If you follow the world of venture capital and private equity, you’re likely familiar with the concept of funds. They’re the folks who are doing due diligence, cutting checks to provide capital for companies, and actively managing a portfolio. What’s less obvious and murky is where those funds actually get the money they use to make those investments. Some of that money comes from a-whole-nother group of funds — often referred to as a “fund of funds” — that provide capital for venture capital and private equity funds to do their work. And one of those fund of funds is the Oregon Public Employees Retirement (PERS) Fund.
So where is the retirement money of Oregon public employees — one of the largest pension funds in the US — invested? Well, thanks to the magic of freedom of information act requests, we can now get a glimpse into where that money is going, how much of that money is going to various funds, and what sort of return Oregon PERS is getting on those investments.
Thumbing through, I recognized a few names on the list — most notably OVP Venture Partners* and Union Square Ventures (2004 is worth a peek). But I’m still working my way through the list and numbers. It’s not the most digestible format, as a PDF, but it’s what we’ve got. Thanks to Rachel Bell at Overcup Press, we’ve got a Google Sheet version of the OPERS data for all of us to muck with to each of our heart’s desire.
To download the PDF, please click the link below.
[Hat tip: Startup Digest Reading List]
Thanks to Jeff Martens for the edit.
