The art of raising from LPs in an economic downturn with Mark Suster, Upfront Ventures

Venture Unlocked: The playbook for venture capital managers

Follow me @samirkaji for my thoughts on the venture market, with a focus on the continued evolution of the VC landscape.

Today we’re excited to bring Mark Suster back on the pod. Mark is the managing partner of Upfront and also a frequent contributor of great content for the venture ecosystem through his blog, Both Sides of the Table, which I’d highly recommend you subscribe to.

Mark and Samir were recently talking about venture funds raising in this market, and we thought it would be timely to record a session on what we are seeing, and how venture fund managers should think about navigating in this market.

About Mark Suster:Mark Suster is a Partner at Upfront. He previously was the Founder and CEO of two successful enterprise software companies, the most recent of which was sold to Salesforce.com where Mark became VP, Products. Prior to being a founder, Mark was a software developer at Accenture where he lived and worked in Europe, Japan and the U.S.

Mark is a graduate of UCSD and has an MBA from the University of Chicago.

In this episode we discuss:

(01:51) With fundraising down from its high in 2021, what are GPs and LPs saying about the market(04:33) What institutional investors are saying about the market(09:19) How emerging managers can access larger global pools of capital(13:47) Building a sales pipeline for your fundraising process as an emerging manager(18:03) Moving deals through the mid-funnel death trap(21:55) Non-obvious things managers can do to improve their fundraising(25:29) Strategies to talk to Family Offices versus large institutional investors(30:49) How to stand out as a manager in a crowded field(34:17) Preparing for an LP meeting(38:45) The bull case for venture moving forward(41:44) How are LPs thinking about venture as an asset category and about the liquidity premiums across the entire market(45:49) Putting in the work to find good managers versus investing in a larger brand name fund(47:30) The importance of having a reserve as an emerging manager

I’d love to know what you took away from this conversation with Mark. Follow me @SamirKaji and give me your insights and questions with the hashtag #ventureunlocked. If you’d like to be considered as a guest or have someone you’d like to hear from (GP or LP), drop me a direct message on Twitter.

Podcast Production support provided by Agent Bee

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ventureunlocked.substack.com