Notes from an interview: What do Big Society Capital look for in emerging managers?

Last week we held our 4th FutureWorldVC event - this time virtual. Diverse VC’s from around the world joined me as together we grilled Dougie Sloan, Investment Director at Big Society Capital, a lea...

20VC: How Fundraising for Funds Has Changed in the World of Covid, the Benefits of Managers Selling Part of Their Gp & How to Think Through Your “minimum Viable Fund Size” With Lo Toney, Founding Managing Partner @ Plexo Capital

Lo Toney is the Founding Managing Partner @ Plexo Capital, a very unique firm making both direct investments and fund investments. They have invested in Precursor, Boldstart, Female Founders Fund an...

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....

Insights for Emerging Fund Managers

Raising your first venture capital fund is challenging. It can take an average of 17 months to close and over 100 meetings. Recognizing this, Level Ventures, in partnership with Signature Bank, Runway...

What are Limited Partners thinking about the venture capital sector?

To understand the effects of the COVID-19 outbreak on the venture capital sector, we recently conducted a survey of limited partners to gauge their sentiment on venture fund investing, plans for 2020 ...

Origins Podcast: Hunter Somerville, Greenspring Associates

Hunter Somerville is a General Partner at Greenspring Associates and is responsible for the sourcing and due diligence efforts on fund, direct and secondary opportunities. He's also actively involved ...

Reflections on Being a Female Founder

Not a lot is written about being a female founder and CEO. I used to believe that my journey as a startup founder was the same as any other founder's experience, regardless of gender, in that it is lo...

Want To Solve Venture Capital’s Diversity Problem? Start With Pension Funds

For all the well-intentioned talk on social media and beyond about the need for diversity and inclusion after the killing of George Floyd, there is one thing that speaks louder than anything else in ...

Cendana Capital’s Michael Kim on investing in Seed funds, would Facebook buy Robinhood & more

Cendana Capital's Michael Kim on investing in Seed funds as a serial LP....

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...

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...

Results from the VC & Founder COVID-19 Sentiment Survey, Part II

The VC & Founder COVID-19 Sentiment Survey is an ongoing initiative to track how early-stage VCs and Founders are reacting to the COVID-19 crisis and economic downturn. The goal is to provide a se...

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...

Since You Asked: Here are the Ways to Get Involved with HBCUvc and to Advance Racial Equity in VC and Technology

On June 1, 2020, the venture capital industry had an awakening. Before this, Black entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and ecosystem builders led conversations, hosted conferences, and wrote thought p...

So You Want to Fund Black Founders

I was one of the first Black investors to be promoted to Partner at a venture capital firm. At the time (2015), I was also one of the youngest, having just turned 31 years old....

Coller Capital Global Private Equity Barometer Summer 2020

There has been a big leap in investor satisfaction with the transparency of GPs’ disclosures and communications, according to Coller Capital’s latest Global Private Equity Barometer. In the years...

Potential down market could temper VCs’ promise of more diversity

Venture hiring by definition is exclusive. Legally, investors have to be able to fork out their own capital, ranging from hundreds of thousands to multi-millions, to join as a partner of a fund, mean...

SURVEY: The Capital Behind Venture: 2020 Edition

The aim of this not-for-profit initiative is to collect useful sentiment, opinion and information from Limited Partners (Fund of Funds, Family Offices, Endowments, Pension Funds, Government Funds a...

Black Funding Matters: Time for LPs to Really Diversify — Through Diversity

As venture capital’s ultimate source of capital, LPs are driving the industry’s lack of diversity — and they’re missing out on returns because of it....

If you’re not investing in diverse founders, you’re a bad investor

We won’t sit here as we have for so many years with strong faces and encouraging words and pretend that we’re not tired....

Origins Podcast: Atul Rustgi, Accolade Partners

Atul Rustgi is a Partner at Accolade, working across both early-stage venture and late-stage growth equity strategies. Prior to joining Accolade in 2007, Atul worked at McKinsey & Co. and the Robi...

Capitalizing on the Post-COVID Economy: Why Distributed VC Teams May Outperform

Anticipating the long-term effects of COVID-19 on venture capital performance: geographically distributed teams might be better positioned to capitalize on trends accelerated by the pandemic....

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...