Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 22, 2021

I counsel first-time VCs (as well as founders) to have mid-funnel strategies to get from first LP meeting to close and to put a disproportionate amount of time into this area (I say more about this on the podcast starting at timecode 27:41). OK, so you’ve found your target LPs who invest in funds at your stage.

LP 375

LP Southern California Los Angeles Differentiation 375

View from Seed

JANUARY 27, 2021

We believe that this fund is the perfect size for us to be the best possible partners to early-stage entrepreneurs today. My partners and I feel lucky to have been able to practice the craft of early-stage investing during these years of tremendous growth and opportunity. We will never take it for granted.

LP 411

LP Early Stage Seed Stage Venture Capital 411

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 16, 2010

The VC industry grew dramatically as a result of the Internet bubble - Before the Internet bubble the people who invested in VC funds (called LPs or Limited Partners) put about $50 billion into the industry and by 2001 this had grown precipitously to around $250 billion. Partners leave the industry. Here’s my take: 1.

LP 311

LP Technical Review Early Stage Silicon Valley 311

David Teten

MAY 16, 2017

Historically, the process of winning capital from limited partners has been opaque. LIMITED PARTNERS’ PERSPECTIVE. Chris Douvos is one of the very few LPs who blogs, at SuperLP.com. Origins is a podcast about Limited Partners, created by VC Notation Capital. Sapphire Ventures’ Top 10 tips for pitching an LP .

Private Equity 60

Private Equity Venture Capital Technical Review Equity 60

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 24, 2014

Not just the $20 million round at Invoca, the $70 million I helped us raise at Maker Studios , but I was intimately involved with the earliest funding round at DataSift and every subsequent round which has recently announced $42 million led by Insight Venture Partners and $70 million in total. The monkey on my back.

Los Angeles 387

Los Angeles Intellectual Property LP Venture Capital 387

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 27, 2013

Understanding where your VC partner sits in their respective fund and where their fund is in the cycle of its investment lifecycle will help you understand your VCs behavior. That role as sparring partner can be useful if for nothing else than to test your resolve. What Rob wrote in his post is right. Sometimes we fight.

Advisory Board 365

Advisory Board CTO Hire Fractional CTO Los Angeles 365

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 26, 2016

Fabio Mercurio, Head of Quantitative Analytics, Bloomberg LP. Karl Sprules, Partner & CTO, AllianceBernstein. Katina Stefanova, Founding Partner & CIO, Marto Capital. Among the speakers are: Aaron Brown, Chief Risk Officer, AQR Capital Management. Lukasz Pomorski, Ph.D.,

New York 60

New York Fractional CTO CTO LP 60

View from Seed

AUGUST 17, 2021

It’s by far the longest time I’ve spent working on any one thing, and I feel very blessed to have been able to work with my partners, colleagues, founders, and collaborators. My partners will tell you that I am an incredibly impatient person. You want someone who will challenge you and be an intellectual sparring partner.

IRR 205

IRR Dilution Founder Portfolio 205

Feld Thoughts

MARCH 24, 2017

Lindel joined Foundry Group as a partner to lead the fund investing activity of Foundry Group Next. We’ve had the opportunity to work with Founder Collective’s partners – David Frankel, Eric Paley, and Micah Rosenbloom – over the years on several companies. It starts with the people.

Founder 75

Founder LP Technical Review Seed Stage 75

David Teten

MARCH 14, 2018

My Partners at HOF Capital are younger than I am, which means that we have a half-century horizon for the franchise we are building. – Build out low-cost force multipliers such as scouts , Advisors, Entrepreneurs in Residence, Venture Partners, and so on. So we think about scaling a lot.

Private Equity 60

Private Equity Venture Capital Equity Cofounder 60

View from Seed

SEPTEMBER 23, 2020

At first glance, you’d think that all LPs pretty much want to buy the same thing. Every fund pitching an LP is pitching this as a baseline. And yet, LP’s get to “yes” in a few cases and get to “no” in most cases. In addition to thinking about the LP overall, it’s important to think about the decision-maker.

LP 309

LP Customer Early Stage Portfolio 309

View from Seed

AUGUST 17, 2021

It’s by far the longest time I’ve spent working on any one thing, and I feel very blessed to have been able to work with my partners, colleagues, founders, and collaborators. My partners will tell you that I am an incredibly impatient person. You want someone who will challenge you and be an intellectual sparring partner.

IRR 156

IRR Dilution Founder Portfolio 156

Feld Thoughts

MARCH 14, 2023

Yesterday, Aaron Gershenberg, a long-time friend and LP of ours from SVB Capital, emailed an introduction to Naveed Lalani, Founder & CEO of Pioneer Mind. Foundry is supporting it as a firm, and I’m supporting it personally along with my partner Jaclyn Hester. He’s announcing the first supporters tonight.

Founder 168

Founder Silicon Valley LP Portfolio 168

View from Seed

AUGUST 17, 2021

It’s by far the longest time I’ve spent working on any one thing, and I feel very blessed to have been able to work with my partners, colleagues, founders, and collaborators. My partners will tell you that I am an incredibly impatient person. You want someone who will challenge you and be an intellectual sparring partner.

IRR 136

IRR Dilution Founder Portfolio 136

The Equity Kicker

MARCH 19, 2012

The LP Update Meeting. I’m just back from our semi-annual update to the LPs in one of our funds, and I thought I would share the experience with you all. As a reminder, LPs, or limited partners, are the investors in venture capital funds. It was published last Thursday.

LP 97

LP Europe Portfolio Private Equity 97

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 20, 2019

just having a sparring partner with a vested interest in your success can be useful. The Limited Partners (LPs) who back funds don’t expect their dollars to be passive. If you get a smart person on the board?—?just As per the chart above, I highly recommend keeping a founder dominated board at the seed stage.

Venture Capital 236

Venture Capital Startup Angel Investor Silicon Valley 236

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 5, 2010

If your idea is so amazing that it warrants my hard-earned angel money or the money of my LP investors from our fund then why should I take a risk on you if you won’t take a risk on yourself? He and his partner told me about this new idea over the course of nearly a year. I run the recruiting process for my VC firm, GRP Partners.

Entrepreneur 293

Entrepreneur CTO Hire South America Salary 293

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 12, 2014

Why prorata rights are now sought out by LPs. People all across the value chain have taken notice including Limited Partners who are the people who invest in VC funds in the first place. What would you do as an LP fund if you backed a seed-stage GP who had a position in Twitter, Pinterest, etc.

Technical Review 336

Technical Review Later Stage Early Stage LP 336

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 18, 2017

Recently the firms two founding partners (and also Managing Partners) —  Fred Wilson and Brad Burnham  — decided to transition management of the firm to Andy Weissman (who joined in 2012) and Albert Wenger (joined in 2008 and writes one of the most thoughtful blogs in our industry ). Maybe that’s USV, too.

Leadership 161

Leadership LP Venture Capital Silicon Valley 161

Hunter Walker

APRIL 27, 2014

Last week we held our first annual LP meeting, when venture funds get their investors together with updates on operations and results. I wrote about the two we lost last year to firms that have been around longer and proud to say that since that time, we’ve been able to beat out and/or partner with many great funds.

LP 97

LP Cofounder Term Sheet Valuation 97

View from Seed

OCTOBER 11, 2022

I made over a dozen angel investments and a few investments in VC funds as an LP, expanding my focus to new geographies, sectors, and stages. I became certified as a professional coach through the Hudson Institute of Coaching to be a more mindful and effective partner on a founder’s journey.

North America 156

North America San Francisco Cap Table Cofounder 156

David Teten

JANUARY 19, 2021

(co-written with Jamie Finney, Founding Partner at Greater Colorado Venture Fund. Similar to the explosion of seed funds in the past decade, we (and some limited partners too ) believe these Flexible VCs are on the forefront of what will become a major segment of the venture ecosystem. Of the Inc. 5000 companies, only 6.5% return cap.

Cofounder 78

Cofounder Technical Review Equity Dividend 78

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 22, 2012

Instant growth = huge valuation from follow-on investors = big VC mark-up on our quarterly reports = LP interest. Our partners have invested in more than dozen companies that became worth more than a billion dollars and that has disproportionately drive returns. Grow or die. ” How’d that turn out in the late 90′s?

Silicon Valley 390

Silicon Valley Venture Capital Startup Technical Review 390

This is going to be BIG.

OCTOBER 12, 2020

I took my last LP meeting the first week of March and clearly, I didn’t close anyone that I had met with at that time. They’re too busy awkwardly trying to explain their overdue search for a new “diverse” partner and why it took until 2020 to realize that a fund full of white people was a problem. He seemed paranoid.

LP 136

LP Technical Review Software Review Valuation 136

This is going to be BIG.

FEBRUARY 23, 2016

Either way, VC funds aren't really built around creating much of an experience for their Limited Partners. Rather than see LP interactions as a chore or a burden, new fund managers should see this as an opportunity to extend the community around their fund. For smaller funds, I think this is a real mistake.

Limited Partner 60

Limited Partner Venture Capital Partner LP 60

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 23, 2014

Limited Partners or LPs (the people who invest into VC funds) have taken notice as 2014 is by all accounts the busiest year for LPs since the Great Recession began. But it still takes VC to scale a business (thus large capital into industry winners like Uber, Airbnb, SnapChat, etc). Why is this?

Technical Review 398

Technical Review Venture Capital Valuation Pre-Money Valuation 398

Babbling VC

NOVEMBER 2, 2018

The same goes for the LP's (limited partners) that invest in venture funds. If a fund has run it's course and can't raise further capital due to poor performance, the LP's walk away. It just doesn't interest LP's anymore. If you are the one who complains, it's likely that you too are the one who will be blamed for it.

LP 151

LP Limited Partner Management Naming 151

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 25, 2019

Every year I invited my largest investors to NYC to have an LPAC meeting (Limited Partner Advisory Committee?—?kind We then do a cocktail party so that everybody can have informal conversations (including LP to LP) and then we do a dinner in a private room at a restaurant. kind of like a board for a VC firm).

LP 269

LP Startup Burn Rate Stock Options 269

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 2, 2017

It’s hard enough to get a job at a venture capital or private equity firm; it’s even more complex to join as a Partner. So I would start by sharing with the fund an institutional LP due diligence checklist , and ask them to share their data room with you. The other Partners have lost faith and want to cut their losses.

Private Equity 60

Private Equity Venture Capital Equity Partner 60

Feld Thoughts

JULY 6, 2016

My partner Lindel Eakman wrote a post a few days ago about his transition from Austin to Boulder and a really helpful one about how to work with him titled A Human User Interface….with This prompted me to poke around for other content from the limited partner (LP) side of the LP/VC/entrepreneurship universe.

LP 75

LP Limited Partner Open Source SEO 75

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 29, 2013

I had a chance to discuss AngelList Syndicates with Naval at Michael Kim’s Cendana LP/VC conference on a panel with Naval, Roger Ehrenberg (IA Ventures) and Mike Brown, Jr. Many of the good and great of our industry are talking about AngelList. Must be doing something right! Bowery Capital). and much more.

Syndicate 356

Syndicate Syndication Cofounder Early Stage 356

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 23, 2017

PEVCTech is partnering with Blue Future Partners to run the first large-scale survey of VCs’ technology stack. Johann Kratzer of Blue Future Partners , a fund of funds, observed, “The majority of the hundreds of funds we’ve diligenced rely predominantly on their relationships to source deals. Greylock Partners.

Private Equity 60

Private Equity Venture Capital Equity Technical Review 60

Babbling VC

OCTOBER 3, 2011

For those of you not in the know, they are one of the largest limited partners ( LP's : investors in venture capital funds) in Europe and are basically in almost all the funds throughout the market. If you see the new funds which have recently been launched you can tell the LP's are putting their money with former entrepreneurs.

LP 82

LP Europe Germany Venture Capital 82

Hunter Walker

JANUARY 5, 2014

The Stage 1 partner escalates an opportunity to Stage 2 when we’ve been able to create a hypothesis as to why this might be a good investment. That partner also generates a set of questions for the other partner to push on in their discussions and data requests. Stage 2 : Here both of us are engaged. 4) Fund Operations.

Software Review 102

Software Review Balance Sheet Cofounder Technical Review 102

David Teten

AUGUST 15, 2013

Most VCs (including ff Venture Capital ) collect money from independent limited partners in order to form their fund. Some corporations emulate this model by creating their own wholly-owned VC entities, typically with one LP: the corporate balance sheet. 1) Corporate Venture Capital. 4) Accelerators.

Startup 114

Startup Technical Support Venture Capital Balance Sheet 114

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 6, 2015

Most importantly – this should encourage LP funds to back more local firms and I would hope to see more indigenous funds to develop. There are so many great, young funds in the market and many of them are attracting LP capital. It will also serve as home to our partner blogs and to our company announcements.

LP 150

LP Los Angeles Marketing Partner 150

Haystack

JUNE 1, 2018

Perhaps because of this success and the unique elbow grease they supply to their portfolio, it was shocking to many to see that one of the storied seed franchises would contract, become its own sole LP, and scale back its operations. Yet for many, it didn’t come as a surprise.

LP 116

LP Global Social Media Portfolio 116