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...

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?...

LPA Terms for Emerging Fund Managers

Raising a venture capital fund is one of the hardest jobs a VC can do. Just like running for public office or enlisting in special forces, it takes an unusual amount of hard work. But even hard work w...

Framework: Not All LPs Invest In Emerging VCs For The Same Reasons

Here’s a test: Ask a handful of LPs why specifically they invest in emerging VCs. Try to get past “great returns” to understand what’s truly motivating them....

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...

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...

The VC Framework For Optimizing Success: The Kauffman Fellows Four Pillars

The venture capital industry is as asymmetrical an industry as any; the top 1% to 4% of venture investments usually get the outsized (10x+) returns.  However, this begs the question: is investing in...

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...

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...

Interview with an LP: Building (And Evolving) A Generational Fund Returns Platform

We welcome Chris Witherspoon from VenCap International, the Oxford-based, ~$2B fund-of-funds platform founded in 1987 that has made over 300 fund commitments into VC funds in the US, Europe, India,...

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...

How LPs should really think about GP commits in Emerging Managers

Limited Partners (LPs) use various filters and metrics to assess how investable a venture fund is. One of the more heuristic measures is assessing the GP’s alignment with them through the percentage...

Sahil Lavingia and Steve Schlafman on new VC structures

In this special episode of Origins, we discuss new VC fund structures with Sahil Lavingia, the founder of Gumroad and manager of one of the top rolling funds on AngelList, and Steve Schlafman, who com...

#ESGinVC: Promoting a collective effort to share ESG frameworks, practices and visions in Venture Capital

As investors in early stage Venture Capital funds, at BFP we obviously ask ourselves what our role should be as a GP for our investors and as an LP for our portfolio managers. But as a team with dif...