Living Through the Revenge of Capital

Charles Hudson, Managing Partner at Precursor Ventures, shares an honest take about the emotional toll of investing in harsh markets, and the impact it has on how GPs and LPs relate to existing invest...

Carta Annual Equity Report 2022

Each year, Carta uses its platform with more than 30,000 cap tables to produce this report on the distribution of equity ownership by race, gender, geography and ethnicity. This year's report aims to ...

Forbes 30 Under 30 Venture Capitalists 2023

From gaming-focused tech startups to companies focusing on sexual and reproductive health, the young investors of Under 30 in 2023 are putting their money to work in companies created by and for their...

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...

VC Terms You Need to Know

The investing world is full of acronyms and terms that are foreign to those that haven’t been in the game for years. The team at Weekend Fund put together a glossary of concepts every fund manager n...

Investors Pour Into Venture Capital Funds Even as Markets Cool

Wall Street Journal VC, tech and startup reporter Heather Somerville spoke with several LP's for their take on the state of the market, including Sapphire Partners' Beezer Clarkson, Cendana Capital's ...

Why VCs Explaining “It Was Only 4% Of Our Fund” Is Misleading Minimization When a High Flying Startup Implodes

Hunter Walk, Partner at Homebrew, shares an honest take on the realities of what happens to a venture portfolio when a highly-valued startup implodes - even if dollars invested is a small percentage o...

‘Me Too’ Investing is Eating Returns

Alan Feld, Founder and Managing Partner at Vintage Investment Partners, wrote a byline in TechCrunch to discuss underfunded areas that could produce huge winners over the next ten years, including alt...

PitchBook NVCA Venture Monitor Q3 2022

Q3 2022 saw a less resilient venture landscape in the US compared with H1 2022. Deal activity across all stages recorded signs of distress, and the market continued to become increasingly consolidated...

A Narrative on Today’s Markets vs Years Prior

QED Co-founder, Partner and Chief Investment Officer Frank Rotman shares an extensive Twitter thread on the reality of today's private markets for startups, VCs and LPs vs years past: the "Acceleratio...

Outperformance: The Power of Power Laws

Which investments generate the greatest venture returns: enterprise or consumer? To answer this, Sapphire Partners' Beezer Clarkson and Evan Tarzian created a database of enterprise vs consumer perfor...

The #OpenLP Podcast Miniseries: Beezer Clarkson, Sapphire Partners

Notation Capital’s Nick Chirls hosts Sapphire Partners’ Beezer Clarkson on the #OpenLP podcast miniseries for a deep-dive on the current state of the LP and VC market, given recent dislocations....

What’s 🔥 in Enterprise IT/VC #305

Ed Sim, Founder and General Partner at Boldstart, predicts fundraising activity will pick up this fall, but with more diligence; later stage rounds will be still be few and far between; and relationsh...

6 Lessons From Being a Venture Capitalist During a Market Decline

Veteran VC Alan Feld offers actionable advice on navigating a market downturn (his 5th or 6th) and says, "we are just at the beginning of a huge wave of innovation and disruption, not at the end."...

Q2 2022: US VC Valuations Report

PitchBook's Q2 2022 US Valuations Report shows that only 10 public listings for companies valued $1B+ were recorded through June 30, compared with 100+ in 2021. And, early-stage median pre-money valua...

The Math Behind Starting a Successful Software Startup

How much value does a successful software startup create per dollar of venture investment? About 10x, though it’s volatile....

Iris’ Kristen Stone – Mercenary vs Missionaries in DAOs

In this episode of the podcast, host Katherine Wu and Iris’ Kristen Stone chat about what the importance of DAOs are and whether Kristen still thinks giving early contributors tokens to a project in...

Ivy League Endowments Brace for Losses With Private Equity Values Tumbling

Bloomberg sheds light on the impact of the downturn on endowment returns and future venture funding....

PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor

The Q2 2022 PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor provides a complete look at venture capital activity, reporting on fundraising, investments, exits and other relevant industry analysis in one comprehensive ...

These Two Questions Are All You Need To Understand The Next Few Years of Venture & Startups

Hunter Walk, Partner at Homebrew, shares two specific questions to consider over the next one to five years, the answers to which he says will have the biggest impact on VC....

What’s Happening in Growth Stage VC?

Perspectives on growth stage VC: The market downturn is acting to offset the 2020-2021 spike in asset prices and the market reset means a return to fundamental metrics : margins, capital efficiency &a...

Forecasting a Return to Venture Normalcy

AngelList shares venture data to support the notion that we’re not in a true bear market, but rather a return to normalcy....

Are Venture Returns About to Cycle?

The answer is yes, but the breadth and depth of this cycle may not be as severe as history has shown. ...

PitchBook Analyst Note Q2 2022

PitchBook’s latest analyst note takes an early look at 2022 VC fund performance and the impact of growing pessimism on private market portfolios....

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...

The Rocky Road Ahead for Startups

From The Indicator by NPR's Planet Money, Wailin Wong invites Beezer on the podcast to explore how the venture ecosystem has been impacted by the down market. Take a listen for perspectives from the f...

The bull market is over… What are the implications for venture capital? ­­­­­­

The decade-long bull run is over, and while it's uncertain how the markets will play out over the next 12-18 months, history gives us insight, and VC must adjust....

The Three-Body Problem: Finding the New Stable Points in VC

Curious how VC Funds are evolving to reflect the recent changes in the LP and Startup ecosystems? The Three-Body Problem: Finding the New Stable Points in Venture Capital is finally here....

The Denominator Effect in Venture

Markets contract and LP asset class allocations need rebalancing. It's the circle of (venture) life. Here's how the denominator effect will hit the VC market....

The Great VC Pullback of 2022

"The great VC pullback of 2022" is on everyone's minds nowadays. Matt Turck of FirstMark helps us navigate the choppy venture waters we all find ourselves swimming in at the moment....

VC distributions are down 90% in Q1, says Industry Ventures, an LP in 450 funds

Deal terms are shifting and LP distributions are down as GPs wait out the market. So says Hans Swildens of Industry Ventures (LP investor in 450 funds). See what else this LP investor has to say about...

A look at six new funds begs the question: Is a slowdown really coming?

There’s been talk of a slowdown in VC funding recently BUT ... "Our inboxes are filled with news about newly raised venture funds," says Christine Hall of TechCrunch. So the fundraising picture rema...

VC ‘funds of funds’ are on the rise as investing ecosystem becomes more complex

On the rise of fund of funds in Europe: "The hot new thing is VCs launching their own LP arms to get access to specialised funds and boost their reach and competitive clout, especially in early-stage ...

The Solo Venture Capitalist Who Doubles Down Like Andreessen

Fascinating deep dive on the "one man show"... solo VC Oren Zeev....

Solo Venture Capitalists Go Big

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

Enmeshment in Venture

What obstacles does the venture industry face? The funding gap has widened; Becoming a VC is easier, but staying one is harder; And everyone’s fingers are in everyone’s pies. Geri Kirilova shares ...

Web 2.0 Investors Aren’t Cut Out for the Web3 World

Investing in Web3 companies requires a top-to-bottom rethink of the investing model, from how you’ll make distributions to your LPs all the way down to how you set up your fund....

Venture Firms Push Fund Caps Out of the Way

The size of a fund drives its strategy. So what does it mean when there is no hard cap during a fundraising process?...

Public Cloud Stocks Have Dropped 50%. Will Private Valuations Follow?

Price movements in public markets eventually trickle into private markets as investors consider market conditions they’re exiting into... What happens when public comps fall 50%+ in the span of a fe...

Market Topsy-Turviness

How to make sense of market topsy-turviness? Solid assessment of the current state of the tech market by Redpoint's Logan Bartlett....

How LPs are Thinking Through Market Turbulence Right Now

The market is topsy turvy. What conversations are taking place among LP investment committees as a result? Lindel Eakman of Foundry Group sheds some light....

How will the “pandemic vintage” of funds ultimately perform?

Individual investments follow their own paths but a 'vintage' will succumb to the forces of the mega-trends. Frank Rotman shares his thoughts on how the "pandemic vintages" will look in hindsight....

LP Expectations vs. VC Realities

"If exits aren’t in the 10x+ range it’s unlikely to make any difference to a fund other than recycling the capital back into something that you think *can* get you to that 10x+ number." Finn Murph...

Minsky Moments in Venture Capital

'Minsky dynamics' have long been applied to public markets, but how might they inform our understanding of venture? Abraham Thomas walks through the time/risk mechanism that underpins the venture boom...

The Future of Solo Capitalists

Solitary GPs now manage more than many multi-person venture funds... What are the limits of a one-man band? And how should legacy firms counter? Great deep dive from Mario Gabriele on the future of so...

Busting the Myth That There’s Little Data on Private Companies

Wall Street (and Silicon Valley) always finds a way to fill a vacuum... Institutional Investor "busts the myth that there’s little data on private companies."...

Why Some VCs Are Hopeful of a Pullback in Sky-high Valuations

Some VCs say new venture deals can start pricing at meaningfully lower valuations only after the stock market remains depressed for a sustained period. ...And they are hopeful that this will take plac...

Y Combinator’s New Deal Sparks Fear in Seed Investors

Y Combinator's new terms are sparking fears of dilution among seed investors. Here's more on how this might ripple through the early-stage venture ecosystem, from Kate Clark of the Information....

European VC investments outperform U.S. ones—and have over the past two decades

"Returns from European VC investments have exceeded that of the US in every time period for the past two decades." The insights from Atomico's recent State of European Tech report just keep on coming....

The State of European Tech 2021: 21 Things You Should Know

With more than 400 charts in Atomico's landmark 'State of European Tech' report this year, there’s a lot to digest. Here are the best bits....

The Evolution of European Venture: The Returns are Real

The returns are real, and it's time to talk numbers. Don’t miss this panel on the evolution and current state of European venture, from the recent SuperVenture conference in Berlin....

$10B is the new $1B, and we need a new framework for startup valuations

The $1 billion unicorn term has lost most of its meaning, argues Alex Wilhelm of TechCrunch. "We need a new framework for startup valuations."...

Meet the Modern Crypto Venture Capital

Something that many participating firms have yet to fully appreciate: Crypto venture capital is a different game than traditional venture capital. Axios walks us through the differences....

Operators Are The New ‘It’ VCs: 10 Lessons On Making The Transition

Operators may be the new ‘it’ VCs, but that doesn't mean it's all smooth sailing. Here are 10 lessons on making the transition from operator to investor, compliments of Deena Shakir and Ann Bordet...

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....

‘Every Firm Is Talking About It’: Venture Capital Is Having Its New York Moment

"Everywhere you turn in New York startup circles, you’ll find investors who have either moved in recent months or been hired by West Coast firms looking to plant a flag." More on NY venture's coming...

A Twitter Troll’s Take on the Future of Investing

And as venture continues getting shaken up, there are real implications for LPs to keep in mind. Here's one perspective from Logan Bartlett of Redpoint Ventures....

The Rise of Growth-stage Investing in Europe

Over the past few years, the European venture market has truly hit its stride. Here Sapphire Partners' Laura Thompson shares her LP perspective on European growth-stage investing at this year's Web Su...

Enduring Truths in Venture

Crypto, web3, Sequoia-type fund restructuring... so much innovation is shaking up the venture industry nowadays! And yet, some "enduring truths" about venture as an industry remain as potent as ever. ...

The #OpenLP Podcast Miniseries: Saul Klein of LocalGlobe and Latitude – Champion of the European Tech Ecosystem

On the latest episode of the #OpenLP podcast miniseries Sapphire chats with European tech ecosystem champion, Saul Klein. Topics include the evolution of venture in Europe over 20 years, the road ahea...

Silicon Valley is split over Sequoia’s fund restructure

LP perspective: What are the broader ramifications of the Sequoia fund restructuring news? Liquidity options! "We're generally supportive of increased flexibility allowing LPs to get money out and act...

University Endowments Mint Billions in Golden Era of Venture Capital

49%... 56%... 65%! These annual return numbers are incredible. "Large college endowments have notched their biggest investment gains in decades, thanks to portfolios boosted by huge VC returns and soa...

More Startup CEOs Are Moonlighting as VC Investors

Adding to the burgeoning ranks of nontraditional venture investors? Startup CEOs! The Information dives deep on the proliferation of "startup CEOs moonlighting as VC investors."...

A Comeback of the First-Time Venture Fund? Stay Tuned

"More debut-fund managers are striking out on their own, emboldened by strong returns in the markets... Also, fund investors are looking for ways to back emerging venture firms, which, research shows,...

As Investors Pivot To Seed And Growth, Who Is Left Leading Series A?

Guess which investors have put the most money to work in Series A rounds in 2021 and 2020? Hint: A lot of traditional Series A fund names are not even in the top 20......

More LPs are Investing in VC Funds

In the last 5 years, the average number of LPs participating in a VC flagship fundraise more than doubled. But the average check size has grown too. Key takeaway? More accredited investors and institu...

Haystack’s Semil Shah on on the Venture Unlocked Podcast

Building a firm from the ground up, portfolio models, and the state of VC today. Haystack's Semil Shah drops many fantastic nuggets in this episode of the Venture Unlocked podcast with Samir Kaji....

50 Behind-the-Scenes Investors in the Venture Capital World that Control Billions of Dollars

"The Real Power Brokers of Silicon Valley." Don't miss this list of the top 50 university endowment LPs that invest in venture....

How ‘Solo VCs’ are Changing the Venture Game

"No one is as fast to decide as a solo GP." Elite LPs are betting on solo VCs because they recognize these investors are not only exceptionally well-connected in the tech ecosystem, but are also desir...

How Fast is Too Fast?

"In my eleven years in venture capital, I've never experienced a market that's moving as quickly as it is at present. And in conversations with fellow investors, it seems we all feel the same way." Is...

A Guide To Programs For Emerging Managers

With the explosive growth of the emerging manager ecosystem, a wealth of programs have emerged to support aspiring VCs. Here are the top programs on offer....

New Study: How Family Offices are Investing into VC

Family offices tend to be the most opaque genre of LPs in the venture investing landscape. So what does family office involvement in venture actually look like? Here's a snapshot, thanks to a new stud...

What happens when a VC partner has a baby?

Having a baby is a daunting prospect for many VC partners. What happens to board seats? Or dealflow? And what do LPs say?...

Alternative investments and the future of alpha in our COVID-19 world

Neil Datta of Forbes Family Trust shares the LP perspective on the She-VC podcast....

Why Institutional Investors Should Double Down on VC

Half of all VC funds launched between 2009-2017 generated returns to investors that outperformed the S&P 500 and Russell 2000 net of all management fees. The conventional wisdom of only 5% of VC f...

VC is performing better than ever. Why are so few first-time funds being raised?

2020 was a record year for venture fundraising, with nearly $80 billion of fresh capital, and this year is on pace to crack $100 billion. But fundraising by first-time managers hasn't been keeping pac...

Confluence VC: Nandu Anilal of Canaan Partners

Nandu touches on: the process of learning as a VC, the rise of data-driven companies, themes worth monitoring within data infrastructure, preempting rounds and escaping the competitive fundraising pro...

Seeding the exception: A flight to safety and back again

We saw record capital deployed into startups in 2020 and no slowdown in financings. But the story isn’t that simple. While venture investing across the board was hitting all-time highs, activity was...

Two Worlds of Venture

Over the weekend, I tweeted offhand about my frustration with the buzz around early stage venture rounds these days: there’s so much discussion of companies raising lots of money very quickly, when ...

VC Market Dislocation: The Fundamentalists vs The End Marketers

Various go-to-market strategies among VC firms are starting to lead to a bifurcation in the VC market. Here's how "fundamentalists" and "end marketers" approach things....

The Data: Enterprise & Deep Tech VC in Europe & Israel 2020

A detailed look at venture capital activity across the region in 2020....

A SPACtacular Future: The Rapid Rise of SPACs & What Comes Next

SPACs. You can’t read the news these days without hearing about them. This time last year, SPACs were mostly a curiosity, but today, with 128 SPACs having gone public in the first 40 days of 2021,...

7 Truths Across Venture Investing Stages

People often talk about how different the pre-seed stage is from Series A and later stage investing. The focus of this post is the opposite: Highlighting things that are true across stages of investin...

Twitter Wisdom: Institutional LPs Share Thoughts on the Recent Rise in Exit Valuations and Impacts on Allocation

In a fantastic Twitter thread, Frank Rotman compiles feedback from a number of institutional LPs on some of the most pressing issues facing the venture ecosystem, including sky high valuations and mor...

Seed Funds Are Under Existential Threat From Venture Giants

When a tiny two-person San Francisco startup named Stytch began pitching venture capital firms for its first-ever round of funding early last year, known as a "seed" round, the partners at venerable s...

These Three Enterprise Deals Show There’s Plenty of Action in Small Acquisitions

Not every deal involves a huge price tag. Today we are going to look at three smaller deals that show there is plenty of activity at the lower-end of the acquisition spectrum....

Are SAFEs Obscuring Today’s Seed Volume

Investors have been seeing a hot seed market, while data often showed a flat-to-down seed market. So, what’s going on?...

A new fund aims to provide diverse investors the opportunity to build wealth

For years, women, people of color, and allies in Silicon Valley have been working to diversify who receives venture capital funding. But that issue runs parallel to another: Who has the opportunity t...

Why SPACs are booming in New York but not in London

Xavier Rolet, the former CEO of London Stock Exchange Group, has jumped into the boom in “blank check” companies. But instead of going public in London at his old employer, the special purpose ac...

Post-Pandemic Silicon Valley Isn’t A Place

Where are tech companies going to go once the pandemic subsides as vaccines reach more and more Americans?...

Discovering the Next-Gen of Top Venture Investors

On this episode of the Venture Unlocked podcast, Samir Kaji chats with Apurva Mehta, Managing Partner at Summit Peak Investments....

Redrawing the Map: How the “Decoupling” of Capital and Geography Will Lead to More Unicorns — in More Places — in 2021

In good news for founders everywhere, the small geographic aperture of the world’s best VCs — which has been slowly opening over the last 10 years — has been dramatically impacted by the events ...

8 Myths of Pre-seed Venture Investing

Pre-seed investing presents a unique set of challenges as compared to later stage (series A+) venture investing: the signals, the data, and the strategy could not be more different.  Like every indus...

Why So Many VCs are Moving to Austin and Miami

It’s taxes first — but this isn’t new, and while taxes in CA are even higher than a few years ago, they’ve always been high... and...

Constraining The Path

In the context of entrepreneurship and the creative process, I am a big believer in constraints. I fundamentally believe that a shortage of resources, or a specific pain or trauma, or any set of condi...

The Rise of Challenger VCs: What LPs Need to Know About This New Bet in Early Stage Venture

A guide for LPs to spot opportunities in revenue based financing, profit sharing and other emerging forms of early stage venture financing...

Myth-Busting In European Venture Capital

The European venture capital market needs a makeover. Over the last two decades, Europe has struggled to keep up with its US counterpart. Historically, returns in European venture has lagged the US, w...

The Capital Behind Venture 2020 report

The aim of this initiative is to collect useful sentiment, opinion and information from Limited Partners (Fund of Funds, Family Offices, Endowments, Pension Funds, Government Funds and Corporates)...

How the Pandemic is Shifting LP Strategies

In this episode, Beezer Clarkson shares how the pandemic is affecting Sapphire Partners’ investment strategy. I also share what I’ve been seeing from investing in startups and venture capital fund...

In praise of VC partnerships

Venture Capital is eating itself. In the 2010’s, VC disruption took the form of syndicates, crowdfunding and angel funds (think Ron Conway’s SV Angel, founded in 2009). In the 2020’s it’s ro...

The Stories Behind Cap Tables

Startups don’t need capital—they need signal. Founders choose individual VCs based on their chemistry, high-conviction and fast commitment....

The Mutable Laws of VC

Not all Notes are created equally—know the difference between Fully Diluted Basis vs. Issued and Outstanding. Not all shares are created equally—know the liquidation preference stack. There ar...

Limited Partner series on Covid-19

The ‘Limited Partner series on Covid-19’ explores the effects of Covid-19 on the Venture Investment space from the perspective of LP investors....

Announcing the Black Venture Institute

Today, we are thrilled to announce our newest and largest program yet: the Black Venture Institute. We’ve been busy working on this initiative all summer with incredible partners that include Oper...

Is impact investing having an impact on investing?

Last week, I joined colleagues from the impact investing community for a panel discussion at the British Private Equity & Venture Capital Association (BVCA) Summit, New Horizons to tackle the ques...

The Case for Camels: Part 2

Why backing innovators that seek balanced growth, not just growth-at-all cost, is good business and good investing......

Re-inventing the SPAC

One of the hottest topics in the technology and finance world right now is an old idea that has suddenly found new life, the special purpose acquisition company or “SPAC.”...

Adding Value in Today’s Venture Capital Market with Peterson Ventures’ Ben Capell

The proliferation of venture capital funds, accelerators, and other startup resources has left many VCs wondering how to deliver unique value to their portfolio companies and how to scale that value t...

Karey Barker, founder of Cross Creek on an Emerging Asset Class: Late Stage Private Growth Companies

Karey Barker founded Cross Creek Advisors, a growth-focused venture capital firm, inside of $22b Wasatch Global Investors in 2006. Cross Creek invests in leading venture-backed companies and venture f...

Family Office Venture Capital Outlook 2020

At the start of 2020, Kauffman Fellows and First Republic Bank surveyed family offices (“FO”) to better understand their current investment theses and outlooks. We ran the survey again to explore ...

20VC: SPACS. WHAT ARE THEY? WHY NOW? HOW DO THEY CHANGE THE VENTURE LANDSCAPE? ARE THEY BETTER THAN IPOS & DIRECT LISTINGS? HOW SHOULD FOUNDERS THINK ABOUT THEM?

Kevin Hartz is Co-Founder & Partner @ A*, a newly listed special acquisition company which raised $200M to acquire and take public a tech startup. Kevin is also the Co-Founder, former CEO, and Ch...

Abby Lyall – Embracing Technological Change & a glimpse into the VC World

If we want to move the needle in terms of gender diversity & inclusion in the VC field, LP's need to be part of the conversation and have a larger influence....

Kate Shillo Beardsley talks about future of venture capital investing in new economy

Kate is the Founding Partner of Hannah Grey investing at the intersection of human behavior and technology in the new economy. She was previously at Upslope Ventures and was a Founding Member of Lerer...

The use of placement agents for Emerging fund managers

For emerging managers, the actual capital raise of a fund represents the most significant friction point for getting off the ground (and early on, scaling a firm). This issue has prevented many aspiri...

Surging: The 2020 Venture-Backed IPO

In late March, headlines mourned a once-robust 2020 IPO environment amid plummeting public equity market woes. Four months into the pandemic, equity indices are making a recovery despite continued mac...

20VC: WHY ENTREPRENEURS CARE LESS ABOUT FIRM BRAND AT SEED, HOW LPS SHOULD THINK ABOUT GP COMMIT & HOW THE WORLD OF LPS AND FUNDRAISING WILL CHANGE POST COVID WITH APURVA MEHTA, MANAGING PARTNER @ SUMMIT PEAK INVESTMENTS

Apurva Mehta is the Managing Partner @ Summit Peak Investments, investing in early-stage venture capital funds and making direct co-investments. To date they have backed the likes of Raymond Tonsing...

Venture Capital’s Access Myth

A myth at its core is a story to explain something complex. Over time, the story is broadly disseminated such that popular consciousness can, at times, accept it as true at face value. At Greenspring ...

Will Rolling Funds Roll Over the Venture Capital Industry?

In the world of venture capital, the big news of the past two weeks has been AngelList’s “Rolling Venture Funds.” More than 15 funds have publicly launched on the platform since February, incl...

Structural Problems In The European Venture Capital LP Landscape And Why It Matters

In my conversations with emerging venture fund managers, I am often asked about the Limited Partner (LP) landscape in Europe. Understanding your prospects is important when you want to raise a fund....

MATTHEW GRANADE – INSIDE DATA SCIENCE AT POINT72

Matthew Granade is Chief Market Intelligence Officer at Point72 and the Managing Partner of Point72 Ventures.  Matthew oversees all proprietary research and data efforts at the firm, manages several ...

Private IPOs are Here to Stay (For Now)

The topic of Private IPOs is getting a lot of interest and is something we have examined before. We previously wrote about the rise of unicorn (private $1B+) valuations and the impact of mega rounds...

Covid-19 and the implications on the investment industry

Now more than ever, we can lean in to our society’s needs for strategic investments, optimize our investment operations and seek to further support our partners during these turbulent times....

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...

Seed Investing Today: What’s Changed, What Hasn’t with Aileen Lee

What Nobody Tells You About Seed Investing with SaaStr CEO Jason Lemkin and Cowboy Ventures Founder and Partner Aileen Lee...

Origins Podcast: Josh Kopelman, First Round Capital

Josh Kopelman is the co-founder of First Round Capital, a pioneering seed-stage venture capital firm. He's been an active entrepreneur and investor in the Internet industry since it's commercializatio...

For Endowments, The Pressure is On

A recession fueled by an ongoing pandemic has universities facing critical budget woes.  With endowments feeling the heat, VCs are on course to see a very different fundraising environment later this...

Entrepreneurship Redefined

There’s a lot to be proud of in the European startup ecosystem. In the past decade, Europe truly came of age, with companies like Spotify, Adyen, and Supercell leading the way. To date, we have seen...

A New Platform For Emerging Managers

Previously, we examined the unmet needs of micro-VC and emerging managers, and the opportunities this may bring for an enterprising, emerging manager-focused LP....

“Risk-On” And Digital Antibodies

With the arrival of June 2020, it’s almost as if there is no pandemic when it comes to the early-stage investment market in the Bay Area. The early-stage tech formation world and the VCs that suppor...

VC Monique Woodard is NOT “Doing Fine”

Monique Woodard is a venture capitalist in Silicon Valley.  She is one of the very rare Black, female General partners in venture capital.  As events drove the Black Lives Matter (“BLM”) moveme...

Finding BIG-Thinking and Executing Entrepreneurs with Dick Rothkopf

How can we better spot big thinkers and big ideas with the propensity to scale, and how can we help our entrepreneurs think bigger?  I invited Dick Rothkopf, co-founder of Learning Curve Internationa...

Origins Podcast: Kanyi Maqubela, Kindred Ventures

In this episode, we discuss everything from Kanyi's childhood to founding his first startup out of Stanford to joining Collaborative Fund to ultimately founding Kindred Ventures with his partner Steve...

20VC: ELAD GIL ON STARTUP OFFENSE AND DEFENCE IN A RECESSION, HOW THE VENTURE LANDSCAPE HAS SHIFTED & ALL THINGS VALUATIONS, SECONDARIES AND LAYOFFS

Elad Gil is one of Silicon Valley’s most successful and prominent angels of the last decade with a portfolio including the likes of Stripe, Square, Airbnb, Pinterest, Instacart, Flexport and Brex t...

She-VC: Holly Maloney from General Catalyst discusses Rise of Full Stack Venture Capital Fund

VC is a very hard industry to prepare for. There is no MBA or coursework that prepares you for early stage or late stage investing.  Holly Maloney, Managing Director from General Catalyst VC Fund dis...

Consolidation: the Face of Venture Capital Post COVID-19

In venture capital, the increasing disruption by mega-funds is driving many VCs into the classic innovator’s dilemma: I need to raise bigger funds to survive, but doing so will eventually dilute my ...

20VC: SARAH KUNST ON WHY THERE IS PLENTY OF INVESTOR MONEY STILL AVAILABLE, THE MEGAN MARKLE EFFECT AND HOW IT IMPACTS HIRING AND TALENT & WHETHER GP COMMITS PREVENT DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION

Sarah Kunst is the Founder and Managing Director @ Cleo Capital with a portfolio including the likes of StyleSeat, Glow Bar and PlateJoy to name a few. Prior to venture, Sarah served as a senior ad...

Startup Ecosystem Faces Capital Crunch over Coming Months

Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy ride. The U.S. startup ecosystem has rapidly entered a new chapter of what will be a turbulent period over at least the next several quarters. The U.S...

Outside View, Groping & Fluidity In The Equity Chain

Making an investment decision involves both analysis and intuition. These decisions contain an irreducible intuitive component, but when early stage investors rely largely on intuition, growth stage ...

Use of Capital call lines for Emerging Managers during economic downturns

The use of capital call lines by venture capital funds has seen a dramatic increase over the last few decades --- Today >50% of VC funds that qualify are using these lines....

COVID-19 Edition: What is venture sentiment today?

To understand the effects of the COVID-19 outbreak on the venture capital sector, we recently conducted a survey of venture firms to gauge investor sentiment on investment activity and fundraising....

20VC: UPFRONT’S MARK SUSTER ON COVID REDEFINING WHAT A GREAT COMPANY LOOKS LIKE AND WHAT VALUATIONS LOOK LIKE, WHY PAY-TO-PLAY IS BACK ON THE TABLE & WHY WE WILL SEE THE DEATH OF PARTY ROUNDS

Mark Suster is the Managing Partner @ Upfront Ventures, one of LA’s leading and largest venture firms with a portfolio including the likes of Bird, GOAT, Maker Studios and Ring.com to name a few. ...

The Impact of COVID-19 on VC, a Case For Optimism

Over the past 100 years, epidemics have only temporarily impacted the economy with short, sharp shocks, following a V-shaped recovery.  Unsurprisingly, the optimists expect......

Talkshow: Semil Shah and Samir Kaji

Raising new VC funds in a pandemic world. What should aspiring & emerging fund managers do now that the world has changed? Samir Kaji from First Republic chats with Semil Shah about it & more....

How to Make Sense of the PPP Loan Program for VC-Backed Startups

There is so much confusion and misinformation out there about the government sponsored “payroll protection plan” loans to companies that the heads of every small business CEO in the country must b...

20VC: ARE VCS STILL “OPEN FOR BUSINESS”, HOW VCS ATTITUDE TO RISK HAS CHANGED & THE 2 MOST VALUABLE ASSETS TO FOUNDERS TODAY WITH FRED DESTIN, FOUNDING PARTNER @ STRIDE VC

Fred Destin is a Founding Partner @ Stride.VC, one of Europe’s newest and largest early-stage seed firms. Prior to co-founding Stride, Fred was a General Partner @ Accel where he was the lead inve...

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 ...

Silicon Valley Camels, will you please stand up

The term Camel was originally coined by Kauffman Fellow Alex Lazarow as part of his new book Out-Innovate: How Global Entrepreneurs – from Delhi to Detroit – Are Rewriting the Rules of Silicon ...

Crisis Coverage – Relief $ for Startups via CARES Act, EIDL, PPP; & How an Extended Downturn Affects Emerging VC Funds

Samir Kaji of First Republic joins Nick on a special Crisis Coverage installment to discuss Relief $ for Startups via CARES Act, EIDL, PPP; & How an Extended Downturn Affects Emerging VC Funds. In...

‘A perfect storm for first time managers,’ say VCs with their own shops

Until very recently, it had begun to seem like anyone with a thick enough checkbook and some key contacts in the startup world could not only fund companies as an angel investor but even put himself o...

Emerging Manager Q&A mailbag

I’ve spent a considerable amount of my shelter in place time having discussions with some very smart people in the market about what this economic dislocation might mean for the emerging venture fun...

The Economic Impact of Coronavirus: What GPs Need to Know

We are at a critical point in our economic future as the Coronavirus (COVID-19) has wreaked havoc across all aspects of our daily lives. As we enter a bear market, the venture capital and startup comm...

What I’m hearing about venture right now

Over the last few weeks, our daily routines have been disrupted by the continued spread of the novel Coronavirus, and many of us may contract or have loved ones contract the virus. Please stay safe, a...

20VC: MATT MOCHARY ON WHY BOARD SEATS ARE THE DEATH OF INVESTORS

Matt Mochary coaches some of the world’s leading venture capitalists and founders helping them to build the best organizations possible. On the VC side, Matt has worked with Peter Fenton @ Benchmar...

The Hard Questions Venture Capital GPs Need to Be Prepared For

As a GP, courting LPs can be a very ambiguous process. You might go in with the full range of optimism and skepticism. Regardless, if you haven’t done the inner work of evaluating yourself, your par...

20VC: VINOD KHOSLA ON WHAT VENTURE ASSISTANCE REALLY MEANS, WHY MANY VCS ARE NOT QUALIFIED TO ADVISE FOUNDERS & WHY STARTUPS CAN INNOVATE SO MUCH FASTER THAN INCUMBENTS

Vinod Khosla is the Founder Khosla Ventures, one of the valley’s most renowned firms of the last decade with a portfolio including Square, Affirm, DoorDash, Impossible Foods and OpenDoor just to nam...

US VENTURE CAPITAL IN 2019

US venture capital activity continued to be robust in 2019, overcoming general macro and micro concerns that surfaced during H2 2019. Some key statistics include......

Venture Capital Positively Disrupts Intergenerational Investing

Families of wealth face three key questions about intergenerational wealth planning: how best to invest to sustain future generations; how best to engage the next generation; and how best to ensure fa...

The VC Industry Norms Which Changed Over The Past Decade

Having spent time around and then in the world of VC in the Bay Area during the last decade, I’ve been reflecting on how different norms in the industry have changed. At the start of 2010, there was...

Podcast: Chad Byers, Susa Ventures

Chad Byers is a co-founder and partner at Susa Ventures, a seed-stage venture fund based in SF that has backed companies like Robinhood, Flexport, and Andela. Chad discusses growing up in Silicon Vall...

Why Seed Funds Have Scaled

For those following this blog and the seed market over the past decade, you may have noticed that every year, we see increases across the board — more investors, newer funds, and funds that get larg...

Venture Capital’s Access Myth

A myth at its core is a story to explain something complex. Over time, the story is broadly disseminated such that popular consciousness can, at times, accept it as true at face value. At Greenspring ...

Scott Kupor – Andreessen Horowitz (FIRST MEETING, EP.07)

Scott Kupor is the managing partner at Andreessen Horowitz, also known as a16z for the 16 letters between the A in Andreessen and the z in Horowitz. He is responsible for all operational aspects of ru...

Which Markets Are the Most And Least Served by Seed Investors?

About a year ago, my partner David Beisel talked about how seed fundraising is no longer a local game, and that the best entrepreneurs seek out the best investors for them outside of their home mar...

VC’s decade in data: How the 2010s reshaped a market

Mega-rounds, and mega-funds. Unicorns, and deca-corns. Crypto investors. Seed stage as the new Series A.  And then SoftBank. Especially SoftBank. Those are some of the most defining traits of the rem...

20VC: BOXGROUP’S DAVID TISCH ON WHETHER CONCENTRATED INVESTING AT SEED WORKS, DO FOUNDERS REALLY WANT DIRECT FEEDBACK AND IS IT GOOD FOR THEM & WHY CONSUMER SOCIAL IS INTERESTING AGAIN

David Tisch is the Founder & Managing Partner @ BoxGroup, one of the leading early-stage firms in NYC with a portfolio that includes the likes of Flexport, RigUp, Ro, Glossier, Clearbit, PillPa...

Venture Capital Geographic Allocations in a Changing World

When investors are asked how they think about building exposure to venture capital, many say they are quite opportunistic with an overarching goal to get access to the best entrepreneurs, start-up com...

Direct Listings: Going Public without an IPO

While M&A represents the majority of venture capital exits at approximately 90%[1], Initial Public Offerings (“IPOs”) are a relatively small but important part of how we generate liquidity for...

Why is venture capital so misaligned?

It’s no secret that I question whether the interests of VCs and founders are properly aligned with each other in many venture capital deals. I’m not trying to be snarky or controversial. There is ...

Which investments generate the greatest value in venture: Consumer or Enterprise?

One of our favorite areas to explore is: as a venture investor, do your odds of making better returns improve if you only invest in either enterprise or consumer companies? Or do you need a mix of bot...

20VC: WORKLIFE VENTURES’ BRIANNE KIMMEL ON WHY MORE OPERATORS SHOULD START THEIR OWN FUND, HOW TO STRUCTURE YOUR ROUND FOR THE HIGHEST SIGNAL ROUND & WHAT THE MULTI-STAGE FUNDS PLAYING AT SEED MEANS FOR THE REST OF THE ASSET CLASS

Brianne Kimmel is the Founder and Managing Partner @ Work Life Ventures, a very new firm focused on the future of work backed by some of the best in the valley including Marc Andreesen, Chris Dixon,...

Navigating the New Seed Landscape

A presentation on the state of early stage venture....

Surviving a Coming Storm: Explaining the Unique Factors Driving a Tech Market Correction, and How Technology Founders and Investors Can Persevere Through It

2019 appeared to be a banner year for the technology markets. The year ushered in a boom in public market liquidity, with unicorns such as Uber, Lyft, and Pinterest going public before the end of Q2....

Checking In With The Market And Rorschach Tests

Hi everyone. I’m at an offsite down in southern California. Yesterday, I briefly tweeted something that was on my mind (during a break at the offsite) just to get it out of my head. I didn’t check...

The Master list of US Micro-VC’s

When we launched our emerging manager focused effort in 2012, only a small coterie of sub-$100MM venture funds existed (<100). Our thesis was that this segment of the market would represent one of ...

20VC: BRAD FELD ON WHY MARKET SIZE AT EARLY STAGE IS NOT HELPFUL

Brad Feld is Managing Director @ Foundry Group, one of the most successful venture firms of the last decade with a portfolio that includes the likes of Zynga, Fitbit, SendGrid and many more incredib...

Venture Capital — No, We’re Not Normal

Most of us know intuitively that venture investing is a hits driven business. A relatively small number of winners drive returns. However, you might be surprised by how skewed the distribution of outc...

Navigating The Changing Venture Ecosystem

My experiences as a founder, investor, and advisor have been a guiding light as I focus on helping founders succeed. When I built my first company, I didn't know what an appropriate capital structure ...

The European Series A landscape — actionable benchmarks & the most active lead VCs

9 months ago we published, together with Dealroom and Atomico, actionable benchmarks on Seed funding in Europe — round sizes, conversion rates and time to Series A....

Redpoint’s 20th Anniversary: VC Then and Now

This week marks the twentieth anniversary of Redpoint Ventures’ initial announcement. On August 18, 1999, the Wall Street Journal broke the news on an exclusive about the formation of “Project T-...

For Top Venture Capital Firms, Success Breeds Success

Most investing success is short lived. As the disclaimer goes, past performance does not guarantee future returns. But venture capital is an exception, with top VCs beating the average year after year...

The Summer Solstice And Seed Stage Squeeze

If you’ve been following my tweets lately, you’ve read some of my quick musings on the state of the seed market this summer. In short, in my 6.5 years of investing in the seed stage, I have neve...

20VC: BENCHMARK’S BILL GURLEY ON 5 TRAITS BENCHMARK LOOK FOR WHEN ADDING TO THE PARTNERSHIP, WHY THE ABUNDANCE OF CAPITAL IS TODAY’S BIGGEST CHALLENGE IN VC

Bill Gurley is a General Partner @ Benchmark Capital, one of the most successful funds of the last decade with a portfolio including the likes of Uber, Twitter, Dropbox, WeWork, Snapchat, StitchFix,...

20VC: WHY HISTORICAL LOSS RATIOS ARE SIMPLY TOO HIGH, JONATHAN HSU, CO-FOUNDER AND GENERAL PARTNER @ TRIBE CAPITAL

Jonathan Hsu is Co-Founder & General Partner @ Tribe Capital, one of Silicon Valley’s newest funds on the block being founded by Jonathan, Arjun Sethi and Ted Maidenberg. To date, Tribe has in...

Quickly Unpacking The Looker And Tableau Acquisitions

Normally, I like to pounce on these big acquisitions quickly with some quick analysis, but big M&A in tech is happening too fast, and it’s graduation season for the toddlers, and family is in to...

B2B vs. B2C IPOs

For the past dozen years, Top Tier Capital Partners has believed that using data wisely can potentially help us to “see around corners”. Venture capital is an industry enshrouded in secrecy, makin...

20VC: WHY PORTFOLIO CONSTRUCTION IS INEFFICIENT, WHY THE ONLY THING THAT MATTERS IN VENTURE IS PRICING & THE FUTURE OF VENTURE

Zach Coelius is Managing Partner @ Coelius Capital and in his own words, “a pretty eclectic investor who loves to see just about any deal”. To date, Zach has made investments in the likes of mPa...

The Shrinking Public Equity Market

The number of listed companies in the U.S. has decreased substantially over the last 20+ years.[1] Given our vantage point in the world of venture capital, our team sought to determine how the changi...

20MinVC Podcast with Sarah Smith, Bain Capital Ventures

Sarah Smith is a Partner @ Bain Capital Ventures, a leading US venture fund with a portfolio that includes the likes of LinkedIn, Lime, SendGrid, Jet.com and more incredible companies. As for Sarah,...

The Future of Investing from an LP’s Perspective

In this episode, we hosted a panel on the future of investing from a LP. perspective. The panel was hosted by the amazing Female Founders Fund at an event in san Francisco on Monday, March 11th. ...

Venture Optimism

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#OpenLP: The internationalisation of venture capital: will this affect LP allocations?

Venture capital is becoming increasingly globalised. The VC stronghold is said to be shifting to regions outside the US, and VCs are moving to make investments across multiple geographies. Is this rea...

Why Europe Now?

Top Tier Capital Partners (“TTCP”) has been evaluating the venture capital industry for twenty years. As we analyze the market across various regions, we look at three metrics in particular – in...

Venture Capital’s Access Myth

A myth at its core is a story to explain something complex. Over time, the story is broadly disseminated such that popular consciousness can, at times, accept it as true at face value. At Greenspring ...

18 charts to illustrate US VC in 2018

Over the past couple of years, the term "record-breaking" has frequently been used to describe the state of venture capital in the US, as the space hits new heights with deal value, mega-rounds and fu...

2018 Year in Review

2018 ended up being a distinctive year for venture capital, just about any way you look at it. Despite a decreasing deal count, the industry managed to reach recent highs in invested capital, total va...

Origins Podcast: Manu Kumar, K9 Ventures

Origins is a podcast about Limited Partners, the firms and institutions that invest in venture capital funds. Through a series of interviews, we explore what has historically been an opaque corner of ...

The Shifting Funding Landscape – Slush 2018

Should VCs fight against the incentive of growing? How do ICOs and other instruments affect traditional equity investing? To what scale does the role of a VC expand to nowadays? A group of prominent i...

Europe’s Entrepreneurial Ecosystem – Looking to the Future by Understanding the Past

Beezer Clarkson and Colette Ballou will draw on their myriad of experience as investors and entrepreneurs, and discuss the up and down cycles in European technology landscape and where they think thin...

Building Billion Dollar European Companies

Hear the learnings and observations from Magnus, Co-founder of iZettle and Måns, CEO and Chairman of Qliktech, on what it takes to build companies of such stature in terms of talent management, manag...

A data driven view of Emerging VC

Recently, we surveyed a group of US emerging manager venture firms to assess a variety of metrics including performance, fundraising experiences, and portfolio construction strategies....

Due Diligence the VCs: Part Two, The Founder Perspective

I started off my previous post with an acknowledgement of a few trends, including the institutionalization of pre-seed and the increase of early stage capital generally. Despite, or perhaps because of...

Predicting the Future of Venture Capital

This is the final of five posts in a series on the history and future of venture capital. While prior installments were retrospective and provide helpful context for this post, they aren’t necessary...

Micro-VCs: A worthwhile investment?

This article presents a top-down analysis of the Micro-VC space in the US and Europe, defined as venture capital funds under $100 million. The article seeks to answer the key question of whether Micro...

The Rise of Unicorn Startups

One of the trends we’ve been tracking here at Top Tier is what we like to call the rise of the “Private Company IPO”. The Private Company IPO reflects the upsurge of rapidly growing “unicorn�...

A New VC Crop of Series A Firms

Believe it or not, this will now be the second blog post on this site about a billion-dollar exit for a shaving-related startup. It was just about three years ago when the startup world learned that U...

The Future of Data-Driven Venture Firms

Venture capital is built on the business of capitalizing on innovation and disruption. While venture capitalists are adept at identifying entrepreneurs and companies at the forefront of changing trend...

The definitive guide to London Seed Venture funds

I came across this brilliant London-based founder who’d been courageously talking to investors all over Europe but had somehow missed all the most talented local seed funds . We can solve that —...

LPs Push Into The Crypto Fray

There is nothing like being ten years fashionably late to a party, though given VC interest investing into crypto[1], it seems like a good time to discuss what LPs think about crypto as an investment ...

We Like Healthcare and Here Are a Few Reasons Why

Apr 27, 2018 The healthcare venture capital market continues to be an exciting area of focus for Top Tier. Being located in the heart of San Francisco, we’re lucky that we are able to enjoy the h...

Year in Review: TTCP Liquidity Trends

In our previous post, we discussed trends in the venture capital industry for the year 2017 based on publicly available data. To dig deeper we decided to use our own data to discuss one of the more p...

Where is venture capital heading? The trends, views and hotspots

In an exclusive interview with Winter Mead, Principal of Sapphire Ventures, we discuss the trends in the venture capital industry, changing LP appetite, emergence of new tech circles and the evolution...

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...

Origins S3-E6: Roland Reynolds, Industry Ventures

On this episode of Origins, we sit down with Roland Reynolds, a managing partner at Industry Ventures. Industry Ventures is a fascinating “full stack venture capital firm.” Their funds invest into...

Blockchain, Cryptocurrencies And ICOs: Separating The Wheat From The Chaff

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2017 Year In Review – Industry Breakdown

When looking back at 2017 in venture capital, the year actually looked surprisingly like 2016. We were concerned even then about capital inflows, valuations, and the low number of IPOs. These issues...

The A to Z on Series A: Part Three | The Exit

This is our third and final post on Series A investing. As a quick recap, in addition to direct growth-stage investing, Sapphire Ventures invests in early-stage venture funds, specifically those focus...

How To Win In Micro VC

In the business of investing, ownership matters — a lot! At Accolade Partners, a private equity fund of funds, we believe that portfolio company ownership is a significant driver of returns in t...

The A to Z on Series A: Part Two

In my first post on Series A investing, we looked at active investors at the A-level and found that while there’s a recent downward trend in the number of Series A deals done, there are three times ...

The A To Z On Series A: Part One

At Sapphire, as a matter of good investment discipline (and our personal love for geeking out over venture data), we routinely set aside time to stress test our investment assumptions. And as many of ...

Key Seed Investing Trends Of 2017

Not long ago, seed stage investing was considered a phenomenon in tech, but with the rise of cloud computing, startups became easier and cheaper to develop, and seed investors were firmly planted in t...

Corporate Venture Capital – Trends And State Of The Market

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Origins S3-E2: Andy Weissman — Union Square Ventures

On this episode of Origins, we sit down with Andy Weissman, a managing partner at Union Square Ventures. This was plain and simple one of the best episodes we’ve ever recorded. Andy’s one of the m...

Making Sense of ICOs

Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) have raised $1.5B in 2017 (through 8/30) and this new fundraising mechanism has generated significant buzz and excitement from mainstream media and investors alike. ICOs�...

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...

Pre-Seed Investing: Venture Capital’s Draft Day

The evolution of early stage VC ecosystem has led to the proliferation of many new venture funds started by former angels, operators, and existing VCs. According to Pitchbook, since 2014, there have ...

Origins S2-E11: David Frankel — Founder Collective

On this Origins season 2 bonus episode, we sit down with David Frankel, a managing partner and co-founder of Founder Collective. David and the partners at Founder Collective started the firm in 2011 w...

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...

Emerging Managers: Minefields Or Diamond Mines?

Are emerging managers risky? Many investors in venture funds treat them as if they are not only risky but toxically so. And yet, we find that many of the best performing funds of all time have been �...

VC Interest Piqued In Healthcare

At Sapphire Ventures, we aim to proactively research spaces as we search for new investments. Most recently, we have been taking a closer look at early-stage healthcare investments....

Why The LP Outlook Is Good For Venture And Startups In 2017–2020

Every year Upfront Ventures surveys Limited Partners (LPs) who are the main source of capital that invests in VC funds and thus the main source of capital that goes to startups to get an early-warning...

Origins S2-E5: Hunter Walk — Partner, Homebrew

This episode was one of the most interesting (and fun) to record so far. As two partners still in the early days of building Notation, it’s extremely helpful to look towards other VCs a little furth...

Venture Capital In 2017 Is When The Rubber Hits The Road For Returns

In the United States, VC funds raised a whopping $40.6 billion in 2016[1]. It was the largest year for VC fundraising since 2000 when the venture industry raked in a jaw dropping $101.4 billion[1]. Ye...

Origins S2-E3: Jonathan Abrams — CEO, Nuzzel + Co-Founder, Founder’s Den

Heyo 2017! We’re starting the year off strong with a new episode of Origins, our podcast dedicated to exploring the Limited Partner community....

The Unexpected Winner Of The Distribution Derby

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Why Enterprise Funds May Return More Capital Than Consumer Funds

This is the first part in a series of writings on enterprise and consumer investments in venture capital (VC). Stay tuned for upcoming posts as we explore investment and exit trends related to this to...

IPO Window May Be Opening

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New York Venture State Of Mind

At Sapphire Ventures, although our portfolio has traditionally skewed towards the Bay Area, we constantly track a number of other vibrant tech ecosystems, including New York. Yesterday in a blog post,...

Life Science – Gene Therapies Provide New Hope for Families

I wanted to follow up my last post about breakthrough therapies with something a little less clinical and a little more personal. Last month I had the honor of attending a luncheon hosted by the Calli...

Life Science – Regulation Gives Way To Innovation

Over the decade of the 2000s it became increasingly clear that structural issues made investing in biotech companies a high-risk, low return game. The clinical trial process lasted a decade, and cost...

Cheap Startup Costs For Tech Firms And Low Valuations Made Micro-VC Irresistible

We spoke to the best and brightest in private equity on the West Coast and beyond - Here's Judith Elsea of Weathergage Capital SuperInvestor US 2016 took place at the Four Seasons in San Francisco, 1-...

Lightning In A Bottle: The Evolution Of Micro-VC

Micro-VC—now a teeming subset of the venture capital industry—didn’t even have a name when we at Weathergage made our first commitment to that genre in 2006. At the time, we could see that adva...

Reading The Venture Tea Leaves For 2016

Investing in the future is what limited partners (LPs) do for a living. It’s inexact, yet over the years Sapphire Ventures has developed a process to identify trends — in technology, and the v...

Emerging Managers Can Bring Top-Tier Returns

You asked and we answered. More emerging managers than ever seem to be raising venture funds. And so a number of readers emailed their questions of how to stand out in a crowded fundraising market. ...

Venture Capital Disrupts Itself

The Old Wives Tale … Conventional investor wisdom holds that a concentrated number of certain venture firms invest in a concentrated number of companies that then account for a majority of venture c...

Venture Capital In Israel – The Top Tier Perspective

At Top Tier Capital Partners (TTCP), we seek to invest in the best venture capital managers throughout the world. While assessing our portfolio weighting, whether by sector or geography, the team at T...

How VCs Are Cracking The Code On Millennials

Rightly or wrongly, Millennials have become a popular target for a wide array of generalizations. They’ve been called products of a terrible economy and the “go-nowhere generation”; they’re se...

A Closer Look At European Investing

We’re bullish on Europe, and that strikes some folks in the U.S. as a bit strange. It’s not that Europe is all we know — we’re an investor in early venture stage funds (an “LP”) in the...