January 2024 

The latest perspectives from OpenLP, a resource for the venture community to hear from a diverse group of LP and GP voices.

LP & GP Voices

How to Plan for General Partner Succession 

By Alan Feld

Reflecting on his 2015 blog, "Confronting the 'S' Word: Dealing with General Partner Succession," Vintage Investment Partners’ Founder and Managing Partner Alan Feld initiated a robust succession plan seven years ago, ensuring a seamless transition for the firm. He now shares with TechCrunch a ‘how to’ for planning. 

Do This Before You Raise a Fund

By Ryan Hoover & Vedika Jain 

Signature Block by Weekend Fund shares insights into the major drivers of portfolio construction, how they impact each other and the key trade-offs to consider when forecasting scenarios for your fund.

Predictions for 2024 and Scoring 2023

By Ed Sim

Ed Sim, Founder and Managing Partner at Boldstart Ventures, shares his 2023 scorecard and predictions for 2024, including 8 enterprise tech trends. Spoiler: AI will go mainstream in the second half of 2024, triggering substantial IT spending on cloud, tools, infrastructure and security.

The Puritans of Venture Capital

By Kyle Harrison

Kyle Harrison, General Partner at Contrary, shares a glimpse into the future of VC, which he believes will be driven by the bifurcation into two types of firms: Cottage Keepers vs. Capital Agglomerators. Going forward, they can't ignore each other.

Featuring the Creators of OpenLP

From Unicorns to Unicorpses: Why Billion-Dollar Startups & Even VC Firms Keep Imploding

By Jessica Mathews

Fortune Magazine’s latest cover story reveals why newly minted unicorns risk being eclipsed by former high-flying startups gone belly-up, and why these billion-dollar startups - and even VC firms - keep imploding.

LPs Doubt Venture Funds’ Startup Valuations

By Yuliya Chernova

Without a market event to indicate a new valuation, a prolonged period of illiquidity and a lack of follow-on financing for startups, it’s difficult to discern what venture fund portfolios are worth today. The The Wall Street Journal's Yuliya Chernova shares a roundup of expert LP insights on the topic, including insights from Sapphire Partners' Beezer Clarkson.

Venture Capital is a Mean Business

By Martin Krag

Martin Krag, Partner at byFounders, shares key takeaways about the return profile of VC funds, aggregating LP and investor perspectives from David Clark, Beezer Clarkson, Meghan Reynolds, Samir Kaji and Jamie Rhode. 

Media Masterminds

By Nicole DeTommaso

Beezer Clarkson shares advice for early-stage fund managers on navigating down markets and more on the More Equity podcast, hosted by Harlem Capital's Nicole DeTommaso.

What We're Reading This Month

Welcome Back to the Unicorn Club, 10 Years Later

By Aileen Lee & Allegra Simon

In 2013, Cowboy Ventures assembled and studied a dataset of U.S.-based, VC-backed startups that had grown to be worth more than $1 billion, coining the term “unicorn" to describe how magical these companies were. Now, a decade later, Aileen Lee reflects on what’s happened in the ecosystem since.  

2024: A Year Of Reckoning And Resilience For Startups & VCs

By Umesh Padval

Despite headwinds, the year concluded on a strong note, witnessing record highs in stock markets and a gradual easing of interest rates and market volatility. Thomvest Partner Umesh Padval  published an op-ed in Crunchbase about the implications of these shifts on the private markets and predicts the year ahead.

For Solo GPs, 2024 Will be Hard—But in Ways that are Expected

By Allie Garfinkle

2024 has been widely predicted to be a tough year for VC, but solo GPs are especially on the front lines. As a lone manager, there’s nowhere to hide, even in the easiest of macroeconomic environments. 

OpenLP is supported by Sapphire Partners.

Launched in 2012, Sapphire Partners is a Limited Partner seeking to invest in elite early-stage venture capital funds, across the U.S., Europe, and Israel.

Not a subscriber to the
OpenLP monthly newsletter?