“When you bring people in as partners, being generous around compensating them from funds they did not build can help create alignment because they’re not sitting there getting rich off of something that started five years ago and exits in ten years. So they’re kind of on an island because everybody else is in a different economic position and that can be very isolating.” – Jaclyn Freeman Hester We're doing a three-part series with some of our fan favorites over the last three seasons on...

“We overcomplicate almost nothing as LPs. And this is a criticism of myself. And I think we oversimplify almost everything. Because by definition, we’re the customer of the end product. [...] LPs watch the movie, but don’t read the book.” – Ben Choi We're doing a three-part series with some of our fan favorites over the last three seasons on the LP perspective of succession-planning and VC firm-building. Lisa Cawley is the Managing Director of Screendoor, a highly respected LP of GPs,...

“You can map out what your ideal process is, but it’s actually the depth of discussion that the internal team has with one another. [...] You have to define what your vision for the firm is years out, in order to make sure that you’re setting those people up for success and that they have a runway and a growth path and that they feel empowered and they feel like they’re learning and they’re contributing as part of the brand. And so much of what happens there, it does tie back to culture [...]...

Rick Zullo is the Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Equal Ventures. which invests into the future of four verticals: climate, insurance, retail, and supply chain, and boasts a portfolio including the likes of Threeflow, Leap, Smarthop, Ghost, Starday, David Energy, Leap, Odyssey, Vquip or Texture, just to name a few — many of which Rick serves on the board of. Prior to co-founding Equal Ventures, Rick was an investor at Lightbank, an early-stage venture fund based in Chicago, where he led...

Felipe Valencia is one of the co-founders of Veronorte, a venture capital investment firm based out of Colombia. In the first decade, Veronorte focused on managing Corporate Venture Programs for some of the largest Corporations in Latam. These days, they’re diving into a Fund of Funds investment strategy in the Venture Capital space. For the last 12 years, Veronorte has invested in over 25 startups across the U.S., India, Europe, Mexico, and Colombia, and in more than 12 Venture Capital...

“If you want to build trust with someone [on your team], if they screw up, you have to be okay with them screwing up because you put them in the situation.” – Ben Ehrlich Ben Ehrlich is the founder and General Partner of First Momentum Capital, where he helps seed a new generation of venture capital firms. He is also the Director of Strategy at the Long Term Stock Exhange. Previously Ben worked across the venture ecosystem supporting companies in the Canadian Technology Accelerator,...

Susan Kimberlin builds and invests in things that are Good & Useful. She is an angel investor, limited partner and product leader with a career that is equal parts building SaaS software products, and investing in companies, funds, teams, and projects that promote social equity with practical solutions for real-world problems. She is committed to bringing more diverse people into investing and the innovation economy. With a background in building search and natural language products for...

“The more constraints you have, the more conviction you will have in each manager.” Raida started her career in banking before moving to the investment team of BY Venture Partner, a venture fund with offices in Beirut and Abu Dhabi. She quickly climbed the ranks within the company and ultimately became a Venture Partner. Recognizing a void in the market for personalized venture consulting services, Raida established Amkan Advisory, a boutique consultancy firm specializing in assisting...

“If you are governing things from a point of a legal document, whatever that may be and having to refer to that in order to trigger a behavior, that often to me feels emblematic of a transaction, not a relationship.” Lisa Cawley is the Managing Director of Screendoor, a highly respected LP of GPs, investing in firm-builders by firm-builders, with a unique model for partnering with allocators to access the emerging manager ecosystem. She’s been covering venture capital for more than a dozen...

“In venture, we don’t look at IRR at all because manipulating IRR is far too easy with the timing of capital calls, credit lines, and various other levers that can be pulled by the GP.” Evan currently serves as Head of Venture Capital Investments and Research for Integra Global Advisors, a multi-family office. Prior to Integra, Evan served as Senior Manager of Data Science for Anheuser-Busch InBev where he oversaw data science and strategy for the US marketing organization. Prior to...

Ian Park is a Partner at Primer Sazze, a firm dedicated to investing in ambitious talent across East Asia and North America. Prior to Primer Sazze, he was a venture capital allocator at Korea Investment Corporation (KIC), one of the largest sovereign wealth institutions in the world, where he focused on investments into venture managers and founders. He’s also amassed a fervent following of AI, VC, and LP fans over the years through writing his newsletter and his YouTube channel. Prior to...

Dave McClure has been a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and investor for over 25 years. He has invested in hundreds of startups around the world, including 10+ IPOs and 40+ unicorns (Credit Karma, Twilio, SendGrid, Lyft, The RealReal, Talkdesk, Grab, Intercom, Canva, Udemy, Lucid, GitLab, Reddit, Stripe, Bukalapak). Prior to launching PVC in 2019, he was the founding partner of 500 Startups, a global VC firm with $1B AUM that has invested in over 2,500 companies and 5,000 founders across 75...

John Felix is the Head of Emerging Managers at Allocate where he leads manager diligence and product innovation within the emerging manager ecosystem. Prior to joining Allocate, John worked at Bowdoin College's Office of Investments, helping to invest the $2.8 billion endowment across all asset classes, focusing on venture capital. Prior to Bowdoin, John worked at Edgehill Endowment Partners, a $2 billion boutique OCIO. At Edgehill, John was responsible for building out the firm's venture...

Beezer Clarkson leads Sapphire Partners‘ investments in venture funds domestically and internationally. Beezer began her career in financial services over 20 years ago at Morgan Stanley in its global infrastructure group. Since, she has held various direct and indirect venture investment roles, as well as operational roles in software business development at Hewlett Packard. Prior to joining Sapphire in 2012, Beezer managed the day-to-day operations of the Draper Fisher Jurvetson Global...

Jaclyn Freeman Hester is a Partner at Foundry. She joined in 2016 with a passion for supporting the next generation of entrepreneurs and investors. Jaclyn leads direct investments in early-stage companies, often collaborating with Foundry’s partner funds. She loves working closely with founders to solve hard problems and think about the human elements of business. She invests across B2B and consumer companies that exhibit strong end-user empathy and use technology to empower individuals,...

Ertan Can is the Founder of Multiple Capital, a fund of funds focused on investing in micro VC funds in Europe and has been a limited partner in top funds you’ve heard of including Entrepreneur First and Angular Ventures, just to name a few. He's done his tour of duty in the asset management world at JP Morgan to covering investor relations topics at Thomson Reuters to investing in startups at a family office. Ertan is also a founding member of 2hearts, a community dedicated to building...

Aram Verdiyan is a Partner at Accolade. Previously, he worked on the investment team at Andreessen Horowitz. Before that, Aram worked in BD, sales and marketing at Aviatrix, a cloud native enterprise software company. Aram worked at Accolade from 2012 to 2015 as a Senior Investment Associate and at Deloitte Consulting LLP. He holds an M.B.A from the Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) and a B.S. from the George Washington University. You can find Aram on his socials here: Twitter:...

Jaap Vriesendorp is one of the managing partners of Marktlink Capital, an investment manager from the Netherlands investing over $1b into private equity and venture capital funds. Marktlink Capital’s LPs are almost exclusively Dutch (tech) entrepreneurs from companies such as Booking.com, Adyen and Hellofresh. At Marktlink Capital Jaap focusses on selecting venture and growth funds across Europe and the US. Before Marktlink Capital, he spent the majority of his time at McKinsey where he was...

Aakar Vachhani is the Managing Partner and a member of Fairview’s investment committee. He is involved in research, due diligence, investment monitoring, and business development for Fairview's venture capital and private equity partnership and direct co-investment portfolios. Prior to joining Fairview, Aakar was with Cambridge Associates, a leading investment advisor to foundations, endowments and corporate and government entities. He was responsible for analyzing private equity and venture...

Peter Teneriello has been a career-long investor in the private markets. He has experience as an allocator across a range of institutional types, from wealth management firms to pensions and endowments, and helped launch the venture capital program for the Texas Municipal Retirement System. Other past experiences of his have included leading finance/operations for a venture-backed startup, in addition to vetting investments for a family office and working with their portfolio companies. Over...

Winter Mead is the Founder and Managing Member of the investment firm Coolwater Capital, which exclusively focuses on emerging managers and technology investments. Coolwater is an academy for training, building and scaling emerging managers, a curated community of VC investors and early-stage investment specialists, and an investment firm. Coolwater has helped launch over 175 emerging managers, establishing strong ties and trust with these managers, who form the foundation of the Coolwater...

Youngrok Kim is a Partner at GREE LP Fund, a Fund of Funds operating in the US and Japan. Previously, he held the position of SVP at Recruit Strategic Partner, the strategic investment arm of Recruit Holdings, a major internet company in Japan. Youngrok began his career as an engineer at Goldman Sachs before transitioning to a VC career at ARCH Venture Partners in Chicago. He earned an MBA from the University of Chicago and received his degrees in Information Technology from Aoyama Gakuin...

Abe Finkelstein, Managing Partner at Vintage, has been leading fund, secondary, and growth stage investments focused on fintech, gaming, and SMB software, among others, leading growth stage and secondary investments for Vintage in companies like Monday.com, Minute Media, Payoneer, MoonActive and Honeybook. Prior to joining Vintage in 2003, Abe was an equity analyst with Goldman Sachs, covering Israel-based technology companies in a wide variety of sectors, including software, telecom...

Jeff is a partner at Renaissance Venture Capital an innovative venture capital fund of funds. Jeff’s diverse background in venture capital and technology and his experience working in various start-up ventures uniquely position him to advise startups. In addition, Jeff is quite active in the Michigan start-up community, volunteering his time to mentor young entrepreneurs, judge pitch competitions, and guest lecture student classes and organizations. Through Jeff’s work on the Fund, his...