Berkocorp

When Joshua Berkowitz took over his family's Berkocorp, his family’s multi-generational investment office, in 2020, he faced a classic institutional challenge: how to transition from a single-asset real estate business into a diversified, world-class investment vehicle.

By applying the rigorous "Yale Model" of endowment investing and leveraging Mantle Portal, Josh has transformed Berkocorp into a lean, highly sophisticated operation. Today, Berkocorp manages a complex portfolio of private equity, venture capital, and niche assets with the precision of a large institution and the agility of a single-principal office.

The Challenge: From Real Estate to "Endowment-Style" Diversification

For 60 years, Berkocorp was primarily a Vancouver-based real estate developer. Upon taking the helm, Josh Berkowitz sought to move toward a highly diversified, data-driven approach inspired by David Swenson’s institutional framework. However, this transition introduced significant operational hurdles:

• Cash Flow Complexity: Managing $10M+ capital commitments across dozens of funds requires high-fidelity forecasting to avoid "cash drag" (idle capital) or liquidity shortfalls.

• Data Fragmentation: Analyzing performance across disparate asset classes—from litigation finance to seed-stage AI funds—was a manual, labor-intensive process.

• Administrative Overhead: As a "one-man investment committee," Josh needed to eliminate the "brain damage" of manual data entry to focus on high-level underwriting and relationship building.

The Solution: Scaling "Operational Alpha" with Mantle

Josh is using Mantle Portal to replace manual data entry with an automated, institutional-grade command center. By leveraging Mantle’s core architecture, Berkocorp transformed its back-office operations from a cost center into a strategic advantage.

1. Automated Document Capture

Instead of manually logging into dozens of GP portals, Josh uses Mantle to automatically capture every statement, notice, and report from his portals and emails. Mantle’s AI engine reads and classifies each document, from Capital Calls and Distributions to K-1s, eliminating the manual search for critical data.

2. From Flat Text to Structured Insights

Mantle transforms unstructured data into real-time dashboards. For Josh, this means a permanent tab open in his browser that provides an instant view of items like his Investment Positions (committed, funded, and unfunded capital) and Asset Allocation across multi-currency investments.

3. Institutional-Grade Reporting & Sourced Intelligence

Mantle serves as the "single source of truth" for Berkocorp’s reporting. Beyond just numbers, Mantle extracts key insights from investor updates, keeping every figure traceable back to the source document for total transparency. This enables Josh to generate precise performance snapshots and NAV changes in real time, ensuring he is always up-to-date about the portfolio’s health.

Up until Mantle, I would spend many, many hours collecting all the data that would go into that spreadsheet manually. Now, Mantle just sits open as one of the tabs in my browser all day long." - Joshua Berkowitz, Managing Principal, Berkocop

The Result: The Freedom to be Contrarian

With the administrative burden handled by Mantle, Berkocorp has been able to lean into its competitive advantage: the ability to be contrarian and right.

While many teams of institutional LPs stick to "consensus" investments to avoid career risk, Berkocorp’s data-driven confidence allows them to back "weird" things that don't fit a standard mold, such as boutique holding companies, litigation finance, and specialized secondaries.

• Portfolio Impact: Berkocorp currently holds several venture funds that are tracking at significantly higher-than-average multiples (some upwards of 15x net), driven by early bets on AI and specialized managers.

• Speed to Execution: Because Mantle keeps the data ready and the cash flow modeled, Josh can move from "hello" to "I’m in" faster than traditional committees.

Looking Ahead: The Future of the Human-AI Hybrid Office

Josh envisions a future where the "human" part of the business—judging character and vision—remains, but the "administration" disappears entirely. With Mantle, Berkocorp is already living in that future.