From Frustration to Conviction: What led to starting Allocate and our $30.5M Series B
Description
Last month marked four years since I co-founded Allocate with Hana Yang.
Today I’m excited to share a milestone in our journey: we’ve raised $30.5 million in our Series B funding, led by Portage Ventures with participation from Andreessen Horowitz, M13, and Fika Ventures.
This milestone is nice, but the real story is what it enables—fixing a problem I’ve been facing for over a decade.
The realization came back in 2011 when I tried to find solutions to help me build a private market portfolio—something personalized, transparent, easy to manage, and with access to the full menu of opportunities. Since I was conflicted out of investing in funds through my relationships, given my role at the banks I worked at, I had to find other options.
What I found instead was nothing that met my needs, and everything was either too manual, too opaque, or just not aligned to my objectives. When I joined First Republic in 2012, I saw how crucial private market access was becoming for clients. The bank did a great job introducing alternatives, but even then, we were constrained by antiquated systems. Relationships were strong, demand was there, but the tooling simply couldn’t deliver the experience investors deserved. Those experiences stuck with me.
And they ultimately pushed me to start Allocate. If public markets can be as seamless as they are today, why shouldn’t private markets be the same?
Private markets today represent ~$15 trillion in AUM and are projected to nearly double by the decade's end. Venture capital, once considered a niche corner of finance, now accounts for more than $3 trillion in NAV. The scale is staggering: the three largest VC-backed companies—SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI—are collectively valued at over $1 trillion and reportedly generate over $30 billion in annualized revenues. For reference, Google went public with a market cap of $23B and prior year revenues of $1.4B.
But growth has come with fragmentation. There are thousands of fund managers on one side, each with unique models and reporting standards.
On the other hand, we’re starting to see more non-institutional participation than ever before. Although only 3–4% of client portfolios are allocated to alternatives in the wealth channel today, projections suggest this will rise to 10% by 2030.
For context, wealth advisors in the U.S. oversee more than $30 trillion, meaning trillions of new private allocations are likely coming. Without the right tooling, this market cannot scale efficiently or responsibly. And this isn’t about simple “democratization tools.” What private markets need is a comprehensive infrastructure reset—systems built from the ground up so they can operate with the same efficiency, transparency, and accessibility that public markets achieved during their transformation in the 1970s.
In four years, we are thankful that despite a turbulent economic climate from 2022-2024, we have started to see the impact of our efforts.
Today:
We have built three core products that directly attack this complex problem: Curations for responsible access to high-quality opportunities (we’ve partnered with over 80 fund managers since inception); Fund Solutions for turnkey white-label funds and streamlined administration; and Insights for a unified, intelligent view of portfolios. These aren’t point solutions. Together, they form the foundation for a proper private market operating system.
Over 2,800 users and clients
We just passed $2.5B in assets on the platform (nearly 3x from the end of last year)
65 full-time team members
Addition of Payments and Bank Accounts: LPs can now make capital calls to Allocate or non-Allocate-sourced funds through a single clickable interface. We will also soon make an exciting announcement addressing the growing liquidity issue.
We recently welcomed the Coterie Platform to Allocate, an important event that allows us to continue growing and building the workflow of record for private market investing.
We’re at a turning point. The generational transfer of wealth is accelerating, private markets are becoming mainstream, and trillions of dollars are waiting on the sidelines. But unless we fix the infrastructure, participation will remain messy, inefficient, and gated. That’s why this Series B matters— We have a chance to build the rails for a market that will define wealth creation ahead.
To our team: thank you for four years of grit and belief. To our clients and partners: thank you for trusting us to play such an important part in your journey. To our investors: thank you for sharing our conviction in what’s possible. And to this Venture Unlocked community—thank you for being part of the conversations that shaped so much of this thinking.
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