LispCast - a series of screencasts of Common Lisp development

I'm the co-founder (and, loosely, EIR) of a $4B alternative asset management firm in Chicago. We also have a small correspondent office in London. I have two co-managing partners that come from a more traditional background (investment banking, investment management, real estate, etc.) My background is mostly in startups. I've had a few nice exits in the past, and my pedigreed partners were willing to overlook my lack of polish for that reason only. The bulk of all of our personal assets are invested in the firm. We have, all together, around 400 employees. We have an essentially flat management structure, so a larger percentage of our employees are developers than you might expect. We pay fairly well, although our culture and our equity/performance share is more compelling to most new hires.

I have some limited input with our equities trading activities, but I don't have anything to do with our M&A or real estate activities at all. I manage all of our software and internet investments. I don't just sit on boards, though...I play an active role in all of our portfolio companies (except one that is a somewhat special case where we brought in a graybeard with more industry experience.) I make essentially all strategic and marketing decisions, and most hiring decisions for the companies in my division. I even write (abysmally bad Lisp) code on occasion to prove a point. Our internet division operates almost like a traditional VC firm, except the bulk (95%+) of our investments are in our own ideas. We're open to outside ideas for the most part, but we haven't found many that are worth pursuing instead of our own. Most of our active investments are in business and financial services, although we also have a few portfolio companies that are in more 'pure play' internet areas. All of our launched companies are currently profitable, and none rely on advertising for revenue. That record is likely to change once we launch our next three companies, though :-( Most of our investments are in industries that YCers would probably find boring (pension administration, payment processing, skills assesment, mortgage underwriting, etc.)