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...

Seed to Harvest Podcast with Jaclyn Hester

In the latest episode of Paige Doherty's 'Seed to Harvest' Podcast, Foundry Partner Jaclyn Hester shares best practices for emerging managers around capital calls, networking, annual meetings, managin...

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 ...

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...

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...

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....

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...

Materials & Strategies for the Best Founders (& Emerging Managers)

2048 Managing Partner Alex Iskold shares a fundraising Twitter thread with tactical strategies for early-stage founders, with many parallels for emerging VCs raising from LPs, including deck tips, ens...

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 ...

Seed to Harvest Podcast Featuring Beezer Clarkson

Paige Finn Doherty, Founding Partner at Behind Genius Ventures, invited Sapphire's Beezer Clarkson on the latest episode of her Seed to Harvest Podcast to share the LP perspective and advice around fu...

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...

Running a VC Fund & Investing in Startups Are Not Always Synonymous

After receiving many cold emails from aspiring VC fund managers asking for investment advice, Elizabeth Yin, co-founder of Hustle Fund, realized people often conflate running a VC fund and investing i...

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...

10 Resources for Understanding the VC Side of the Table

Before Contrary Capital's Jason Chen became a full-time investor, he founded two companies - a common path for many, but requires a new understanding. Jason shares his top resources for getting up to ...

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....

How Much Should I Raise for my First VC Fund?

Henri Pierre-Jacques, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Harlem Capital, opens the curtain on Harlem's Fund I and shares four questions to consider when determining how much to raise....

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...

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...

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....

20VC: How to Build Anti-Fragile Venture Portfolios Today

Mike Chalfen guest-starred on 20VC and provided insights on investment mentality, portfolio construction, market sizing, board membership and how he thinks about "managing your career vs the money you...

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....

Raising a Fund I

Yohei Nakajima shares a great Twitter thread for emerging managers with fundraising data and insights from the recent raise of Untapped Capital's Fund I....

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. ...

Investor’s Framework: An Update

QED Investors co-founder Frank Rotman provides an updated version of his "Investor's Framework" for how to think about corrections and navigate the choppy waters via Twitter @fintechjunkie....

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...

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 #OpenLP Podcast Miniseries: Jaclyn Hester of Foundry Group

On the latest episode of the #OpenLP podcast miniseries, Sapphire Partners’ Laura Thompson chats with Jaclyn Hester, Partner at Foundry Group, about how LPs pick funds, what good performance looks l...

Tips for Fundraising in the New Market: A Thread

This market continues to raise Qs about VC fundraising. Samir Kaji offers many great tips to fund managers to understand and adapt to the market. ...

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 ...

On Deal Attribution

Deal attribution. Important for incentives? Or bad for team alignment and culture? Mac Conwell at RareBreed Ventures shares his thoughts....

The Benefits of Joining an Emerging VC Fund

Thinking about joining an emerging VC fund? Nicole DeTommaso of Harlem Capital helpfully breaks down the *why* in this great thread....

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....

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...

“Why Seed Funds are Going to Start Investing in More Companies”

Is seed fund math changing before our very eyes? Is 40 companies per fund the new 20? Portfolio construction food for thought from Henri Pierre-Jacques....

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...

“Who Are Your LPs?”

Disclosing who your LPs are is a *very* delicate dance. But as the venture industry, by and large, moves towards greater transparency, the question is increasingly coming to the fore. Here's what LP i...

An LP’s Perspective on the Venture “Slowdown”

Are venture funds starting to pump the brakes on fundraising activity? LP Beezer Clarkson shares her thoughts on what she's seeing in the market nowadays....

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? ...

The “Biggest Shareable Secrets to Raising a New Fund”

With wisdom from some of the most prominent new fund managers in venture, this thread is jam packed with gems for first time GPs navigating the fundraising process....

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?...

Reserves Strategy Tradeoffs

Every fund manager wants to know what the optimal reserve strategy is for their fund. The answer: There's no magic formula... but there sure are a lot of tradeoffs either way! Check out this thread on...

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....

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 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...

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 and Why VCs Recycle Management Fees

Hustle Fund's Elizabeth Yin takes on how and why VCs recycle management fees in this super helpful Tweet thread....

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,...

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 Guy Perelmuter of Grids Capital on Venture Unlocked

LP investor Guy Perelmuter chats with Samir Kaji on investment risk mitigation strategies, how new venture investors can capture upside in today’s market, the case for bear AND bull markets, and mu...

Fundraising Pacing and the Value of Time Diversity

Have venture funds really been deploying and raising faster than before or does it just seem that way? Let's look to the data! Beezer Clarkson shares thoughts on fundraising pacing and the value of ti...

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...

What LPs Are Looking For When They Invest in a VC Fund

100s of LP meetings, input from many other VCs, and listening to myriad podcasts... It all resulted in these important fundraising lessons from Jarrid Tingle of Harlem Capital. ...

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...

How Does Seed Stage Fund Math Work?

Ownership targets, fund sizes, check sizes... so many variables to consider when modeling a fund's potential. Here Henri Pierre-Jacques helpfully walks us through the seed fund math....

Emerging Manager Fundraising – What the Data Shows

Ready to double click into how emerging managers and first time funds managed last year re: fundraising? Here's what the data shows for 2021 (and what trends might be underlying the numbers), courtesy...

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...

2021 Fundraising Trends – The LP Perspective

Where did LPs invest their money in 2021? And what does it mean for venture in 2022? Time to dig into the data! The LP perspective courtesy of Beezer Clarkson....

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....

VC Exit Model

This VC exit model from Nicole DeTommaso is extremely helpful. It allows investors to see their exit potential at different check sizes. Give it a whirl!...

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....

How Much Do Early Fund Performance Metrics Really Tell You?

How are fast markups changing the game for recent fund vintages? And how reliable of an indicator can recent fund vintage performance *really* be? Excellent Tweet thread from Rob Go digs in on this to...

The LP’s Perspective from Ahoy Capital

This episode is a gem. From crypto, to what makes a great fund manager, to today's "anti-fragile companies"... Venture veteran Chris Douvos shares his LP perspective on the current market moment with ...

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."...

The LP Perspective Entering 2022

What questions are venture LPs asking as we enter 2022? Beezer Clarkson provides an insightful Tweet thread on investment pacing, "LP indigestion," the IPO market and more......

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....

“Should I Start A Fund?”

Ready to go it alone as a venture investor? There is much to consider! Ryan Hoover walks through the distinct pros and cons of various fund structures in this very helpful Tweet thread....

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....

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....

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!...

A Lesson on Quarterly LP Letters

Want to see what a fantastic quarterly LP letter looks like? Josh Wolfe of Lux Capital provides....

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....

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...

LP Thoughts on Emerging Manager Performance Benchmarks

Want to know how your fund stacks up against the rest of the pack? Particularly in the context of newer vintages? Here's a great thread from Beezer Clarkson on just that topic... plus key insights on ...

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....

Star Endowment Manager’s Next Act at Rockefeller University

Paula Volent, recently named CIO of Rockefeller's $2.5B endowment, takes the hot seat on the Capital Allocators podcast. Learn how she grew Bowdoin’s endowment from $450M to $2B and generated return...

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...

LP Roundtable on the #VentureUnlocked Podcast

The very first LP Roundtable on the #VentureUnlocked podcast is a *must listen* episode. Featuring Chris Douvos (Ahoy Capital), Beezer Clarkson (Sapphire Partners), and Guy Perelmuter (GRIDS Capital) ...

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 ...

Follow-on Strategy

Is first check picking a different skill than follow-on picking? Here's an excellent meditation on follow-on strategy from Gale Wilkinson....

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...

The #OpenLP Podcast Miniseries: Kim Lew, CEO of Columbia University’s Endowment

Episode two of our #OpenLP podcast miniseries just dropped… And it’s an exciting one! Sapphire Partners' Nate Leung chats with Kim Lew, CEO of Columbia University’s endowment. Topics touched on ...

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...

Bad Pattern Recognition

"The key is to know when to trust previous patterns and when to ignore them which is anything but a simple task. Sometimes art needs to override science and intuition needs to override history." Incre...

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....

Footwork Ventures on Capital Allocators

In this episode of the Capital Allocators podcast, Beezer Clarkson chats with Footwork's Nikhil Basu Trivedi and Mike Smith about the nitty gritty of how they closed their (very oversubscribed!) first...

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?...

How To Re-Pitch an LP that Passed Previously

Sometimes GPs need a couple at-bats with LPs before funding is in the offing. Here's a fantastic thread from Beezer Clarkson on what GPs should keep in mind when re-pitching LPs that have previously p...

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...

Scott Malpass – Building a Great Endowment

We know VC is playing a bigger role in endowment investing. But did you know Notre Dame's venture portfolio (through funds) once helped fund ~35% of NASDAQ-listed companies...

How to Get Started as an LP

Interested in being an LP? Maybe you dabbled in angel investing, and it’s not for you. But you still want exposure. Investing in a VC fund is a great idea! Where do you start? Yohei Nakajima provide...

Let’s Talk LP Diversity

LP diversity has been a popular topic of conversation lately, but substantive analysis has been hamstrung by the lack of data. Sapphire's Beezer Clarkson finally sheds some light on the true outlines ...

Turning the Tables on Notation: Introducing the #OpenLP Origins Podcast Miniseries

Sapphire Partners is bringing #OpenLP to Notation's Origins podcast! Here's episode one of the #OpenLP podcast miniseries, this time featuring Sapphire turning the tables on Notation to chat NYC tech,...

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...

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....

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....

The VentureFizz Podcast: Sara Zulkosky of Recast Capital

How do we create a wider path for emerging managers to break into VC? Sara Zulkosky of Recast Capital chats with Keith Cline on the VentureFizz podcast on this question and much, much more....

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...

Investment Committees 101

How do investment committees function in the LP ecosystem? Investment offices may *make* the investments, but they are beholden to ICs on risk levels, asset allocation, etc... Excellent peek behind th...

‘How I Raised It’ Podcast With Michael Kim of Cendana Capital

Fund-of-funds LP Michael Kim of Cendana Capital speaks on what he's looking for when meeting a new VC, the evolution of seed investing, tips for raising an inaugural fund, the process for raising capi...

Charmel Maynard from the University of Miami on ‘The First Close’ Podcast

University of Miami CIO and Treasurer, Charmel Maynard, shares his LP perspective in what host Jessica Straus calls, "a new record for insights per minute on the podcast, a must-listen for emerging VC...

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 ...

A Peek at the US Pre-Seed Venture Market

There is lots of hype around skyrocketing valuations lately. But what does the data say? Here's a snapshot of analysis from Will Bricker of Hustle Fund across 3000 pre-seed deals....

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 Emerging Managers Should Consider Incentive Mechanisms

This fantastic Twitter thread from Marco Cesare Solinas of Blue Future Partners advises managers on incentive design: "If there is somewhere you should avoid being creative, it's here."...

A Conversation on LP Demographics

This Twitter thread from Kia Kokalitcheva of Axios kicked off a highly relevant (and candid!) conversation on LP demographics. Journalists, GPs, and LPs all jumped in to have their say....

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...

What LPs Wish GPs Knew

Curious about where LPs' heads are at on the current state of the venture market? Beezer Clarkson of Sapphire Partners shares the LP perspective on the Innovation podcast with Mark Peter Davis....

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....

On LPs Selecting Venture Capital Fund Managers

There is little transparency on how LPs make decisions to invest in funds. Alexi Malikotsinas spent months talking to different types of limited partners and summarizes his key takeaways here....

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....

Top 10 Learnings from an Emerging Manager Program

In this very popular Tweet thread, Paige Finn Doherty shares her key learnings from Sutton Capital's Emerging Manager program....

So What Does LP Due Diligence Actually Look Like?

In this Twitter thread, Winter Mead of Oper8r shares the collective wisdom of LPs from Sapphire Partners and Accolade Partners regarding the due diligence process for emerging managers....

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...

LP Wisdom from the Bridge Conference

What do LPs look for in emerging managers? Beezer Clarkson of Sapphire Partners shared a roundup of LP panelist insights from the recent Bridge Conference....

Top Investor Relations Tips from the VC Platform Community

Focused on fundraising or investor relations? This Twitter thread is for you. Huge thanks to Lindsay Knight of Chicago Ventures for assembling this list of top IR takeaways from the VCPlatform communi...

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 might an LP turn a GP down?

Here are the top reasons according to one LP. In a fantastic Tweet thread, Sam Ettelaie of the British Business Bank parses through what makes an LP push the pause button on a potential investment wit...

Diverse and emerging fund managers in the private market asset class

Aakar Vachhani of Fairview Capital shares the LP perspective on the She-VC podcast....

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....

Diversity across the growth stage investing landscape

Hunter Somerville of Greenspring Associates 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...

Many Flavors of LPs

"LP" can mean many things in practice, so it's critical to differentiate between varying LP profiles. This Tweet thread by Monique Villa breaks down thinking through varying incentive structures &...

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...

Venture Unlocked: The Family Office as an LP

Limited partners come in a few different varieties, one of the largest, but also most opaque groups is that of the Family Offices. On this episode of the Venture Unlocked podcast, Jamie Rhode, CFA, Vi...

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....

The LP Perspective: Building an Institutional LP Base

This Carta-hosted panel discussion with Greenspring Associates, Illinois State Treasurer, and Barings shares perspectives from LPs on how they source, evaluate, and work with emerging fund managers an...

The Nuances of LP Investing

This incredible tweet thread from Hustle Fund's Elizabeth Yin dives deep into LP investing, touching on everything from capital calls, to fund recycling, to crowdfunding, to innovation in legal struct...

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...

Dimple Sahni on the future of public and private board diversity, a global landscape perspective

On this episode of the She-VC podcast: The LP perspective on the current state of global investing and board diversity from Dimple Sahni, Managing Director of Impact Funds Portfolios at Anthos Fund an...

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....

Ted Seides on The LP Perspectiv‪e‬

In this episode of The Pomp Podcast, Ted Seides discusses the Yale Investment Office, Dave Swenson, asset allocation, rebalancing, asymmetry, ESG, Diversity and Inclusion, comfort being different, and...

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...

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...

Building the “YC for Fund Managers” and Tips for Launching a Firm

As the Emerging Manager world continues to grow, so does the importance of providing these managers with key education, resources, and community. Enter Oper8r, founded by Welly Sculley and Winter ...

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?...

The First Close Podcast: Nate Leung, Sapphire Partners

In this episode of The First Close podcast, we interview Nate Leung, Principal with Sapphire Partners, to shed light on the limited partners’ perspective on new venture funds....

Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained

A new podcast by Greenspring Associates about Limited Partners who think differently about allocating to venture....

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...

Deena Shakir from Lux Capital speaks about firm culture, solving the diversity issue, and how portfolio management is a team sport

Deena Shakir is a General Partner at Lux Capital, a firm founded in 2000 and has since raised $2.5 billion. Lux invests in emerging science and deep technology startups such as Auris Health, Cerulea...

20VC: WHY THE THEORY OF PRO-RATA CAN OFTEN BE FALSE, HOW ROLLING FUNDS IMPACT BOTH PRICING AND COMPETITION

Avlok Kohli is the CEO of AngelList Venture which has facilitated the funding of over 5,000 startups including 47 unicorns and is home to 4,300 funds and syndicates with $2.2B in assets under manag...

#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...

DIVERSITY EQUITY & INCLUSION: DARYN DODSON – TRAINING AND ACTION AT ILLUMEN CAPITAL

Daryn Dodson is the founder of Illumen Capital, a venture fund of funds that seeks to invest in the best impact fund managers and takes them through a process to reduce implicit bias in their business...

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...

REID HOFFMAN ON HOW TO THINK THROUGH OWNERSHIP AND PRICE IN VENTURE & HOW TO ENSURE VENTURE PARTNERSHIPS ALWAYS HAVE TRUST AND A LEARNING MINDSET

Reid Hoffman is a Silicon Valley stalwart in the modern technology world. On the investing side, he is a Partner @ Greylock, one of the leading venture firms of the last 2 decades with a portfolio i...

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)...

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...

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...

Jon Sakoda: Build Your Fund With Founders By Your Side

Hear how Jon, who describes himself as a “recovering entrepreneur,” started his first company, Imlogic, Inc. which was eventually acquired by Symantec, and then joined New Enterprise Associates (N...

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...

Why Alignment With Partners, LPs, and Companies is Powerful

Jodi Sherman Jahic is a managing partner of Aligned Partners, a Silicon Valley-based venture fund investing in early-stage, enterprise technology companies that are have a lean toward capital efficie...

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...

Roger Ehrenberg, IA Ventures: The craft of building a top-decile firm

Roger Ehrenberg is the founder and Managing Partner of IA Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm based in New York City. In this episode, Roger gives a master class on all aspects of starting a...

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...

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...

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 ...

Lisa Edgar, Top Tier Capital Partners

Lisa Edgar is a Managing Director and member of the Investment Committee at Top Tier Capital Partners. She focuses on manager selection, due diligence and investment monitoring of Top Tier’s primary...

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...

Origins: Lisa Edgar, Top Tier Capital Partners

Lisa Edgar is a Managing Director and member of the Investment Committee at Top Tier Capital Partners. She focuses on manager selection, due diligence and investment monitoring of Top Tier’s primary...

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...

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...

Common Traits Shared by Top GPs, Why Underrepresented Fund Managers Will Produce Superior Returns (Lo Toney)

Lo Toney of Plexo Capital joins Nick to discuss Common Traits Shared by Top GPs, Why Underrepresented Fund Managers Will Produce Superior Returns, and SPACs vs. Direct Listings vs. IPOs. In this episo...

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 ...

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...

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, ...

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...

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....

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...

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...

Widening the Aperture in Venture Capital: A Conversation about Expanding Diversity & Inclusion in Silicon Valley and Beyond

The data tell the story: Less than 1% of venture capital in the United States is invested in companies led by Black entrepreneurs. Add "female" as a data filter and it drops to 0.2%. Amid reckoning wi...

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....

Diaspora Ventures explains how AngelList’s rolling venture funds work

A few days ago, Ilan Abehassera and Carlos Diaz announced Diaspora Ventures, their new VC fund. The duo plan to invest in French founders who have a global mindset: They might be based in France ...

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...

The persistent effect of initial success: Evidence from venture capital

We use investment-level data to study performance persistence in venture capital (VC). Consistent with prior studies, we find that each additional initial public offering (IPO) among a VC firm’s fir...

Know Your Edge As A VC, Part Two: Analytical And Behavioral Edge

As a venture capital fund manager, you need to convince potential LPs about the attractiveness of a potential investment in your fund. Part of the LP’s due diligence is their evaluation of your edge...

Venture Capital Realizes that its Race Problem Extends Beyond Each Firm

As firms pledge their support to the Black community and launch diversity initiatives, there is also acknowledgement that the industry is not a meritocracy....

Q2 2020 Pitchbook and NVCA Venture Monitor report

The second quarter of 2020 was truly unprecedented for the venture capital (VC) industry, as the COVID-19 pandemic, nationwide lockdowns, stay-at-home orders, and a major economic downturn shook the e...

Voices of Women in Venture

'Voices of Women in Venture' is a curated playlist of podcast episodes featuring the voices of female leaders in venture capital....

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...

20VC: Oren Zeev On Why Diversification Is Overrated, The Downside Of Thematic Investing, Making Quality Decisions In Uncertain Conditions & Why He Has No Reserves Allocation

Oren Zeev is the Founding Partner @ Zeev Ventures, one of the best and most under the radar firms in the early stage Silicon Valley landscape. Over the past decade, Oren has backed the likes of Trip...

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...

Diversity in Venture Capital: Taking Action to Actually Change the Ratio

Kim Smith, executive director of the League of Innovative Schools, has worked for many years to address education equity and has a unique perspective on the barriers to entrepreneurship. In this inte...

GP and LP Alignment, Challenges for Emerging Fund Managers, and How the Explosion in Seed Fund Volume Plays Out

Jaclyn Hester of Foundry Group joins Nick on a special Crisis Coverage installment to discuss GP and LP Alignment, Challenges for Emerging Fund Managers, and How the Explosion in Seed Fund Volume Play...

Know Your Edge As A VC, Part One: Informational Edge

The relationship between venture capitalists and founders is well discussed and understood. But another side is also critical in venture capital: the VC’s relationship with limited partners, or LPs�...

The questions LPs can ask for due diligence on diversity and inclusion in VC

It is widely recognised that improving diversity and inclusion in the venture capital and private equity industries is the right thing to do. Not only that, but there is strong evidence that increasin...

GPs and LPs face down new fund structure challenges

Capital on both sides of the table could be in trouble as funds have swelled in size and come back to market faster than ever before.  Here's how GPs and LPs are traversing fund schedules and capital...

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...

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...

WhatsApp, Backstage, Revolut & Olivia

On this week's episode, Pete and Eoin dive into payments on WhatsApp, the paradox between investing in underrepresented founders and the current demographics of venture capital, and getting digitally ...

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....

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...