VC Firms — How to Build an LP Base for the Long-term

If you're a venture capital fund, LPs are the lifeblood of your business, nut like any customer base, LPs can churn — usually at the time when you need them the most. Barry Eggers breaks down buildi...

VC Human Capital Survey

What does the VC industry workforce look like in terms of demographics? What is the current state of VC DEI? The VC Human Capital Survey, powered by Deloitte, Venture Forward, and the NVCA, answers th...

When Can We Expect Venture Performance to Bounce Back?

AngelList data on lagged market correlations suggest VC recovery may be delayed until 2024....

Opportunity Funds Fall From Favor as VCs Go Back to Basics

PitchBook News' Marina Temkin spoke with Sapphire Partners' Laura Thompson and AHOY Capital's Chris Douvos for their #LP take on opportunity funds in an inopportune time....

Cambridge VC Benchmarks Will Be Worthless for the Next 24 Months

Great thought piece by Adam Marchick on benchmarks and why for the next 12+ months, LPs might need to shelve them and instead rely on bottom's up performance....

Emerging Venture Fund Managers Had Few Banking Options to Begin With. After Silicon Valley Bank’s Collapse, Where Do They Turn Now?

Anecdotally, SVB & other regional banks met many needs of a VC fund, and in particular for emerging managers with a smaller fund size. With commentary from Beezer Clarkson, Jenny Fielding, Elizabe...

A Guide to Raising Your Fund in Public

Weekend Fund raised its latest fund from over 350 LPs, crediting some of the world’s most talented marketers, engineers, designers, salespeople and founders financially invested in its success. This...

The Current State of the Venture Market

Investment Director at VenCap International plc David Clark shares his thoughts on LinkedIn about the current state of the venture capital market. While the next 24 months will be exceptionally challe...

Financial Infrastructure For Small Venture Funds

Most smaller venture funds are not highly technical finance gurus. Semil Shah shares lessons learned from Haystack’s (unintended) good financial hygiene from the early days, including the importance...

This Downturn Will Show Us Which LPs Actually Believe in Diversity

Sara Zulkosky, Co-Founder & Partner of Recast Capital, shared in Crunchbase News how the downturn will show us where LPs truly stand on diversity: Investing in the perceived "safer bet" vs believi...

The State of Black Venture Report

There’s a gaping hole in the current venture ecosystem’s investment strategy: a persistent lack of diversity. This report is a first step in holding the industry accountable for progress....

VC Resource: Fund Models

A great fund model is a game changer - it can help a fund go from good to great, driving millions of dollars of additional returns for funds of all sizes and strategies. All you needed to know about f...

The Current State of Emerging Manager Fundraising in 2023

Read insights on fundraising and market perspectives from First Republic's recent survey of VC partners. The article sheds light on how GPs are thinking about fundraising tactics and strategies over t...

Ten Charts That Explain the 2022 Pullback

Ten charts that give a snapshot of what exactly happened in 2022: Funding rounds with $100 million-plus check sizes are evaporating, deal volume is shrinking, and startup shares on the secondary marke...

“Ask an LP” with Beezer from Sapphire Partners

An Emerging Manager 101: How to maximize chances of a first institutional LP commitment; best practices for relationship management; fund differentiation; reserves strategy, and more....

The Next Big Thing in 2023 Will Be…

This extensive roundup of 2023 insights from 50 of technology's top thought leaders shares what we can expect to come next year, including company & VC resets, continued recalibration by LPs, a re...

12 Predictions For Venture Capital In 2023

What are the biggest opportunities in terms of investment stages and types of businesses for 2023? How will VC evolve in the year ahead? January Ventures' Maren Bannon spoke with leading investors to ...

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...

How Accurate are “Zombie” Valuations?

For LPs considering selling ten-year-old+ funds on the secondary market, the question is: Are GPs clinging to overstated zombie valuations and thus postponing eventual write-downs, or should LPs expec...

The State of Gender Compensation in Venture 2022

This year's report takes a deeper look at how investors' compensation has changed year-over year by AUM and how women’s representation at each position has changed. It also examines how the introduc...

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...

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...

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...

Black VCs Can Make a Bigger Impact With Institutional & Individual Investors’ Help

The share of venture capital dollars managed by Black men and women is less than 1% for each, and Black founders have raised only 1.2% of venture dollars, according to Crunchbase. Geri Stengel profile...

Top VCs Have Expanded into Broader Asset Managers; Is the Model Sustainable?

TechCrunch Editor Connie Loizos sat down with Niko Bonatsos, General Catalyst, and Caryn Marooney, Coatue, at Disrupt to answer the question: Does it make sense that top venture firms now tackle nearl...

‘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...

The Importance of Staying Lean in the Early Days

With so much cash flowing during the last 24 months, Ed Sim says it was easy to hire too fast, but onboarding new folks, getting them up to speed on the codebase, and managing internal communications ...

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...

How to Write LP Updates

In this edition of Signature Block, Weekend Fund's Ryan Hoover and Vedika Jain tap five established LPs to share their insights on what makes a good LP update great, what to include, how to get bonus ...

Assure Analytics Report: How VCs Use SPVs

This report analyzes dozens of datapoints around venture capital and SPVs, unpacking adoption, analysis by fund stage and AUM, investor networks, context on the General Partners, management fees and c...

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...

Succeeding in VC is About Knowing What to Buy And When to Sell

There’s a lot of talk about when to buy, but rarely when to sell. With no hard and fast best practices for secondary transactions, Hunter Walk and the team at Homebrew codified their own ruleset....

A Look Back at Our Letters to our LPs and Capital Exuberance

Michael Eisenberg lifts the curtain on a particularly classified aspect of venture capital and shares a rare glimpse of Aleph's LP letters over the last few years. A look back at the flood of capital ...

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...

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...

LP Spotlight: Laura Thompson on How Emerging VC Managers Can Stand Out

PitchBook features Sapphire Partners' Laura Thompson in its latest LP Spotlight. Laura discusses the current fundraising environment, how emerging managers can grab LPs' attention and why there is no ...

Venture Demystified: Reserves and Follow-ons in 2022

Suranga Chandratillake, General Partners at Balderton Capital, shares institutional wisdom around reserves, particularly in this new and challenging investment market. Whether you're an entrepreneur o...

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...

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."...

Why Emerging Managers are Critical to a Well-Rounded Venture Portfolio

EMs have a clear focus on core competency and maximizing returns; alignment with investors  as they're motivated to “emerge," and  the opportunity to generate outsized outcomes from a single posit...

State of the LP Market: Q&A with Beezer Clarkson

Shomik Ghosh sits with Beezer Clarkson for a Q&A on the state of the LP market: What GPs should know, portfolio allocation, investment strategy and tips for managing the GP/LP relationship....

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....

The Other Diversity Dividend

A new study shows that diversity significantly improves financial performance on measures such as profitable investments at the individual portfolio-company level and overall fund returns....

Taking the Pulse of the LP Community

Raise Global polled 200+ LPs for their take on the state of venture capital today, preferences and observations. Two key themes emerged....

Family Offices Continue to Invest in Venture Despite Macro Concerns

While investment activity has slowed, family offices expect to capitalize on lower valuations to grow their venture portfolios in 2022. This report includes insights from FOs, perspectives on the stat...

The Only Bad Bubble is the One You Don’t Learn From

Biz Carson recaps her conversation on Protocol’s Pipeline with Sapphire Partners’ Beezer Clarkson, Redpoint’s Geoff Yang and Menlo Ventures’ Matt Murphy, who shared insights on how this downtu...

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....

Valuing a Venture Capital Portfolio

Fred Wilson shares best practices and rules to live by for valuing a VC portfolio quarterly, and how USV does this conservatively and consistently....

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....

AMA Takeaways: What the LPs Want You To Know About the Market Downturn

Sapphire Partners' Beezer Clarkson and Packard Foundation's Stephen Bluestein share their perspectives on best practices for fund managers in recessionary periods and insights on how LPs are thinking ...

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....

Preparing for a Downturn: Strategies for Managing an Emerging Venture Capital Firm

In Part 2 of its series “Preparing for a Downturn,” Raise Global shares six strategies for emerging VCs managing the business side of a VC firm during a downturn....

Preparing for a Downturn: A Playbook for Emerging Fund Managers

In Part 1 of this series, Raise Global shares a playbook for emerging fund managers on how downturns may impact portfolios and the steps VCs need to take now to weather the storm....

A Rolling Fund May Be Just What Women And BIPOC Venture Capitalists Need To Raise Funding

Sourcing funding for diverse VC emerging managers is a struggle. Lisa Morales-Hellebo and Brian Laung Aoaeh, general partners and cofounders at REFASHIOND Ventures, think outside of the box to address...

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 Partnership

There are many models for building and managing investment firms. Fred Wilson offers fantastic advice on a winning one for early-stage VC....

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...

European Women in VC

European Women in VC: Analyzing the Role and Importance of Women as Check Writers and Start-up Founders...

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....

IRR is a Vanity Metric

IRR is a vanity metric - "Much too easily manipulated and in some cases incentivizing behavior counter to the long-term benefit of LPs (and GPs)." So argues Seth Levine of Foundry Group....

Dirty Secret: Venture Reserves are Not Always a Good Thing

Nearly every early-stage manager has a reserve strategy incorporated into their fund model nowadays. BUT… and here’s the dirty secret… venture reserves are *not* always a good thing, says Laura ...

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....

Reservations About Reserves

"The greater your confidence in stable prices in the fundraising market, the more likely you are to double down with follow on investing. The less confident, the greater your reservations about reserv...

Forecast: VCs Stockpiled Record Funds This Year. Where Will All That ‘Dry Powder’ Go In 2023?

Venture firms have continued to raise record funds in 2022, even as startups received far less money than they did last year. That poses the question: What will happen with all that dry powder in 2023...

Family Offices: Leveraging SPV’s as Alternative Asset Allocations Grow

2021 was a breakout year for Family Office usage of SPVs, and "SPVs are a rapidly emerging component of the family office toolkit," finds a new study from Assure Analytics....

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....

An LP Take on VC Portfolio Construction

Is it better to index venture as broadly as possible in the hopes of unearthing winning outliers? Or to concentrate resources on a smaller number of investments, so as to maximize returns on winners? ...

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...

Strategies for Optimal Follow-On Investments

Post-launch, a fund manager’s focus shifts from portfolio construction to active portfolio management — and a frequent pain point is follow-on reserve sizing on active deals....

How Emerging Managers Can Stand Out In 2022

62% of LPs say the risk/return profile for emerging managers is attractive relative to established firms. Still, it remains an uphill battle for emerging managers to raise funds. Here's how to stand o...

I No Longer Want to Be a Venture Capitalist

"I just don’t have that knowledge and expertise to justify allocation on [a founder's] cap table... I can, however, add value to an investor’s cap table." One woman's journey from a VC to a Fund-o...

On VC Scout Programs

The easiest way to work with and for VC funds is as a scout, getting paid for sourcing investments. But how do you do that? Here's how VCs structure scout programs: how much they pay, carry structure,...

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...

6 Simple Principles To Embrace When Building A New Fund

While there’s no established playbook for building a new fund, there *are* some principles that hold value across the board. Miruna Girtu of Syndicate Room shares the principles to embrace while bui...

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...

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...

The Great Venture-Capital Resignation is Underway

DIY... *venture style.* "A growing number of influential investors plan to rely on their distinct brands and deep networks to raise individual funds as they call it quits at some of the most respecte...

Emerging Managers from the Raise Conference: What Does the Data Say?

At #OpenLP we love ourselves some performance benchmarks! 250+ emerging managers submitted data to the Raise Conference... One 2015 fund is notching a 10.46x TVPI! Check out the stats here....

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....

Predictions For 2022 According To Emerging Managers In VC

What does the emerging manager community predict for venture in 2022? Heather Hartnett of Human Ventures helpfully compiles some thoughts from fellow emerging managers....

How 3 Investors Raised Their Own VC Funds in a Year Where That Was Weirdly Difficult to Do

"With US venture firms hauling in a record $128B last year, it was a splendid time to be a venture capitalist... But there was a big exception: those who were raising a brand-new, first-time fund."...

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....

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....

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...

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....

Rolling Funds on AngelList Are The Best Way For Accredited Individual Investors to Start Investing in Venture Capital Funds

Rolling funds can be a great way to dip your toes into VC waters. And "the future of VC is being written by emerging managers and the innovations that enable small individual investors to invest in th...

VC Lolita Taub shares her best advice for underrepresented investors trying to raise their own funds

"Create a mission statement and a clear goal for your fund, because a solid foundation is necessary for outsized returns." Lolita Taub shares her best advice for underrepresented investors trying to r...

$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."...

How VC Firms Decide: Considerations On Decision-Making Structures

Who decides what deals get done? A VC firm's decision-making process is a critical component of it's overall governance. Here are some different models to consider, courtesy of Blue Future Partners....

How Asset Owners Are Solving the Emerging Manager Problem

Asset owners cite investing in emerging and diverse managers as “one of our biggest priorities.” But... "allocators feel overwhelmed with where to start." More on how asset owners are solving the ...

What is the Best CRM and Marketing Tech Platform for a New Venture Capital Fund?

What's the best CRM and martech platform for a new VC fund? David Teten walks us through his thought process in selecting his preferred tool for fund communications....

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...

An Early-Stage Supply Chain Tech Venture Capitalist’s Take on ESG and Impact Investing Considerations

Although it's hard for early-stage startups to meaningfully measure ESG and impact outcomes, these considerations can still be taken into account when making investment decisions. Brian Laung Aoaeh sh...

How LP Protections Play Out in First-Time Funds’ LPAs

From bad leaver clauses to provisions on launching successor funds, protections are in place for investors backing first-time funds. Here's how LP protections are making their way into LPAs....

Tiger Global: How to Win

Tiger Global is venture capital's winning machine. Mario Gabriele provides a deep dive analysis on the latest disruption in the tech investing market. Never a dull moment in venture!...

An Emerging Manager’s Not-So-Secret Superpower

A thoughtful choice of foundational software and services can enable first-time investors to invest and operate like the full VC team of yesteryear. More on "an emerging manager’s not-so-secret supe...

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...

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 ...

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....

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...

What I Tell All New VCs About Their First Funds

There is a delicate dance in the interplay between check size, ownership and portfolio management. Great insights from Hunter Walk on this topic, and what else new VC need to know....

Why every first-time fund manager needs a fund administrator

Becoming an institutional VC means knowing when to selectively outsource complexity. Here's "why every first-time fund manager needs a fund administrator."...

An LP Team Assessment Framework For Emerging Managers

Wondering how LPs assess emerging managers? Blue Future Partners has pulled together a helpful framework to shed light on just this topic....

Structural Problems Of Incentive Alignment In VC

Incentive alignment is *fundamental* to VC corporate governance, and also crucial for a firm's long-term success. Here's where misalignments can arise between GPs + LPs, and thoughts on how to best av...

VC Performance Metrics For Early Stage Funds Beyond Common Multiples

In the early stages of the life cycle of a fund, the most frequently used performance metrics (MOIC, TVPI, DPI, IRR) may not be very reliable... So what are the key VC performance metrics beyond just ...

VC Incentive Mechanisms For Venture Partners, Scouts And Ambassadors

"Ensuring that Venture Partners, Advisors, Scouts or Ambassadors have the right incentives is absolutely critical." More on properly incentivizing external VC collaborators from the Blue Future Partne...

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...

How do you attract family offices and other large investors to your direct investing platform?

"I’ve been meeting lately with more family offices interested in investing directly into companies, in lieu of via funds." David Teten shares some of the online platforms that empower LPs by enablin...

What About Track Records?

John-Austin Saviano, former CIO of the Berkeley endowment chimes in on the track record question: "If it were as simple finding firms with 'great' track records, we’d all just pay for a good databas...

A Simple Framework: The Regulatory Structure and Principles of US VC Funds

The laws and regulations governing venture are NOT simple. Luckily Chris Harvey has provided as clear an overview of venture fund law as is possible....

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......

Track Records: How LPs Think About Them and Do They Matter?

Craig Thomas asks a provocative question: Are track records in venture meaningless?...

Breaking the Pattern Match: Outperformance Indicators for Venture Capital

Different Funds provides an analysis of 100+ variables around VC funds, paired with performance data, to surface dozens of correlations that can help LPs improve their manager selection process....

A Strategic Allocation to Newer GPs

A clarion call for institutional investors to embrace emerging managers, from John Austin Saviano, the former CIO of the Berkeley endowment: "Fiduciary duty actually compels us to embrace innovation."...

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...

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...

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....

Assessing the World of Opportunity Funds

Opportunity funds are growing by leaps and bounds. But, like all things, it's a game of tradeoffs. Samir Kaji masterfully unpacks the who/why/how of opportunity funds in this great blog....

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 ...

The Opportunity For Family Offices To Outperform Over The Next Decade

"If you’re a fund manager without a strong private wealth pipeline, you’re going to be in trouble. If you’re an institution without a true emerging manager program, you’re also going to be in ...

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...

Multi-Stage Portfolio Construction Tool

Monte Carlo simulations, power law curves, valuation step-ups, and more... This fantastic interactive modeling tool from Kauffman Fellows lets you test out various multi-stage VC portfolio constructio...

How Firms Are Seizing the Opportunity Funds

"In 2019, non-flagship funds (opportunity funds, SPVs) raised $13.2b across 190 vehicles, ~1/4 of total VC assets raised that year in the US. These types of funds have been outpacing the growth of the...

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....

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....

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....

The 2021 VC Tech Stack

"What's the best tech stack for VCs?" It's a question that we all ask ourselves routinely. Here's some crowdsourced insight, courtesy of Miguel Pinho of Seedcamp....

Ten Leading VCs Team Up On A $50 Million Fund To Back Underrepresented Investors

Would-be venture capitalists looking to raise a fund for the first time often face a chicken-and-egg problem: to raise money, they’re expected to demonstrate a track record of promising startup inve...

Venture Diligence at the Seed Stage

Diligence at the seed stage of VC involves a mix of qualitative and quantitative factors. This fantastic model from Kauffman Fellows runs scenario analysis for your fund and illustrates dynamics arou...

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....

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....

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...

Avoiding Venture Capital Fund Administration Headaches

For venture investors, fund administration and reporting is no joke. Luckily, Elizabeth Kraus of Mergelane is willing to share "some of the easily avoidable administrative mistakes I’ve made over my...

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?...

Solving VC’s ESG Puzzle

“How does a venture firm ‘do’ ESG with early-stage startups?” This is a common question from venture firms, limited partners, academics, and the media — and the answer is, well, not so obvio...

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...

Should You Give an Anchor Investor a Stake in Your Fund’s Management Company?

Raising capital for a new fund is always hard. Should you give preferential economics or other benefits to a seed anchor investor, who makes a material commitment to the fund?...

Capital Gains Taxes May Be Coming, But Probably Not For Emerging Managers & LPs

There has been lots of chatter lately regarding the QSBS exemption in Biden's tax plan and what the downstream effects on early-stage investing might be. Here's the explainer you need to understand th...

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...

Learnings From the Family Office Perspective

In this fantastic Twitter thread from Magdalena Kala, she shares the family office perspective on pre-fundraising, GP commit, LP decision-making, and post-close must-do's....

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...

Fund Recycling Moves the Needle for Both LPs and GPs. Here’s How.

For as powerful of a mechanism as fund recycling can be, we believe it is an under discussed strategy in venture investing. It can transform a good fund into a great fund, and a great fund into an ev...

Metrics that matter most for investors & limited partners

Finding your north star metric as an investor can be confusing. Do you care more about consistent cash flows overtime or a large lump-sum payment later in the future? Do you care about total cash retu...

The Essential Guide to Syndicates

This guide defines what a syndicate is, how to work with syndicates, and why you should consider them as part of your fundraising journey as an organizer, an investor, or a founder....

Venture Fund Portfolio Construction Tool

This interactive tool from Kauffman Fellows explores venture portfolio construction and the various trade off implications a GP must consider. It enables you to construct your own portfolio to underst...

The danger of venture capital ‘foie gras’

Capital foie gras describes the situation of being force fed, or stuffed, with too much money until you, and the company, choke. With interest rates at an all time low, SPACs everywhere and tech bei...

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...

How VC and private equity funds can launch portfolio-acceleration platforms

Almost every private equity and venture capital investor now advertises that they have a platform to support their portfolio companies. You can’t pick a platform strategy that’s unique, but you ca...

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 ...

2020 State of Terms: Venture Capital Benchmark

A little over two years ago, we published our State of Terms report, benchmarking a series of terms and trends in the venture capital industry. The report was a watershed moment of transparency for t...

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....

Does Your VC have an Investment Thesis, or a Hypothesis?

VCs love to talk investment theses: on Twitter, Medium, Clubhouse, at conferences. And yet, when you take a closer look, theses are often meaningless and/or misleading....

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

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

How Emerging Investors Can Think About Their Value Proposition To Founders

Venture capital as an offering has long been defined in terms of capital and value-add. This leaves aside important nuances that need to be acknowledged. What exactly are the differences between inves...

Stampede for Silicon Valley start-ups sees VCs invest at fast pace

Venture capitalists are investing at the fastest pace in more than a decade, in a flurry of dealmaking that has intensified competition for stakes in young tech companies while increasing concerns abo...

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 ...

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,...

Annual VC Human Capital Survey

The third edition of Deloitte's VC Human Capital Survey assesses the state of the US VC industry workforce, with a special focus on DEI. Results from this edition were benchmarked against findings fro...

Simplifying the SAFE

Since Y Combinator first introduced the “SAFE” in 2013, early-stage deals have exploded. That’s not to imply a direct, causal link, but SAFEs have become the de facto securities instrument for ...

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...

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...

Flexible VC, a New Model for Companies Targeting Profitability

More and more startups are pursuing Revenue-Based VCs, but “RBI” doesn’t fit everyone. A new category of VCs have emerged offering a hybrid between VC and RBI, which we call “Flexible VC”....

The Black Swan Year: How 2020 Impacted Venture Investing and Performance

2020 was a year that profoundly disrupted nearly every aspect of life, so it’s no surprise that the pandemic’s effects made ripples throughout the venture landscape too. In the spirit of our #Ope...

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?...

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...

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

The venture capital industry has been maturing and standardization across the globe has taken shape. However, when we started thinking about how to formalize our investment principles to encompass our...

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...

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...

Getting the Count Right

Understanding the Limits of Investment Company Act & Optimizing Your Fund Size...

Diversity in VC: Learnings from an LP Audit and how we can make this better together

This winter, Women in VC, the world’s largest community of female venture investors, released a report on “The Untapped Potential of Women-led Funds.” The research was stark, if not surprising....

Defining Today’s Opportunities Funds

Top Tier has observed a growing number of funds titled as “Opportunities” Funds in the ecosystem, which can mean many different things. We are continually having to define these fund names interna...

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...

Quantitative Approaches to Venture: Why we are not there yet (Part 1)

In the era of big data and AI, not surprisingly we started to see more and more venture capital managers adopting new quantitative investment processes and frameworks....

Quantitative Approaches to Venture: Lessons from Chess (Part 2)

In venture capital, we are also seeing an increasing number of managers using scoring methodologies to make their final investment decision. Such scoring models basically consist of creating a weighte...

Table Stakes 2020: A Study Analyzing Equity Distribution By Gender, Race & Ethnicity, & Geography

Owning equity in a successful company can make a material impact on one’s financial well-being and ability to grow wealth.  Read the full report....

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...

The Un-American Rule: Legal Fees: Not a Hill to Die On

Most industries have unwritten rules that are shocking when you first learn of them. Often, these rules are so widespread that they become calcified and beyond negotiation. Today, we focus on an unwri...

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)...

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...

#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...

A Framework for Venture Capital Fund Law

Venture capital fund law is a complex system of rules, regulations, and exemptions. But once you get the principles down, it’s not that difficult to understand the law....

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...

Should LP’s care about GP commits?

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...

Fund Recycling for Early Stage VCs

Recycling has proven to be good for the environment, but it also appears to be beneficial for the performance of PE & VC funds.  At Blue Future Partners we are currently investigating fund recy...

How (And Why) To Make Venture Funding More Equitable

Despite a growing awareness of the inequities in venture funding, along with the massive untapped financial opportunities from investing in underestimated founders, the stark discrepancy between wh...

Lions, Tigers, and Rolling Funds, Oh My: Why We Ultimately Decided not to do a Rolling Fund

There has been a lot of talk recently about AngelList’s (AL) new fund structure of Rolling Funds. I have to admit they seem really cool and we thought really long and hard about raising one ourselve...

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....

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...

The Fight For Ownership

I am stating the obvious in this opening sentence, but I need it for the post: In each round of funding for a startup, the founders sell a portion of their equity in exchange for cash....

Two and Twenty: What’s ‘Market’ for Venture Funds These Days?

One of the most frequently asked questions from our venture managers is “What is market?” Whether market refers to terms like management fees and carry, compensation for employees, number of compa...

A mental model for evaluating VC funds

At the highest level, there are six dimensions of evaluation that I use as part of my framework for investing in venture managers:...

The Untapped Potential of Women-led Funds

Here’s the inconvenient truth: the funding stats for female founders are not improving. Even with an influx of initiatives aimed at building awareness and closing the funding gap, women are still be...

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...

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...

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...

Thoughts on distribution strategy and CEO/firm misalignment

Much has been written about how to start a venture firm, how to raise money from LPs, how to build one’s product and reputation and how to invest. Precious little has been written about how to retur...

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.”...

Rolling Venture Funds through the Good Times and the Bad

On February 5, 2020, just before our world was upended by a global pandemic, AngelList announced its Rolling Venture Funds program. Alex Konrad wrote a great piece about the launch. It earned soci...

Carta’s definitive guide to the LPA

So, you’ve decided to launch a new venture capital fund. You’ve got an investment strategy, a management team, advisers, deal flow, and some first close investors lined up who love your ...

Analysis: The LPs That Invest In Emerging Micro-VCs

Even though it has been less than a month since we asked about who invests in emerging micro-VCs, we feel we have enough data to start making some observations. A note on methodology:...

Pitfalls LPs Need to Avoid When Co-Investing Directly in Startups

At Village Global, an early stage venture firm where I am a partner, we have the privilege of working with several of the largest family offices in the world, along with university endowments and oth...

Do Emerging Fund Managers Outperform More Established VCs?

Today we address our first question:  Do Emerging Fund Managers Outperform More Established VCs?  The bottom line is that YES, emerging fund managers have a slight edge compared to more establishe...

My thoughts on the Rolling Fund product

Recently, AngelList's Rolling Fund product has been a frequent topic of discussion within early-stage investing circles. Over the last few weeks, I've had dozens of conversations with LP's and GP's to...

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...

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 ...

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, ...

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...

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....

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 ...

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...

Know Your Edge As A VC, Part Three: Structural Edge

Limited Partners need to assess a GP’s competitive advantage when considering an investment in their venture fund. If you want to raise a fund you need to know your edge. This three-part series prov...

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...

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....