Featured Allocator | David Tammaro of Pinegrove Venture Partners
EAA: What drew you to the LP space and how did your background shape your path here?
David: What drew me to the institutional LP space was the incredibly unique view it gives you of the capital markets ecosystem. As someone who has spent their entire career in the private markets, primarily as a venture and technology PE LP, my LP seat gives me such a unique perspective to how innovation plays out across markets, sectors, and geographies. I’m exposed to different investment strategies, theses, and decision-making frameworks every day, which helps me develop pattern recognition faster than almost any other investing role out there. Relationships have always been the center of my life, and being an LP is very much a relationship-driven job. You’re building long-term trust with top-tier GPs, learning how they think, and in turn gaining access to the kind of insights and networks that very few jobs provide access to. For someone who is obsessed with learning, a perpetual optimist, loves people, and enjoys looking at the world through a long-term lens, being an LP is an ideal career path.
As a former college quarterback, the main job of the position is to get the ball out of your hands and into the hands of the wide receivers, tight ends, and running backs in the most efficient way possible that maximizes upside while minimizing downside. In a way, that’s exactly what I’m doing as an allocator, getting the capital out of my hands and into the hands of the GPs in the most efficient way possible while maximizing upside and minimizing downside :)
EAA: Tell us more about your organization. What’s its origin story and core mission?
David: Pinegrove Venture Partners is an investment firm founded in 2023 as a joint effort between Sequoia Heritage and Brookfield Asset Management to focus exclusively on the venture capital ecosystem. Today, Pinegrove has an AUM of more than $10 billion deploying capital across a complementary suite of offerings spanning venture capital fund of funds, venture debt, secondaries, and co-investments. Our core mission is to offer tailored solutions for fund managers, founders, and limited partners in the innovation economy while delivering outsized returns to our own investors.
EAA: How should GPs and fellow LPs understand your firm's investment philosophy?
David: At Pinegrove we aim to support all members of the innovation economy, from founders to GPs to other LPs. We have a fund of fund business backing both established and emerging fund managers as they raise capital on a blind pool basis, a co-investment business investing in best-in-class founders alongside our underlying GPs, a secondaries business where we engage in GP-led, LP-led, and highly structured secondary transactions across the venture ecosystem, and a venture debt business for founders who are aiming to raise capital while minimizing dilution.
In short, if you are a member of the innovation economy / venture ecosystem in search of capital, let’s have a discussion!
EAA: What’s been a defining moment in your allocator journey so far?
David: Moving to the Bay Area early on in my career has been a tremendous accelerant to my allocator journey. After growing up in Virginia, doing my undergrad in Baltimore, and starting my career in Maryland, moving to the Bay Area is about as far of a domestic journey as I could’ve embarked upon. However, I quickly realized that if I was serious about building a career as a venture-focused LP and direct investor, there is no better place to be than in the Bay. Fast forward to today and I’ve spent the past 4+ years working on Sand Hill Road learning from, building relationships with, and partnering with the most iconic firms in the industry as well as the next generation stars of the ecosystem, majority of which are conveniently located in my backyard in SF and/or on the same street as my office in Menlo Park!
EAA: What’s a current idea, market shift, or emerging thesis that’s on your radar?
David: I am incredibly curious about how AI-enabled hardware is going to change our lives in the next 20 years. While much of the AI value we’re seeing accrue today is in the software (i.e., ChatGPT, Midjourney, Perplexity, etc.), technology-enabled hardware such as iPhones, semiconductor chips, computers, televisions, and even cars & air conditioning are what truly changed the average person’s life in the 20th and 21st centuries. I’m incredibly excited about what we will see in the AI-enabled hardware front over the next 20 years, much of which will be funded by venture capital.
EAA: If you had to put all your money in one investment, what would it be?
David: If I had to put all of my money in one investment, I would invest it into a major market NFL team (ignore the illiquidity aspect). Investing in an NFL team offers the opportunity to own a stake in one of the most valuable and resilient assets in the entire sports and entertainment industry. With only 32 teams and consistently rising valuations, NFL teams benefit from built-in scarcity and diversified, recession-resistant revenue streams driven by long-term media rights deals, sponsorships, and sticky fan engagement. The league’s structured economics which include revenue sharing and salary caps creates financial stability and predictability, while ever-increasing global expansion and new monetization channels like streaming and sports betting provide meaningful upside.
Plus, as a football fanatic, partially owning a team would make all of my childhood (and adulthood) dreams come true.
EAA: What is your most non-consensus controversial take?
David: Speed limits should be a suggestion, not a law! Often, speed limits are arbitrary and were set decades ago based on vehicle technology and road safety data that is now obsolete. Modern vehicles have vastly improved braking systems, lane assist, and collision avoidance features which should be accounted for.
(Nobody follow me on my commute down the 280 from SF to Menlo Park every morning)
EAA: What do you like to do outside of work?
David: Anything active (except for running). Lifting weights, skiing, scuba diving, playing basketball, golfing, ping pong, hitting the sauna, and going on long walks with my fiancé is what charges my batteries. I am also a huge foodie and love trying new restaurants, with my newest goal being finding the best pizza in SF.
I’ve also become obsessed with electric scooters and personal electric vehicles since relocating to the Bay Area. My favorite scooter model currently is the Gotrax Raptor and my fiancé’s is the INMOTION Climber.