Inside Goldman’s $22B Bet on Venture Capital | Hans Swildens, Industry Ventures

Hans Swildens started Industry Ventures in 2000, and this is his first podcast since selling it to Goldman Sachs in 2026.

Hans has been buying venture secondaries longer than almost anyone, and the combined business is one of the largest VC portfolios in the world: 525 firms, 1,600 funds, and over $22B in capital commitments.

We get into why he sold to Goldman, the barbell market quietly killing middle-stage venture, how VC's are manufacturing their own exits, why most seed funds without a real angle have 5 years left, the LP base that's a completely different species every fund cycle, how he started Industry by acquiring funds at 99% discounts during the Dot Com Collapse, the day he passed on a multi-billion-dollar data center, and why the secondary market may eventually be multiples the size of the primary market.

Thank you to Zach Coelius, Will Quist, Emily Zheng, and Andrea McGee for help brainstorming topics for the conversation.

Thank you to Numeral, Flex, Amplitude, and Merge for supporting this episode.

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Timestamps:

(0:00) Inside Goldman’s $22B venture bet

(7:57) 1,600 funds over 525 firms

(11:11) Why scale lets you “see the cube”

(14:17) Most humbling lesson in 26 years

(16:19) Three types of Seed funds

(18:47) LP's evolve every fund cycle

(22:00) VC is a sales game

(24:38) A strong CRM is non-negotiable

(29:06) Buying secondaries during the Dot Com Collapse

(31:33) Triangulating opinions across GP’s, founders, and LP’s

(37:22) Seed without differentiation doesn’t work

(42:16) Biggest mistakes by first-time GP’s

(44:31) Buying Enron’s VC portfolio at a 99% discount

(50:15) Entrepreneurial finance is underappreciated

(52:15) Why asset managers are acquiring venture firms

(58:47) Why it’s hard to start venture programs

(1:03:20) Secondaries: $250M to $150B market in 25 years

(1:08:06) Continuation funds & debt structured secondaries

(1:12:02) “Secondaries might be multiples bigger than primaries”

(1:19:52) How to structure secondary transactions

(1:26:00) What happens after SpaceX, OpenAI, Anthropic IPO’s

(1:30:35) How Seed survives the asset manager era

(1:35:16) How to manufacture liquidity

(1:41:41) How AI is impacting secondary markets

Referenced

Industry Ventures: https://www.industryventures.com/

How Big Is The Secondary Market for Venture Capital?: https://www.industryventures.com/insight/2023-2025e-how-big-is-the-secondary-market-for-venture-capital/

Exploring the Growth of Venture Secondaries: https://www.chronograph.pe/exploring-the-growth-of-venture-secondaries/

Pitchbook’s US Secondaries Market Watch: https://pitchbook.com/news/reports/2025-annual-us-vc-secondary-market-watch

Follow Hans

Twitter: https://x.com/HansSwildens

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hansswildens

Follow Turner

Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak

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