However, wealthy families, especially those whose fortunes are not from tech, have a mixed history investing in start-ups. Shailesh Sachdeva, managing director of the family office practice at SVB Capital, suggests the York family is not alone: there has been much more participation from ultra-high net worth families whose wealth did not come from technology.įield of dreams: San Francisco 49ers CEO Jed York, left and Brano Perkovich, 49ers chief investment officer, at their stadium in Santa Clara © Jason Henry for the FT York says his family is “probably more overweight venture ” than other US family offices, but not compared with those in the Bay Area that have made their fortunes in tech. Increasingly, that includes clans that grew rich from retail, real estate and other industries with few connections to the kinds of software and internet-based products that have generated billions in the latest boom. While those totals fall short of the money invested in private equity buyouts and other alternative assets, such as hedge funds and property, the growth shows how even normally conservative families have begun eyeing riskier investments. The average family office in the survey held direct stakes in 17 companies and 10 investments in venture funds, which accounted for 12 per cent of its portfolio. Three-quarters of family offices surveyed globally by SVB (Silicon Valley Bank) and Campden Wealth said they made venture investments in 2021, about double the share that were striking deals a decade earlier. The San Francisco 49ers celebrate a defensive play during a 2020 game © Thearon W. A growing list of wealthy families from outside the tech world have tried to gain a foothold in the explosive growth of start-ups during the recent tech boom. If York seems an unlikely venture capitalist, the 49ers owner is not alone. He says Aurum has returned more than four-and-a-half times the money it has invested in more than two dozen companies since 2014. Now, says Perkovich, the fund has few problems securing access to attractive deals - thanks to tight relationships it has developed with top venture capitalists. The fund was being approached by “companies that had been up and down the valley and couldn’t raise anywhere else”. “There was a significant - I would call it negative - selection bias,” says Perkovich, 47, who was born in Bosnia and studied electrical engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. Instead, it heard many pitches from start-ups in stagnating areas such as advertising technology that had found little success raising money elsewhere. Aurum also made an early investment in DripDrop, a rehydration drink mixture with backing from Hall of Fame football quarterback John Elway.Įven so, Aurum struggled to get into deals backed by top-tier venture capital firms, according to its principals. As one of its first investments, the fund started a ticketing and food-ordering app for sports stadiums that quickly received backing from Twitter’s venture arm and other strategic investors. To help run the fund, he recruited Brano Perkovich, a technology investment banker with Barclays in Silicon Valley. The Twitter bio for Danielle York, his wife, states that she is “CEO of the fresh-faced York had to work hard to win access to deals after he started a venture fund called Aurum Partners in 2014. York’s online presence gives the appearance of a family man. After a brief stint in investment banking, he joined the family business at the lowest rung of the organisation, sewing names on jerseys and taping players’ ankles. He was captain of the baseball team in high school, then attended the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, America’s most prestigious Catholic university. Nor did York himself have much tech experience. “There’s a level of entrepreneurship, but it’s not necessarily in what Silicon Valley would look at as tech.” “My parents didn’t start a computer company in the 1970s . . . That’s not the make-up of my family,” says York. A shrewd $16.5mn investment became the basis of a family fortune worth about $4bn, according to Forbes estimates.īut, if football made the family’s fame and fortune, it was of little help when York decided to diversify into technology investing and break into the tight-knit world of Silicon Valley. In the decades that followed, the 49ers became one of the dominant National Football League teams, bringing home five Super Bowl championships. The 42-year-old owes his wealth to sports and shopping malls: his grandfather made his riches in Midwest property before buying the 49ers in 1977. Heads for business: Jed York, left, and Brano Perkovich at the Levi’s Stadium, home of the 49ers © Jason Henry for the FTįew people would guess that Jed York, owner of the San Francisco 49ers football team, is an early investor in dozens of technology start-ups.
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