually find it has a shelf life.
What Cendana Capital Founder @MKRocks looks for before investing as an LP in a new fund
"Networks and domain expertise have a shelf life. You could've been the VP of whatever at Google 10 years ago. That's not as relevant today."
"What we look for is someone that has hustle, they're building on those networks, and are intellectually curious, that's the it factor.
Michael Kim retweeted
What Cendana Capital Founder @MKRocks looks for before investing as an LP in a new fund
"Networks and domain expertise have a shelf life. You could've been the VP of whatever at Google 10 years ago. That's not as relevant today."
"What we look for is someone that has hustle, they're building on those networks, and are intellectually curious, that's the it factor.
Michael Kim retweeted
Happy Thursday. On today's show:
- @MartinShkreli (Godel Terminal)
- @vladtenev (Robinhood)
- @lulumeservey (Rostra)
- @GillVerd (Extropic)
- @KaranKunjur (K2 Space)
- @MKRocks (Cendana Capital)
- @joon_s_pk (Simile)
See you on the stream.
Michael Kim retweeted
An unauthorized party is impersonating me and Cendana Capital using the fraudulent domain cendanacapitals.com (note the extra “s”).
Our only official email domain is @cendanacapital.com.
If you receive an email from @cendanacapitals.com, please do not respond, click links, or open attachments. Report it as phishing and let us know.
We’re working with the appropriate providers to have the fraudulent domain taken down. Thank you for your vigilance.
An unauthorized party is impersonating me and Cendana Capital using the fraudulent domain cendanacapitals.com (note the extra “s”).
Our only official email domain is @cendanacapital.com.
If you receive an email from @cendanacapitals.com, please do not respond, click links, or open attachments. Report it as phishing and let us know.
We’re working with the appropriate providers to have the fraudulent domain taken down. Thank you for your vigilance.
Michael Kim retweeted
Power laws rule everything around me. That’s the core takeaway from today’s venture capital roundtable with Footwork’s @nbt, Cendana Capital’s @mkrocks and @alex. Nikhil reckons that the Valley has never been more power-law-pilled than it is today, a dynamic impacting who raises, how much, and from whom. Hit play for the state of play in the secondary markets, why data is once the talk of tech, why the SaaSpocalypse may fade, and more!
0:00 Introduction: Nikhil Basu Trivedi (Footwork) & Michael Kim (Cendana Capital)
1:59 The Anduril vs. USVC secondary market blowup
4:08 Why Silicon Valley is 'power-law-pilled'
8:23 Plaud: If your work depends on conversations — interviews, meetings, calls — you need a Plaud NotePin. You can check it out at Plaud.ai/twist and use code TWIST for 10% off!
9:37 Information asymmetry in the secondary markets
9:45 Every.io — For all of your incorporation, banking, payroll, benefits, accounting, taxes or other back-office administration needs, visit every.io
15:02 Is SPV fraud smoke or fire?
16:32 Superhuman acquires GPTZero
19:54 Agree.com - Stop chasing invoices and automate your entire contract-to-cash stack. Go to agree.com and tell them Jason sent you to get 50% off for life!
21:10 The M&A wave
27:19 The SaaSpocalypse debate
29:59 DigitalOcean - Head to do.co/twist to start building on DigitalOcean's AI-Native Cloud today — and cut your AI workload costs by up to 50%.
30:44 Data's moment in the energy → compute → data loop
35:01 Where will AI value accrue?
40:04 What could cause an AI correction?
42:17 Why some companies are "too big to miss"
46:23 China's possible open-weight model ban
53:28 Young founders: Etched, Thiel Fellows, Z Fellows, Neo
55:33 Portfolio spotlight: WindBorne's weather balloons and data moat
58:47 Michael's favorite fund manager: Josh Browder
🎥 Watch the full episode here 👇
Michael Kim retweeted
Check out the full docket at thisweekinstartups.com/docke…
Michael Kim retweeted
🚨 We're LIVE in 20 minutes with @MKRocks of @CendanaCapital.
Michael was the first institutional LP in IA Ventures; now he's the LP behind dozens of the best seed funds in the business, with nearly $3B under management.
Last fall, he said the quiet part out loud: venture funds are sitting on 20-year-old positions with nowhere to go. With secondary markets in chaos this week, we're asking him what breaks first.
See you at 12 PM central! We've got a stacked panel today!
I think one way to look at where we are today is that we're in basically ZIRP 2.0, where it's not the U.S. government providing free cash but rather the platform funds. There'll be a time where that low cost of capital and the availability of it will slow down. The catalyst might be the circular economy around data centers and compute getting dented by a correction in the public or credit markets.
Similar to 2022 and what followed would be the same story, where companies have to focus not on growth at all costs, but on getting to profitability. Given that compute and energy are constraints, the pricing power for inputs will be held by those companies and not by the end users (i.e., the startups), so it will be a more challenging period for these companies to get to profitability.
Of course, if there is a large and significant correction in the public equity and credit markets, corporates spending on AI may also pull back materially.
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