Clayton Petty
Clayton Petty is a Partner at Gradient Ventures, an early-stage AI-focused venture capital firm based in San Francisco. He previously spent five years at McKinsey & Company, where he advised founders, operators, and investors across cybersecurity, vertical software, and cloud infrastructure. Before McKinsey, he worked as a software engineer at Microsoft and Expedia and studied computer science at Texas A&M University. At Gradient, he has led investments in companies including Stack AI, Infisical, and BackOps, focusing on AI, cybersecurity, and vertical SaaS.
“Maximum concentration (22 companies, 15% ownership) has a median TVPI of 0.9x and a 90th percentile of 5.5x, below the less-concentrated lead strategy at the same percentile.”
Source→“At $30M, high-concentration strategies shrink the portfolio to 9-13 companies. Top quartile falls to 1.4-1.5x and top decile to 3.5x, below what more diversified strategies produce. Half of simulated maximum-concentration funds lose LP money.”
Source→AI-extracted from podcast / newsletter / paper summaries. May contain errors.