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Light Street Capital Management
Light Street Capital Management is an SEC-registered investment adviser in Palo Alto, CA, registered since 2013. The firm manages $1.6 billion in assets.
Light Street Capital Management
Light Street Capital Management is an SEC-registered investment adviser in Palo Alto, CA, registered since 2013. The firm manages $1.6 billion in assets. It has 14 employees and 5 investment advisers.
General information
Firm type
Generalist
Year founded
2010
Location
Region
North America
Country
United States
City
Palo Alto
Corporate office
Palo Alto, CA, United States
Principals
Glen Kacher
Founder, President & Chief Investment Officer
Sector focus
Frequently asked questions
Who runs investment decisions at Light Street Capital?
Glen Kacher is the firm's sole founder, president, and chief investment officer. He built his career inside the Tiger Cub network, serving as managing director at Viking Global and co-founding Deep Current before launching Light Street in 2010. All portfolio decisions — public and private — flow through Kacher, with support from a small investment team. There is no investment committee override; the book reflects individual conviction.
Is Light Street a hedge fund, a venture firm, or a crossover vehicle?
Light Street operates as a crossover investment manager, running a long-short public equity fund alongside a private growth-investing allocation. The firm participates in late-stage venture rounds for companies it knows through the public-equity diligence process. This structure allows it to hold positions from pre-IPO rounds through post-listing without forced asset-class rebalancing.
What was Light Street's reported performance during the pandemic-era tech rally?
The Wall Street Journal reported in January 2021 that Light Street's flagship long-short fund returned roughly 59% net of fees in 2020, making it one of the year's top-performing hedge funds. Performance was driven by concentrated bets in technology and consumer internet names that benefited from digital acceleration. The firm has not publicly disclosed subsequent full-year figures.
Does Light Street take outside capital, and is that structure changing?
Light Street historically managed external capital in its flagship commingled fund. In May 2024, Bloomberg reported that the firm was exploring a plan to return capital to outside investors. If executed, the move would shift Light Street toward a concentrated family-office-style structure managing Kacher's personal capital and a smaller retained pool for select principals — mirroring a path taken by other high-performing Tiger Cub managers.
How does Light Street's Tiger Cub lineage shape its investment approach?
Kacher trained at firms where the benchmark was not tracking a broad index but building high-conviction bets through primary research. The Tiger Cub model emphasizes deep fundamental diligence, long holding periods, and concentrated portfolios. Light Street applies that framework to both public stocks and private late-stage rounds, refusing to add a name unless the team has met management multiple times and stress-tested the competitive moat.
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