Blog
Today’s guest is Miles Lasater, serial founder turned investor and the founding partner at Purpose Built Ventures. As a founder, he helped Higher One scale to over $200MM in revenue and eventually, a public offering. In this interview, Miles shares his journey as a founder turned investor and illuminates insights from having experience on both sides of the venture capital marketplace!
There are no short-cuts for emerging fund managers to solidify their position in the venture ecosystem— managers must:
Build relationships at scale.
Source investment opportunities.
Support the founder ecosystem.
Raise capital from LPs.
Emerging fund managers are prone to burn-out and must be thoughtful about their well-being. In this post, we share 3 things emerging managers can do to rejuvenate and recover without investing significant amounts of their time.
Every emerging fund manager must produce content assets to help streamline and scale their fundraising efforts. The most effective outreach is one that is consistent, systematic, and repeatable. In this post, I share the attributes you need to produce: 1) A pitch-deck, and 2) An introductory snippet. The process of creating these content assets will also force you to clarify key aspects of your fund to a higher degree—the process is just as beneficial as the outcome!
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. 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.
The venture space is saturated with emerging funds and venture brands— this trend is likely to continue for the foreseeable future. However, as a result, it has become challenging for LPs to differentiate one venture fund from another. Furthermore, it is increasingly challenging for founders to find and partner with smaller, value-add funds, especially if so many other smaller funds sound like they are promising and saying the same thing.
Therefore, without clear differentiation, it will be an uphill battle for first-time emerging fund managers GPs to:
Secure meetings with LPs who can provide the capital for your deployment.
Attract top founders and their companies to invest in and grow.
A friend of a friend happens to be looking to hire someone like you.
Your ex-boss decides to be an angel investor just as you choose to found a startup.
A relative happens to work for the key decision-maker at the very company you want to secure an enterprise contract with.
You successfully raise a round of funding, and an employee happens to know a team of talented, tight-knit engineers looking for a new company to work for—
— These serendipitous events can turn into great opportunities for everyone involved. However, unless someone activates their relationships and networks with clear intent, a lot of these brilliant opportunities can go by unrealized.
The opportunity: when you combine the right approach with modern-day technology, you can effectively activate your networks to reach people who would otherwise remain strangers.
