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Building A Seed Stage Venture Firm
Building A Seed Stage Venture Firm
Building A Seed Stage Venture Firm
Roger Ehrenberg
Feb 25
This is a topic I think about — a lot — and have done so for the past 10 years. I have sparred
with many on issues of portfolio construction, follow on strategy and more. But it was my
friend Micah Rosenbloom’s recent tweet that got me thinking about the nuts-and-bolts of
firm building, and that perhaps our experience at IA Ventures might be a useful story to
share.
When I decided to start the firm in the middle of 2009, the environment for starting a
venture firm sucked. Hard. It did for pretty much every other financial services business as
well, as institutional LPs were still licking their wounds from the financial crisis and trying to
figure out the best way forward. They had been risk-on for such a long time, that getting
whipsawed had messed up their liquidity positions and asset allocation models, causing
them to shift to risk-off with a rapidity not seen in my lifetime. In any event, as an emerging
manager (which wasn’t really a thing a decade ago), I had nowhere to go in the traditional LP
world. I could get any meeting I wanted because of my angel track record and terrific
mentors, but I knew with absolute certainty that I wouldn’t have a traditional venture LP
when I held a first closing of IA Ventures Fund I in January 2010. That said, I made a series of
decisions early on that laid the foundation for adding institutions to our Fund I final close, as
well as securing a supportive and blue-chip investor base for Funds II and III. And it is these
decisions and strategies that I will share here.
Assuming that you’re not spinning out as a senior partner from a marquee firm and that
raising Fund I is anything but easy, there are several things you can do in the process of
setting up the firm to enhance your chances of raising Fund II and including institutional LPs
in the mix. First off, articulating a clear strategy — in essence, your product — is absolutely
critical. Think about your firm as a startup, because it is. When you’re looking at a very early
startup, what might you consider? Firm vision? Product mission? Scale of market
opportunity? Quality and chemistry of the team given the vision and the mission? Guess
what: sophisticated LPs, institutions or otherwise, are thinking of you in exactly the same
way. Are you a startup worth investing in? If you’re not thinking about it like that, and having
the empathy to put yourself in their shoes, than the likelihood that you’ll successfully attract
and retain top flight LPs is very poor. Why should you be one of the few new relationships an
LP is going to initiate this year? All of this points towards creating a product, e.g., your
strategy, source of differentiation and competitive advantage, that is flat-out compelling.
Part of this will be your approach to deal sourcing and company building. Part might be your
specific background or the backgrounds and chemistry among you and your team members.
Another area could be deeply-held beliefs around how certain markets might unfold. Finally,
a clear approach to money management, bet sizing, ownership and follow on strategy, will
also play a part in how LPs perceive you. Being wishy washy on any of these dimensions will
be damning and likely relegate you to a bunch of polite responses but little follow through.
But if you are crisp, clear and honest in these discussions, and keep these relationships
updated on your progress, you are keeping open the possibility that these institutions might
join in Fund II, or if you really get off to a great start, participate in your final Fund I close.
Fund IIs can be scary. While raising Fund I is hard as hell and getting in business is awesome,
closing what is invariably a larger Fund II can lead to feelings like: “Am I really good at this?
What if I actually stink — I haven’t proven sh*t yet? How am I going to deploy all this money
intelligently? How should my strategy change now that I’m bigger? Do I need to expand the
team? How might this impact firm chemistry?” While some might think raising Fund II
deserves a victory lap, it is perhaps the scariest time of building a seed stage firm. Bottom
line is that this is generally being raised within two years of Fund I’s closing, as most
managers get out “hot” to be in-market for deal flow purposes and for testing out their
hypotheses around business model and investment approach. So unless lightening strikes,
there is precious little that has been learned about Fund I’s true potential. If Fund I was
raised entirely from individuals and family offices, then institutional LPs will be investing in
Fund II largely because you did what you say you were going to do, what you said you were
going to do was compelling, the team functioned well and firm reputation is strong. They
also know that if you end up being very successful and if they treat you poorly now that the
likelihood of their getting in later is low. So if you’ve done a good job with Fund I, you might
be pleasantly surprised by how much demand you have from quality institutional LPs.
Fund III: Show evidence of Fund I’s return potential and the execution power of a great
long-term team
By Fund III, 5–6 years will have elapsed since you first got in business. Even if you are a very
early seed stage investor (as we were and are), there will be a lot to show about which
companies have big-time breakout potential. Even if you have yet to secure a material exit,
sophisticated investors know how long it takes to build a great company and to get liquid,
even if you are open to using secondary sales. But by now there aren’t really any excuses;
you’ve either demonstrated skill at both team-picking and company building or you haven’t.
You’ve either established yourself as a widely respected seed stage firm and partnership or
you haven’t. And if the answers to any of these questions is no, then raising Fund III will be a
bear. But to be clear, if you’ve secured some high quality institutions in Funds I or II, they’ve
already done a ton of work to even invest in the first place so will be biased to continue the
relationship. That said, they’re also smart and commercial, and if they don’t believe they’ll
make good money over the long term they’ll have no trouble sharing the bad news and
ceasing future commitments.
At IA raising Fund III was a pretty easy affair; the LP group was
essentially the same as in Fund II. We ended up taking $160m and
started investing the fund in January 2016. This enabled us to add
some very early stage “hard science” companies as well as to lead
a few select early Series A rounds with $5m lead investments. While
we hadn’t had any scale exits yet, we had two sales that generated
substantial recycling (the sales of Simple to BBVA and ThinkNear
to Telenav generated over $20m, $3m of which went into the Series
B of The Trade Desk (TTD) that recently generated more than 22x),
and several high-potential companies that were largely proven (most
notably the aforementioned TTD). Equally as important, our
partnership was stable and had worked together over an extended
period of time. Brad, Jesse and I had been partners at that time
for almost 5 years, with Brad and I almost 7 years. We had long ago
decided that we wouldn’t hire any junior investment staff, with
each of us touching the bare metal and working closely with our
companies from the earliest days. This is still our model today.
LPs love consistency and team stability, and, quite frankly, so do
we.
I’m pretty opinionated about this stuff, as I am with principles of money management,
running concentrated portfolios and stripping very early stage venture down to its essential
elements. This is the playbook that worked for us. Best of luck.