Global Private Markets Fundraising Report Q3 2022

Raising private capital became more difficult in Q3. Aggregated fundraising across the private investing universe was down 7.7% to $1.35 trillion in the 12 months leading up to September 30, as only f...

Fundraising as an Emerging Manager: How to Source & Connect with LPs

Four Cities Capital Operating Principal Mia Nguyen shares Part I of her new blog series, which aims to demystify the fundraising process for emerging managers and shares tips for outreach and relation...

A Deep Dive into the Challenges of Raising Your First Venture Capital Fund

Saka Saddiq Nuru of Funnder VC has spent the last 8 months fundraising for the first time. 1000+ emails, 47+ applications, and 6 newsletters later, he transparently shares a deep-dive on the challenge...

Emerging VCs Adjust to a New Fundraising Reality

Though the cadence of fundraising has slowed, Sapphire's Nate Leung views the last few months as a healthy reset for the VC ecosystem after a frothy 2021. And while this environment places additional ...

Top Mistakes First-Time Fund Managers Make

In the latest edition of Signature Block, Ryan Hoover and Vedika Jain of Weekend Fund crowdsource fundraising lessons learned from experienced GPs and LPs to share with first-time VCs. These 10 common...

Materials & Strategies for the Best Founders (& Emerging Managers)

2048 Managing Partner Alex Iskold shares a fundraising Twitter thread with tactical strategies for early-stage founders, with many parallels for emerging VCs raising from LPs, including deck tips, ens...

VC Fund Decks That Close LPs

Weekend Fund's Ryan Hoover pulled together 13 VC fund decks that successfully raised $500M+. The latest edition of Signature Block includes a template, tips for your pitch, and links to all of the dec...

How Much Should I Raise for my First VC Fund?

Henri Pierre-Jacques, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Harlem Capital, opens the curtain on Harlem's Fund I and shares four questions to consider when determining how much to raise....

Raising a Fund I

Yohei Nakajima shares a great Twitter thread for emerging managers with fundraising data and insights from the recent raise of Untapped Capital's Fund I....

The New Walking Dead

During the boom times of the past four years in the tech industry, more than 1,100 first-time venture funds were born. Now, with fundraising drying up and little to show in the way of meaningful retur...

Tips for Fundraising in the New Market: A Thread

This market continues to raise Qs about VC fundraising. Samir Kaji offers many great tips to fund managers to understand and adapt to the market. ...

An LP’s Perspective on the Venture “Slowdown”

Are venture funds starting to pump the brakes on fundraising activity? LP Beezer Clarkson shares her thoughts on what she's seeing in the market nowadays....

Solo Venture Capitalists Go Big

Solo GPs increasingly have some serious muscle behind them. Kate Clark of the Information explores....

Fundraising Pacing and the Value of Time Diversity

Have venture funds really been deploying and raising faster than before or does it just seem that way? Let's look to the data! Beezer Clarkson shares thoughts on fundraising pacing and the value of ti...

What LPs Are Looking For When They Invest in a VC Fund

100s of LP meetings, input from many other VCs, and listening to myriad podcasts... It all resulted in these important fundraising lessons from Jarrid Tingle of Harlem Capital. ...

Emerging Manager Fundraising – What the Data Shows

Ready to double click into how emerging managers and first time funds managed last year re: fundraising? Here's what the data shows for 2021 (and what trends might be underlying the numbers), courtesy...

VC Fundraising Deck Report 2021

The VC fundraising deck is perhaps the *most* critical tool GPs have at their disposal in winning over LPs. With views into 100+ decks, Different Funds walks us through how VCs are structuring their f...

2021 Fundraising Trends – The LP Perspective

Where did LPs invest their money in 2021? And what does it mean for venture in 2022? Time to dig into the data! The LP perspective courtesy of Beezer Clarkson....

Considerations On How To Build Your LP Base

When building your LP base, there are three main factors to consider: value add, time orientation and due diligence process. Excellent primer on "How To Build Your LP Base" by Blue Future Partners....

5 Things LPs Wish VCs Knew About Fundraising

Raising a fund is always a challenge... but now with the crazy competition of today’s venture market, it’s harder than ever to stand out from the pack. Here are some things LPs wish VCs knew about...

Too Much, Too Fast: LPs Fear Fundraising Pace is Unsustainable

How much is too much? LPs fear today's "fundraising pace is unsustainable, and wonder whether they can stay in lock step with their fund managers." Venture Capital Journal dives in....

Fundraising Spikes in a Virtual World

Venture firms have continued their robust fundraising pace amid the pandemic. But fundraising itself might now be changed forever. Venture Capital Journal opines on what it looks like for fundraising ...

Footwork Ventures on Capital Allocators

In this episode of the Capital Allocators podcast, Beezer Clarkson chats with Footwork's Nikhil Basu Trivedi and Mike Smith about the nitty gritty of how they closed their (very oversubscribed!) first...

How To Re-Pitch an LP that Passed Previously

Sometimes GPs need a couple at-bats with LPs before funding is in the offing. Here's a fantastic thread from Beezer Clarkson on what GPs should keep in mind when re-pitching LPs that have previously p...

VC Investor Relations

VC investor relations, in the words of Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures: "The VC’s 'customer' is the founder/CEO/portfolio company and our LPs investors are our 'shareholders'. Frequency, regula...

Who Are the LPs that are Investing in Underrepresented-Led VC Managers?

Many LPs are actively backing underrepresented managers (primarily women-led firms and people of color) through direct mandates or an increased focus and preference toward investing in underrepresente...

LPs Make Most of the Money From VC Funds. So Who Are They?

So much of public discussion about VC fixates on relationships between VCs and entrepreneurs. What gets left out: the quiet chats between GPs and LPs. Fantastic article on the push among VCs to name ...

How to Run a Best in Class Virtual Annual Meeting

Virtual LP meetings don't have to be a drag. Here's how to run a 'best in class' virtual annual meeting for your investors, according to Emily St. Denis of Female Founders Fund....

What Mistakes Do VCs Make When Fundraising?

Don't neglect the funnel! Enterprise sales and venture fundraising are basically the same muscle, says Mark Suster of Upfront Ventures in this episode of the Venture Unlocked podcast....

On LPs Selecting Venture Capital Fund Managers

There is little transparency on how LPs make decisions to invest in funds. Alexi Malikotsinas spent months talking to different types of limited partners and summarizes his key takeaways here....

GP-LP Matching Tool

The GP-LP Matching Tool is a tool created by Josh and Lolita Taub that introduces underestimated and underrepresented emerging fund managers to LPs....

Top 10 Learnings from an Emerging Manager Program

In this very popular Tweet thread, Paige Finn Doherty shares her key learnings from Sutton Capital's Emerging Manager program....

So What Does LP Due Diligence Actually Look Like?

In this Twitter thread, Winter Mead of Oper8r shares the collective wisdom of LPs from Sapphire Partners and Accolade Partners regarding the due diligence process for emerging managers....

5 Innovative Fundraising Methods for Emerging Venture Capital and Private Equity Funds

When fundraising as a venture investor, sometimes thinking outside the box can help. Here are "5 Innovative Fundraising Methods for Emerging VC and PE Funds" courtesy of David Teten....

Top Investor Relations Tips from the VC Platform Community

Focused on fundraising or investor relations? This Twitter thread is for you. Huge thanks to Lindsay Knight of Chicago Ventures for assembling this list of top IR takeaways from the VCPlatform communi...

Many Flavors of LPs

"LP" can mean many things in practice, so it's critical to differentiate between varying LP profiles. This Tweet thread by Monique Villa breaks down thinking through varying incentive structures &...

The Nuances of LP Investing

This incredible tweet thread from Hustle Fund's Elizabeth Yin dives deep into LP investing, touching on everything from capital calls, to fund recycling, to crowdfunding, to innovation in legal struct...

Sharing Your Track Record as an Emerging VC

Track records are a key part of any LP’s due diligence process; and many times they are required for LPs to invest into your VC fund. How to share your track record with an LP can be learned, which ...

How to use design thinking to raise your fund

We can re-think the LP dynamic from a different perspective– through the lens of design thinking. New funds have a challenging time launching for a few reasons: the institutional investment landscap...

Fundraising Hacks: What type of capital should you raise, and how do you meet investors?

Venture capital is just one of many options to finance your business, and it’s typically the most expensive. The broader question is: what type of capital should you raise, and from whom?...

The VC “Strips off” – Silicon Roundabout Ventures VC Fund Deck Reviewed Live by Draper Esprit LP

After decades of secrecy and obscurity, the VC world is finally starting to open up (if only a tiny bit). Some funds, for example, decided for the first time to release a copy of the VC fund deck t...

Brand and AUM: How I think about “Brand” and its relation to fund size

Brand is arguably the only thing that resembles a moat in traditional venture capital. The venture capital flywheel archetype is pretty simple: pick and invest in great companies and founders, supp...

VCs: Your LP Is Your Customer – Spend Time Understanding What They Want!

We wrote previously about who invests in emerging VCs. Now we want to talk about why, drawing from insights VCs and LPs shared in our summer cohort....

The (potential) tyranny of fundraising

Raising money is hard for a bunch of reasons. You have to clearly articulate your vision for a business that may be non-obvious. You will invariably suck at this at the beginning, and need to do it ma...

Here’s how to start a venture fund if you’re not rich

For years — decades, even — there was little question about whether you could become a venture capitalist if you weren’t comfortable financially. You couldn’t. The people and institutions that...

How To Craft Your Elevator Pitch To LPs As An Emerging VC Fund

Fundraising from Limited Partners (LPs) is one of the biggest challenges for emerging venture fund managers to succeed. In my previous post on fundraising strategies, I have drawn from B2B marketin...

Pitch To LPs As An Emerging VC Fund Manager

Fundraising from Limited Partners (LPs) is one of the biggest challenges for emerging venture fund managers to succeed. In my previous post on fundraising strategies, I have drawn from B2B marketin...

Alpha Bridge Deck Review – By SuperLP Chris Douvos

This week we are sharing the complete deck we used to raise Alpha Bridge Ventures Fund I. More importantly, Chris Douvos, the Super LP, agreed to do a slide by slide commentary for us so that you ge...

Virtual Annual Meetings are Here to Stay: Best Practices for Re-Imagining the AGM for our Remote World

Love them or hate them, virtual annual meetings (AGMs) are here to stay for now. Given this shift, and my observations from numerous virtual annual meetings I have attended in the last couple months, ...

How Emerging Venture Capital Fund Managers Should Think About Their LP Fundraising Strategies

For many emerging VC managers, fundraising from LPs seems like an obscure procedure that is difficult to comprehend and hard to do right. I think it becomes much clearer if you look at fundraising as ...

How to raise your first VC fund

Having seen successful returns as a fund manager and an early-stage VC (as well as recently raising my own angel fund), I’ve formulated several best practices and strategies for investing in fund ma...

How to Raise a Venture Fund

While the “front” or entrepreneur-facing side of the venture industry has been demystified over the last 10 years, the back-end of the business, or how venture firms emerge and raise funds from li...

Should You Raise A Fund? An LP’s View On Challenges And Alternatives

The last few years of this capital cycle have paved the way to an explosive growth of first-time funds in alternative assets including venture capital and crypto. As an LP, I had the chance to speak ...

The 4 P’s of Fundraising for Emerging Managers

Raising capital as a first-time venture capital manager (or “VC”) is always challenging – primarily due to a lack of track record and performance coupled with not knowing or having access to pro...

What you need to know about fundraising this year

We’re a little over half-way through 2020 and COVID-19, rollercoaster equity markets and record unemployment rates have dominated the 2020 fundraising narrative.  The fundraising discussion seems t...

How investors approach fundraising from LPs

If you’re an emerging fund manager, finding the right limited partners (LPs) early on can be a challenge. Even with robust networks from past operating and investing experience, it can be tough to i...

Money… show me! If you want to change Venture Capital, focus on LPs.

There have been a lot of calls for VC firms to make more hires from the Black and Brown community, as well as to hire more women. Not all hires, however, are made equally. In venture, it’s all abou...

Fundraising Advice for Emerging GP’s Post-Coronavirus

In part two of this webinar series, we hosted a group of venture experts to discuss how emerging managers can navigate the COVID-19 crisis. The conversation was led by:...

Starting A VC Fund: 7 Key Criteria To Consider

Starting a VC fund is no easy feat. Even when faced with favorable macroeconomic conditions, many of the typical sources of capital available for established VCs are essentially out of reach for first...

Learnings from a failed attempt at raising a VC Fund

In my case, this lockdown has allowed me time to write about a failure I'd been meaning to share for a while. My career in venture capital started in 2012 with a short spell at Startup Leadership Prog...

This is how much harder it is to raise capital during a downturn

The recent coronavirus outbreak has shocked markets around the world and US equities, in particular, have dragged into bearish territory faster than any other tumble. But as an institution focused on ...

Crisis Coverage – LP Lessons from ’01 and ’08, The Denominator Effect, Capital Calls & Fundraising in a Down Market

Chris Douvos of Ahoy Capital joins Nick on a special Crisis Coverage installment to discuss the LP Lessons from ’01 and ’08, The Denominator Effect, Capital Calls & Fundraising in a Down Marke...

FUNDRAISING FOR EMERGING GPS POST-CORONAVIRUS: ADVICE FROM SEASONED LPS

Led by Jim Marshall, Head of SVB’s Emerging Manager Practice, this workshop features an engaging conversation on how to navigate current and future fundraising conditions given the recent developme...

Micro VC fundraising and COVID-19

As we move into month three of the COVID-19 outbreak, the impact on the global economy has been unmistakable, and arguably the most significant since the US came out of the last recession. Conferences...

VCs have to fundraise too

Inside SuperVenture: the bizarre conference where VCs flock to raise their next fund — and not all succeed....

What to look for in LPs

Selecting the right Limited Partners (LPs) for your fund is a critical component for a successful, long-lasting venture capital firm. This is the second of a two-part series that explores how to partn...

Emerging Manager ‘Must-Dos’: The Path to Your First Fund

Capital is a great amplifier. When great ideas meet the right people, the proper application of capital helps startups commercialize incredible products and services. The great news: there is an incre...

Fundraising tips – How to build a better data room

Because of our role in the venture ecosystem,  we often find emerging and established GPs asking us for best practices in putting together a data room. So, in the spirit of #OpenLP, this blog is our...

The Truth About Investor Updates

The topic of “investor updates” has been debated frequently. Most folks who are not close to early-stage startups and new company formation would be surprised to discover that a high number of com...

What Makes a Good Annual Meeting? An LP’s Point of View

Annual meetings are simple in concept but can be difficult to execute well. At Sapphire Partners, we are constantly asked what makes a good annual meeting, which makes sense given the typical GP atten...

Intimacy and Transparency: Part 1 on VC/LP relations

In the opening chapter of Adam Grant’s “Give and Take”, Grant reminds us about the opaque nature of the venture business just 2 decades ago at the turn of millennia. Since then, we’ve seen an ...

Communication Strategies with Existing LPs: Part 2 of VC/LP Relations

In this second part of Intimacy and transparency: VC/LP relations with Chris Douvos, we dive deep into the actual output LPs want to see from their GPs. Meaning quarterly emails, annual meetings, comm...

Do Institutional Limited Partners Back First time Venture Funds?

I recently posted this Twitter thread about the role institutional LP’s play within the emerging VC fund market (Side bar: I’m likely going to push more content through Twitter threads this year, ...

#OpenLP: When Money Isn’t Enough: How to Distinguish Yourself as a VC in a Crowded Market

In 2018, U.S. venture funds invested over $130 billion in startups — crossing the $100 billion mark for the first time since the dot-com boom in 2000. In addition, U.S. venture funds themselves also...

Five Questions for Vetting an Investment in a New or Emerging VC Fund

While most of the money that goes into VC funds comes from institutions that are highly experienced in the asset class, some family offices and high net worth individuals also invest in VC. They’re...

How I raised my $11.5m VC fund

A couple months ago, we announced that we finished fundraising for fund 1 of Hustle Fund. Hustle Fund is my new venture capital firm, and our fund 1 is an $11.5M fund dedicated to investing in pre-se...

Raising A Fund? 9 Questions That Help Get You To GP/LP Fit

This post serves a part two of a two part series that samir kaji and I are co-authoring to help VC’s navigate through fundraising cycles and engender better and more relevant relationships with LP�...

Realistic Fundraising Targets For Emerging Venture Funds

of early stage venture and start-ups. The recent article I posted about the current fundraising environment focused primarily on the macro conditions driving limited partner appetite into emerging ...

Why A Fundraising Winter Is Coming For Micro-VC’s

Earlier in the week, I received an email from a seed fund manager inquiring about current Limited Partner appetite for investing in new seed fund managers. The query was in response to a declaration m...

How To Transform A VC Fund Capital Base From Individuals To Institutional LPs

Lots of people have raised small VC funds. There are more startups, and there’s more LP capital from various sources to meet that demand. After the rise of institutional seed funds in the late 2000�...

What You Need To Think About Before Starting A Venture Firm

Along with the reasons I’ve previously discussed, this list and chart below clearly suggest that becoming a venture investor (or more specifically a seed stage VC) is easier than it’s ever been. Y...

Creative Strategies for Finding LP Investors for Your Venture Fund

When talking to first-time fund managers, Precursor Ventures’ Charles Hudson often shares this piece of advice: “If you’re new to fundraising, chances are you’ll run out of one of four thin...

What You Need To Know Before Raising A Micro-VC Fund Today

Although I’ve never raised a venture fund myself, I can claim having worked closely with managers on nearly 200 fund raises over the past 5+ years. These raises, coinciding with the incredible growt...

Why You Probably Won’t Invest In The Next Unicorn

Winter is a venture capital investor at Sapphire Ventures. Before joining Sapphire in 2014, he worked at Hall Capital Partners. Prior to Hall, Winter founded Mead and Mead, an international food distr...

Twenty Minute VC Podcast: What LPs Look For In GPs

Beezer Clarkson is Managing Director @ Sapphire Ventures where she leads Sapphire’s investments in venture funds domestically and internationally. Prior to joining Sapphire, Beezer managed day-to...

Twenty Minute VC Podcast: What LPs Want In VCs

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What Investors Want From Venture Capital Firms

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Twenty Minute VC Podcast: What It Takes To Raise A VC Fund

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Dear VCs, There’s Something You Need To Know About Raising Funds This Year

Times are changing. Startups and VCs are facing tougher times, layoffs, down rounds and eroding valuations. However, already a record amount of money has gone into U.S. venture funds this year. As an ...

Why Your Investor Might Pass On Your Next Fund

For many investors looking to invest in a venture capital fund, benchmarking is a key part of the due diligence process because it helps determine which managers have historically performed well again...

VC Fundraising Trends: Cause For Alarm Or Business As Usual?

At Sapphire Ventures we do quite a bit of internal analysis on trends in venture capital fundraising. After all, we’re a limited partner in early-stage VC funds, and we like to understand how capita...

Insights From The Venture Capital Fundraising Market

At Sapphire Ventures, we make a habit of analyzing the U.S. venture capital fundraising market to inform our investment perspective as a limited partner (LP) in early-stage VC funds. Some of this revi...

How To Market A Fund And Pique An Investor’s Interest

The latest batch of questions from readers has them asking about marketing a fund, as well as the nitty-gritty of 506(c) offerings, which came about as a result of the JOBS Act signed in April 2012. R...

How To Raise An Institutional Seed Fund In Europe

Sapphire Ventures’ Fund Investments team backs emerging and established fund managers with deep expertise in enterprise and consumer technologies. As a member of this team I have the pleasure of mee...

Top 10 Tips For Pitching An LP

Money is flowing into the venture industry at near record levels. More than 250 venture capital funds raised nearly $30 billion last year, more funds than in any year since 2001, according to the ...