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....

20VC: SAHIL LAVINGIA ON ROLLING FUNDS AND THEIR IMPACT ON THE FUTURE OF VENTURE

Sahil Lavingia is the Founder and CEO @ Gumroad, the company that helps creators do more of what they love. However, most recently Sahil has made waves launching one of the first rolling funds on An...

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...

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 Valence Aims to Provide Better Access and Funding for Black Founders & Executives

I’m so fricking pumped today. Really, truly. Yeah, Valence announced > $5 million in funding led by GGV and Upfront. That IS a big deal, but I’ll get to that....

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...

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...

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...

When Entry Multiples Don’t Matter

OH in South Park, San Francisco (or on Zoom from Big Sky, Montana): “OMG, crazy – that firm just paid 100x revenue to invest in [insert hot startup here] – what could they be thinking?”...

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...

Understanding Portfolio Construction

One thing that emerging managers are often tasked with is building a fund model. LPs often ask for a fund model because it forces a manager to think through portfolio construction including fund size,...

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....

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...

Discussing Portfolio Construction with LPs: The Surface, the Math, the Execution

Portfolio Construction is one of the most complex and underestimated aspects in Venture Capital. It is complex for three reasons:...

The Unspoken Rules of Limited Partner Investing

A limited partner (LP) invests money into a fund with the hope of great financial returns, but with no day-to-day involvement or control over that fund....

Liquidity Tools for Emerging VC Managers

We deconstruct the opportunities to provide liquidity to micro VCs and emerging managers. Our analysis explores two questions......

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...