Seed & Series A: How Many Deals Are Getting Done & At What Check Size
Mega-funds are pushing earlier on the cap table and concentrating capital at the top end of Seed and Series A, turning up the ante on why a founder should pick a particular investor. Beezer Clarkson and Evan Tarzian share new data on where dedicated-stage funds control the market vs megas and how the landscape is more competitive than ever.
Read the full analysis below, and dive deeper with Ed Sim's post on what Seed managers will need to do to stay in the game.
What Does a 'Healthy' Venture Market Actually Look Like?
Kirsten Green, Founder & Partner of Forerunner, weighs in on the rising competition at the early-stage and answers Beezer's question: 'Is the venture market healthy?'
"The highest order way I think about it is: ‘Is there opportunity?’ Is there opportunity for high impact, high growth, high scale businesses being born right now? And the answer to that is unequivocally yes.”
The $5M Line That Is Redrawing Inception/Seed Investing
Ed Sim, Founder & GP at Boldstart, concurs with Sapphire Partners' early-stage data and adds his take in his newest blog post: "Megas will keep tooling up with seed-specific partners and dedicated funds to dominate inception/seed at $5M and above."
70% of Babson’s private equity portfolio is venture capital, an unusually bold stance for an institution whose capital is used to fund the university every year. David Zhou sat down with Trish Spurlin, Investment Director at Babson College’s $800M endowment, to unpack what it takes to run such a contrarian strategy, and the systems, relationships, and mindset that make it work.
The Endowment Playbook: What LPs Won't Tell You (& What Will Actually Close the Deal)
Adam Metz pulls back the curtain on the structural realities that trip up first-time managers, especially the mismatch between expected and actual institutional timelines. His guidance reframes the process so GPs can stop taking the slowness personally and start navigating endowments the way they really work.
Nikhil Basu Trivedi reflects on 15 years of investing in NYC and why so many of his strongest companies trace back to the city. His through-line: NYC founders tend to build on fundamentals, letting the P&L do the talking, resulting in durable businesses that scale with discipline rather than hype.
New Stack, Same Game: Why the AI-Native Era Feels Different Yet Familiar
The shift to AI-native software development feels both new and familiar, echoing the transitions to mobile, cloud, and DevOps. With tools like Copilot, Cursor, MCP, and agent frameworks embedding AI directly into real workflows, the market is fragmenting in ways that create more room for specialized platforms rather than a single winner.
Kyle Samani is the Founder and Managing Partner of Multicoin Capital, a thesis-driven investment firm that invests in cryptocurrencies, tokens, and blockchain companies reshaping trillion-dollar markets. He joins Beezer and Nick to unpack how blockchain technologies are already reshaping global finance away from legacy systems and towards embedded trading platforms within traditional messaging and media platforms.
Minisode: What Early Stage Venture Can Learn from Crypto Traders
Beezer and Nick hash why Nick is more bullish on bitcoin than Kyle, how LPs conceptualize investing in crypto, and why people who came up as crypto investors are uniquely positioned to excel in early stage venture.
VC Deep Dives
DEEP DIVE
Should You Build a Concentrated Fund?
Stefano challenges the belief that a 15–20-company portfolio is the mark of a great picker, arguing that power laws reward exposure, not precision. By running the numbers across different construction models, he shows how diversification expands the surface area for luck while keeping return targets within reach.
Deal flow in US venture secondaries is accelerating, with annual value nearing $95B and major financial institutions betting heavily on continued growth. Even so, liquidity is pooling around a narrow set of late-stage winners, making secondaries a critical bridge while IPO markets remain closed.
Data centers are fast becoming the backbone of the modern economy, much like oil fields were for the last century, but this comes with growing questions around energy consumption, grid capacity and environmental impact.
A sudden leadership pivot at Sequoia puts Alfred Lin and Pat Grady in charge just three years into Roelof Botha’s stewardship. Newcomer outlines the theories behind the move, ranging from partnership friction to missed AI aggressiveness, and what this return to co-stewards signals about Sequoia’s internal calculus and its view of where the market is heading.
PE and VC have effectively merged onto the same playing field as frozen IPO markets and AI mega-rounds reshape the late-stage landscape. With massive dry powder but few true opportunities, the industry is consolidating around a small set of winners and leaving second-tier funds searching for their place.
Thanks for reading OpenLP! We’d love your input to help shape future editions. What’s working well? What’s missing? Your feedback will help us make this newsletter more relevant and insightful for the LP and venture community.
Nothing presented within this article is intended to constitute investment advice, and under no circumstances should any information provided herein be used or considered as an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy an interest in any investment fund managed by Sapphire Ventures, LLC (“Sapphire”). Information provided reflects Sapphires’ views as of a time, whereby such views are subject to change at any point and Sapphire shall not be obligated to provide notice of any change. No assumptions should be made that any investment listed above were or will be profitable. Various content and views contained within this article represent those of third party guests, which do not necessarily reflect the views of Sapphire. Such views are subject to change at any point and do not in any way represent official statements by Sapphire.Due to various risks and uncertainties, actual events, results or the actual experience may differ materially from those reflected or contemplated in any statement made. Nothing contained in this article may be relied upon as a guarantee or assurance as to the future success of any particular company. Past performance is not indicative of future results.
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