
- VENTURE CAPITAL FIRM ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE HOW TO
- VENTURE CAPITAL FIRM ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE PLUS
$500k a year in travel and expenses, marketing (if any), “IT”, etc.Fancy South Park office is $50k a month, or $600k a year.3 general partners, take $1.5m in salary collectively.2.5% management fee, or $5m a year paid by LPs (the investors in the fund) for operational expenses.The rest will go to office, admin, travel and associates and non-partners.Īnd whatever’s left? The partners that own the management company keeps the surplus. Usually, the partners will pay themselves salaries very roughly equal to about 2-3% of the size of the fund. The fees in starting a venture capital firm varies a lot, but in general, you can assume about 2% of each fund goes to “management fees”, for its operational budget. Starting a Venture Capital Firm Budget and Fees I’m making a lot of simplifications here, but it explains roughly how it all works. If you do poor investments, in 5-10 years, you’re out of a job. So if you do amazing investments it can be pretty lucrative. So this can take 10-12+ years … if you even get past 1x, the so-called “hurdle” before any profits. That’s returns from IPOs and acquisitions. Then, once the firm has returned $180,000,000 in cash back from its investments - the size of the fund - if the firm returns more than $180m, then and only then the partners get to keep 20% of whatever the profits are beyond that.
VENTURE CAPITAL FIRM ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE PLUS
Then, the General Partners keep 20% of the profits - after repaying all the money invested, plus all these expenses. It’s not all salaries.Īnd the partners also have to invest a roughly similar amount back into the firm as LPs themselves - several percent of the “committed capital.” That’s not chump change, but it’s not as much as you think including rent, travel, expenses. So in a $180m fund, the LPs “pay” the firm $3.6m a year to run it. The LPs (the Limited Partners, the folks that give VCs the money to invest) pay 2% of the committed capital each year for “fees”. The basic model in venture capital is “2-and-20”, or 2% in committed capital paid in fees annually, and 20% of the profits going to the partners. That Almost No One Asks How Does a Venture Capital Firm Work? The 2 and 20 Venture Capital Model Related : The 4 Questions Every Founder Should Ask Every VC. Most LPs are looking to see that you’ve put institutional capital to work - not just founded an amazing company. What doesn’t work that well is to go straight from Successful Founder to First Time VC with a Relatively Big Fund. Or a successful, but perhaps less “branded” VC, will seek out someone with a brand, but perhaps a less established, or less traditional, track record as complementary. Often, a “financial” VC will seek out an operational partner. Partner with someone starting a Venture Capital Firm But it may be enough to raise a small fund. At least invest in 2+ companies that can be Unicorns. Go join an established fund, and build a track record. Angelist’s Rolling Funds in particular now enable folks with strong followings in tech to now raising “rolling funds” with Angelist doing the vast majority of the administrative work. This used to be very hard, but now it’s merely hard. Perhaps $5m, $10m, $20m to start - mainly from Very Rich Individuals. Start as an angel investor, make some good investments, and then, after proving yourself as an angel, raise a small fund. Start Small before your start a Venture Capital Firm
VENTURE CAPITAL FIRM ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE HOW TO
Go work at a fund first and make some good investments there.Īssuming you have at least a partial track record, then, there are two-and-a-half basic paths on how to start a venture capital firm. If you haven’t already made some good investments - it’s going to be tough to start your own fund. In order to start a VC Firm you need a track record. Having recently raised one, I’ve learned a lot: Jason Lemkin just raised a $70 million fund here’s how he did it
