#363 - Jason Illian - GP & Co-Founder @ Highmount Capital - Growth Equity, Investing in Dude Perfect, Launching Koch Disruptive Technologies

Jason is the General Partner and Co-Founder of Highmount Capital, a unique investment firm focused on growth stage and middle market investments in transformative technology and other growth-related platforms. He is the former Managing Director and founding member of Koch Disruptive Technologies (KDT), the venture and growth arm of Koch Industries, the largest privately-held company in the US with over $130B in revenue. Jason was responsible for helping KDT grow to billions in AUM across 40+ companies. We discuss: - What makes a great venture partner - What venture firms look for in late-stage companies - The process of making a $100mm investment in DudePerfect We'd appreciate you filling out our audience survey, so we can continuously work on providing relevant content to our listeners.  https://www.thefortpod.com/survey Links: Dude Perfect Highmount Capital Jason on X Topics: (00:00:00) - Intro (00:05:23) - Jason's Early career (00:10:03) - What makes a great venture partner  (00:13:23) - Joining Koch Industries (00:15:18) - Building the venture framework for Koch (00:19:48) - What does a great late-stage company look like in the eyes of a venture firm? (00:26:40) - Founding Highmount Capital (00:29:56) - Building a great origination engine (00:35:44) - Investing in Dude Perfect (00:40:18) - The craving for family-friendly brands (00:44:10) - How do you think about your role post-investment? (00:46:44) - What are unique ways to make money in the creator economy? (00:54:14) - Are the Dudes a technology business or technology-enabled business? (00:57:34) - How do you find a CEO for a company like DudePerfect?  (01:01:18) - How is Highmount structured? Support our Sponsors Vesto: https://www.vesto.com/fort Better Pitch: https://bit.ly/42d9L0I Fort: https://bit.ly/FortCompanies Follow Fort on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fort-companies/ Chris on Social Media: The Fort Podcast on Twitter/X: https://x.com/theFORTpodcast Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thefortpodcast LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/45gIkFd   Watch The Fort on YouTube: https://bit.ly/3oynxNX Visit our website: https://bit.ly/43SOvys Leave a review on Apple: https://bit.ly/45crFD0 Leave a review on Spotify: https://bit.ly/3Krl9jO  The FORT is produced by Johnny Podcasts

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Here, we uncover the proven strategies, insights, and inspiring stories of today’s greatest leaders in the worlds of business, real estate, entrepreneurship, and investing. Each episode’s mission is to help you to level up your entrepreneurial game by hearing directly from the men and women in the arena. Chris is able to uniquely uncover things not commonly discussed because he is an entrepreneur himself. We not only cover business, but we also cover the personal side of entrepreneurship. The Fort began in 2018 as a way for Chris to publicly explore the fascinating world of entrepreneurship. Since he was a child, he’s been characterized as obsessively curious about the world around him.  The Fort has now been downloaded over 2M times, across more than 50,000 unique listeners. Each week features conversations with entrepreneurs, Founders, CEOs, and Executives from some of the leading companies in America. Past guests have represented companies such as JLL, Hillwood, S2 Capital, Chick Fil A, Morning Brew, Founders Podcast, Tiny Capital, Permanent Equity, Fort Capital, Matthews REIS, Bonobos, and ConvertKit. 🐦 Follow Chris on Twitter: www.twitter.com/FortWorthChris 💡 Follow Chris on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/chrispowersjr/ 📹 Subscribe to The FORT on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@FORTpod