Teacher's Venture Growth is 8bn AUM. It makes complete sense to me that Ontario Teachers as a whole should put 4% of its assets into a venture fund. TVG put we

Teacher's Venture Growth is 8bn AUM. It makes complete sense to me that Ontario Teachers as a whole should put 4% of its assets into a venture fund. TVG put well over 1% of its assets into FTX. Numerous people who work for the venture fund, who are paid 10-100X the income of the retirees in the fund to make investing decisions, went ahead with this investment without asking themselves: 1. Why isn't there a crypto-savvy lead investor for this funding round? Why are we, Teachers Venture Growth, the best placed people to make this investment? 2. Why are 3 individuals with, ostensibly, enormous personal wealth, seeking outside investment from Ontario Teachers for this business? 3. Why isn't this business headquartered in a jurisdiction where people who commit massive financial fraud will be investigated and held to account? 4. What checks and balances regulate the relationship with Alameda, a hedge fund which a) trades with leverage and favorable fee structures on FTX b) is reputed (long before the Series B and the recent trouble) to have privileged access to FTX data c) is run by a romantic partner of the head of FTX? 5. Who are the grown-ups at FTX? You might well think that SBF and his posse have some magical crypto skills. But why don't they have senior people with experience in accountancy, compliance, or risk management helping keep them on the right path? This is the easiest question to answer - you can simply check who works for them, who's on risk committees and other oversight bodies, and what their resume is. People like to excuse massive due diligence failings like this by pointing out that not all venture investments are supposed to end up in the money. It's fine, if you have huge winners, to use them to justify a certain number of losers. If you don't have a proven track record for finding out-of-the-park winners, it's perfectly reasonable to ask why you think you can risk large amounts of money on things that look dubious to other investors, while not performing basic checks.