When venturing out to raise your first fund, you must have realistic expectations for how long it will take to raise your first fund, and more importantly, the outreach efforts required to do so.

Raising your fund takes tremendous outreach, especially if it is your first-fund. It is also through these outreach efforts that you will:

Refine your pitch-deck and value-proposition.
Reveal any holes in your strategy or thesis and amend it accordingly.
Build long-term relationships within the LP ecosystem.
Identify who the values-aligned LPs are, and regardless of whether they choose to commit funds immediately or not, continue to nurture those relationships.
Establish your reputation as an emerging manager through quality, consistent touch-points with LPs, introducers, and your GP peers.

Many LPs, without saying explicitly, will want to commence conversations 12 months (at minimum) before writing a check into your fund. And 12 months is on the short side of the time scale. Being an effective steward of capital is a mature profession, and smart LPs want to observe emerging fund manager talent behavior over longer time-intervals before committing. There are pools of capital that have the freedom to operate with much longer time-intervals— 5 years, even 10-year horizons.

So, when planning your outreach, here are some benchmarks you can work off as you plan your outreach:

Outreach to over 500 LPs to secure your first fund. Expect to be frequently traveling to different cities too.
From a cold start, it can take anywhere between 3-6 months to secure a meeting with a specific LP.
It takes between 12-18 months to secure your first fund.
Outreach to LPs should be daily during the fundraising phase. This outreach isn’t limited to just talking to LPs, but also setting follow-ups with them every 1-3 months to build the relationship and keep them updated on your progress.

Though trusted advisors and critical networks can help you bridge the gap faster and reduce friction in the process, there’s no shortcut to building strong relationships. You must leverage the trust you have with your networks (1st and 2nd degree) to make connections, build relationships, communicate value, and secure the right LPs.

Furthermore, raising and growing a fund is a marathon with multiple sprints, and therefore, GP burn-out is a real thing. So, I recommend taking care of your well-being; mental, emotional, and physical. Consider setting aside days to ‘tune-out’ and rejuvenate, even taking your team for off-site retreats.

Some concluding remarks:

The first fund is the hardest to raise. But once you do raise it, you should raise fund II shortly after, or towards the tail end of your first fund. To gain additional insight into what LPs look for in early-stage funds, I recommend reading resources available at #OpenLP. Elizabeth ‘Beezer’ Clarkson and the Sapphire team have done a tremendous job in putting together helpful content for the venture and startup ecosystem.
The heart of every venture business is people. I think it’s important not to lose sight of this basic fact. It is a huge plus if you enjoy interacting, understanding, and developing relationships with people. Some LPs and founders you meet can become some of your best friends. So, enjoy the natural flow of giving and taking, pay it forward when you can, share insights, and find ways to add value.