How do you raise money for your venture capital or private equity fund from family offices and high net worths? I see five innovative new methods for raising capital which emerging managers like us are using, which I’ve ranked in roughly descending order of popularity: Join the online communities and virtual conferences where investors participate. ...
[Continue Reading]How do you attract family offices and other large investors to your direct investing platform?
One of the best business models ever is creating a marketplace between investors and investment opportunities. However, the challenge with this two-sided market is: how do you get the investors to show up? It’s hard enough to get the retail investors, but the family offices and other large check writers are even more challenging. I’ve...
[Continue Reading]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? These “VCs for investment management companies” are also known as GP seeders or fund platforms. They often also are active in the GP stakes business,...
[Continue Reading]Should Small Emerging Managers Use Placement Agents?
The pros and cons of choosing a placement agent for small funds It would make life a lot easier for emerging managers if they could outsource the entire fundraising process. But can you? Empirically, few small emerging investment managers hire placement agents, particularly in venture capital. And even the firms that hire a placement agent...
[Continue Reading]Launching a Portfolio Acceleration Platform at a Venture Capital or Private Equity Fund
I’ve recently advised a number of emerging private equity and VC funds who are wrestling with the question: What are the highest impact steps they can take to support their portfolio companies? Almost every private equity and venture capital investor now advertises that they have a platform to support their portfolio companies. The popularity of...
[Continue Reading]Does Your VC have an Investment Thesis, or a Hypothesis?
(co-written with Stephane Nasser, co-founder of OpenVC, an open-source initiative to collect and analyze all VC theses.) 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. OpenVC is a new, open-source initiative to collect and analyze all publicly...
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