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VC fund decks that close LPs

Aug 12, 2022
Fundraising

A deck template, tips, and best practices that successfully raised $500M+ from LPs

In our last edition we shared advice on how to raise from LPs. In this edition we’re going a step deeper by sharing examples of 13 pitch decks that successfully raised over $500M from LPs in aggregate. In this post, we link to full decks (a picture is worth a thousand words, right?) and summarize patterns, tips, and best practices.

Fund managers are salespeople and pitch deck (or memo for some) is the primary sales tool. It’s often the hook to capture enough interest to secure a meeting with LPs. It also serves as support during and after a pitch meeting.

If you only have a few minutes, here are four main takeaways to consider when creating a deck for LPs:

  • The purpose of your pitch deck is to convince LPs in your ability to make outlier investments. Making exceptional investments relies on access, sound decision-making, and an ability to win deals. Your pitch deck should breakdown how you do this effectively.
  • Your pitch deck is the place to tell the most clear, concise, and convincing version of your fund’s story. Focus on the narrative, leave out the commentary. Like any good storytelling, this requires distilling it down to the core message you want to get across. It often requires a lot of editing and re-editing.
  • “Showing” is better than telling. Use examples, numbers (e.g. past performance metrics), screenshot evidence of how you’ve helped, and other visuals to add credibility to your deck. These can be very memorable and help create a more objective narrative.
  • Let others speak to your strengths and establish social credibility. As with GPs investing in startups, many LPs value social proof, consciously or subconsciously. Highlight positive quotes from founders you’ve backed, testimonials from strong references, and LPs already committed to investing in your fund.

Lastly, before we dive into the template, it’s worth acknowledging that some people have a hard time boasting about themselves. If that’s you, you’ll have to get over it when creating a pitch deck. Pump your chest a little, with authenticity. :)

Shout out to Julia Lipton (Awesome People Ventures); Amit Vasudev, Matt Sornson, and Alex MacCaw (Earl Grey Capital); Lee Jacobs (Long Journey Ventures); Packy McCormick (Not Boring Capital); Charles Hudson and Christine Tobolski (Precursor Ventures); Niv Dror (Shrug Capital) Wiz (Spacecadet); Leo Polovets (Susa Ventures); Todd Goldberg (Todd and Rahul’s Angel Fund); and Brianne Kimmel (Worklife) for contributing.

Deck Template

Here’s a template of what each deck should include, along with examples from the decks linked at the bottom of this essay. While each fund story is unique, most LPs are looking to answer the questions prompted in each of the slides in this outline.

  • Title: So, what’s this fund called? Which fund is it?
  • Team: Who is the GP? Who else is on the team?
  • Access: How do you get access to high-quality investment opportunities? What’s your advantage?
  • Ability to win: How will you win competitive deals? What’s your value-add to founders?
  • Investment Focus: What are you investing in? Why? Do you have a unique insight into that focus?
  • Track record: Do you have investment experience? What’s your past track record? What are your most impressive investments?
  • Fund structure: What’s the size of the fund, stage you’re investing in, number of expected investments, and other details on the fund structure.
  • Network: Who’s in your orbit? Which founders, investors, and others do you collaborate with and can you show examples?
  • Appendix: Additional materials that might be useful to include

Each of the above topics can be covered with a single slide or a set of slides.

Title

So, what’s this fund called? Which fund is it?

The goal of this slide is to simply introduce the fund.

While not required, a tagline can be useful for setting the tone and establishing differentiation from the beginning. The best one-liners are memorable soundbites.

Must-haves:

  • Fund name
  • Fund number (e.g. Fund I or II)
  • Logo

Nice-to-have:

  • One-liner tagline
  • Fund-specific branding which can help you become memorable

Team

Who is the GP? Who else is on the team?

The goal of this slide is to convince LPs you’re the right person to deliver on the fund presented.

As with startups, the team slide is critical in a fund deck. Use this slide to showcase your experience most relevant to becoming a fund manager. If you include this slide near the beginning of your deck, it’s your opportunity to get LPs “nodding along” from the start.

Must-haves:

  • Name and a photo
  • A few sentence summary of your career and highlights
  • Relevant experience related to becoming a fund manager
  • If applicable, additional team members involved in the fund

Nice-to-haves:

  • If you have an audience, talk about your reach and the relevancy of that group
  • Press, awards, or achievements
  • What you’re known for
A summary of Brianne’s experience, the size of her audience and press features (Source: Worklife 2 deck)
Julia Lipton’s operator background, her right to start a fund as well as her philosophy around starting a community-driven investment fund (Source: Awesome People Ventures Fund 2 memo)
Todd and Rahul’s team slide brings together their founder experience, their angel investing track record and how long they’ve been investing together (Source: Todd and Rahul’s Angel Fund II)
Ryan showcases his operational experience as a founder and in product and highly relevant affiliated networks (Source: Weekend Fund 3.0 Deck)

Access

How do you get access to high-quality investment opportunities? What’s your advantage?

The goal of this slide is to convince LPs you have a real, differentiated, and enduring advantage that will enable you to see outlier investment opportunities.

Having access to good deal flow is a necessary condition to making great investments. In this slide, explain the drivers of your deal flow and why they give you access to great investment opportunities.

Deal flow can be categorized into two buckets: Inbound and outbound.

Inbound deal flow might be driven by your brand (as a successful founder, operator, creator, etc.), your network, your reputation, or all of the above.

Outbound deal flow may come through an outbound sourcing system, proprietary flywheels, or “owned” networks that provide unique insights and access.

Must-haves:

  • The primary drivers of your deal flow

Nice-to-haves:

  • Personal systems or flywheels that make your access advantage stronger over time
  • Examples of how you sourced specific investments
  • Social proof that validates your access
Long Journey Ventures’ strong network advantage in sourcing, doing diligence, and growing companies (Source: Long Journey Ventures Fund I deck)
Showcasing what Shrug Capital is known for, their unique advantages, and deal flow drivers in the words of their network (Source: Shrug III deck)
The main drivers of Not Boring Capital’s deal flow, a combination of inbound and outbound “systems”, and how they attract companies that want help telling their story (Source: Not Boring Capital Fund I Memo)
The unique drivers of Worklife’s deal flow and how their program created a flywheel for access (Source: Worklife 2 deck)
Why Weekend Fund is a “magnet” for founders (Source: Weekend Fund 3.0 deck)

Ability to win

How will you win competitive deals? What’s your value-add to founders?

The goal of this slide is to convince LPs that you’re “making something founders want”.

It’s not enough to have access to good investment opportunities, they need to want you as an investor, especially as venture has become increasingly competitive. In this slide, share your “value-add” to founders and why they choose you as an investor.

Must-haves:

  • How you help founders and your superpower value-add

Nice-to-haves:

  • Quotes from founders highlighting specific ways you helped
  • Case studies highlighting specific ways you helped a portfolio company
  • NPS or similar portfolio support performance metrics
Breakdown of the Susa founder experience and the community they provide to founders (Source: Susa Ventures IV and Opportunity Fund II deck)
Frames Spacecadet’s product for founders and how they deliver on it in a memorable way (Spacecadet deck)
Example of how Shrug added value to their portfolio company Superhuman, became their #1 referrer and generated buzz for them (Source: Shrug Capital Founder Deck)
Explains the “why?” behind Precursor’s product for founders (Source: Precursor Fund III deck)

Investment Focus

What are you investing in? Why? Do you have a unique insight into that focus?

The goal of this slide is to illustrate a winning investment strategy that aligns with your unique advantages.

This includes the stage, themes/theses, and any other details about the types of companies you’re investing in. You can also include details about the market opportunity and why the timing is right for your investment focus. Many funds are either thematic or thesis driven:

Thematic investing involves identifying big themes and going after them. Examples from the world of web services would be "social networking", "online video", "ad networks", "social media", "real time", "mobile". I know many VCs who go about it this way. They identify the themes and then get busy filling out their portfolio with companies that fit those themes.

Thesis driven investing involves drawing a picture of where your particular area of focus is going. I like to take a five to ten year view. And once you have mapped out that picture, it becomes your thesis. And you evaluate every investment you make in the context of that thesis.

That’s not to say you cannot raise a pure network-driven, horizontal fund. Many fund managers with stated themes or thesis invest in promising companies that don’t cleanly fit inside these definitions.

Whatever investment focus you choose, it’s helpful to share examples of companies you’ve invested in or companies similar to ones you plan to invest in that fit your focus.

Must-haves:

  • Investment theme or thesis
  • Companies that fit your investment focus and why

Nice-to-haves:

  • Your investment TAM: the size of the market opportunity and its growth
  • Why timing is right for your investment focus
A clear articulation of the opportunity Earl Grey Ventures is focusing on, “the programmatic layers of the internet” with examples (Source: Earl Grey Fund Ventures II memo)
Susa Ventures outlines their thematic investment focus with examples of generational companies that fit each theme (Source: Susa Ventures IV and Opportunity Fund II Slide deck)
Why the market timing for Worklife’s thesis is right (Source: Worklife 1 deck)
A case study into two of Awesome People Ventures’ investments and why they invested (Source: Awesome People Ventures Fund 2 memo)

Track record

Do you have investment experience? What’s your past track record? What are your most impressive investments?

The goal of this slide is to show LPs that you have experience, even if minimal, and (if you can) impress them with your portfolio to date.

This should include details about your investment performance to date, including performance metrics such as TVPI and IRR.

If you’re raising your first fund you won’t have a formal portfolio to report; however, you can use the following as a “proxy”: angel investments, deals you’ve scouted for another fund, and companies you legitimately had access to invest in but didn’t have the capital to do so.

Important note: Some managers lose trust with LPs by (sometimes mistakenly) misreporting numbers. Investment multiples are based on the appreciation of the fund’s price per share based on the most recent priced round. Future rounds completed on a note or SAFE should not be reported as markups. You can include a disclaimer if you’d like to highlight companies that raised non-priced rounds at a higher cap than your initial investment, but don’t conflate that with traditional performance metrics.

Must-haves:

  • Number of companies in your portfolio
  • TVPI, IRR, and other standard VC performance metrics
  • Names of the best performing investments and if applicable, markups

Nice-to-haves:

  • Names of investors who led or participated in successive rounds of funding
  • More “bespoke” performance metrics like specific markups, number of unicorns in your portfolio, or percentage of your portfolio that received markups
  • Benchmarks that can help LPs contextualize your investment performance (more useful for less experienced LPs)
  • A snapshot of the entire portfolio in the context of investment performance
A Summary of Susa Ventures track record across their funds and SPVs (Source: Susa Ventures IV and Opportunity Fund II Slide deck)
A summary of Earl Grey Capital’s performance as well as a snapshot of the best performers in their portfolio, multiples and co-investors (Source: Earl Grey Fund Ventures II Primer Deck)
Select companies in Long Journey Ventures’ fund, what they do and co-investors (Source: Long Journey Ventures deck)
Spacecadet showcases multiples on their best performing investments (Source: Spacecadet deck)

Fund structure

What’s the size of the fund, stage you’re investing in, number of expected investments, and other details on the fund structure?

The goal of this slide is to share fund strategy decisions you’ve made with LPs, and ensure they’re well-informed.

Must-haves:

  • Investment stage(s)
  • Fund size (a range is OK, but it should be somewhat narrow)
  • Number of expected investments
  • Investment period (an estimate is fine as deployment velocity can depend on market conditions)
  • Fund pricing (carry and management fees)
  • Fund admin and related fees
  • Follow-on and reserve strategy
  • GP commitment
  • Back office setup

Nice-to-haves:

  • SPV strategy or opportunity fund structure, if applicable
A clean layout of Precursor's fund strategy across their funds, provides visibility into how the firm has evolved (Source: Precursor Fund III deck)
Todd and Rahul’s Angel Fund II strategy across their core, opportunistic and exploratory bets (Todd and Rahul’s Angel Fund)
Susa Ventures’ barbell approach and how their core fund and opportunity funds work together (Source: Susa Ventures IV and Opportunity Fund II Slide deck)
Not Boring Capital’s breakdown of investments by stage in their first fund which is one aspect of their fund strategy (Source: Not Boring Capital Fund II Memo)

Network

Who’s in your orbit? Which founders, investors, and others do you collaborate with and can you show examples?

The goal of this slide is to show that the fund you’re building is surrounded by the right people and networks to succeed.

Admittedly, this slide can be a bit hand wavy. We all know a lot of people and simply listing your LinkedIn connections won’t impress anyone. Nonetheless, venture is a highly network and relationship-driven endeavor so showcasing talented people and organizations you legitimately engage with can signal confidence. It also serves as a conversation starter about mutual connections and an informal list of leads that LPs may contact for a reference.

Must-haves:

  • LPs in your fund, networks you’re a part of, co-investors you collaborate with, and relationships you have with connectors in your area of focus (when listing individuals, make sure to get their explicit sign-off)

Nice-to-haves:

  • Pictures or avatars to make it more visually interesting
Showcasing Shrug’s strong network and how their ability to open doors has driven deal flow while helping the portfolio (Source: Shrug III deck)
SaaS operators in Worklife’s network who can help the fund succeed (Source: Worklife 2 deck)
High-level composition of Earl Grey Capital’s LP base, a mix of founders, operators, individual investors and investors from large funds, and LP names (Source: Earl Grey Fund Ventures II Primer Deck)
Showcases investors, both individuals and firms, that Weekend Fund has worked with, and how collaboration is core to their strategy (Weekend Fund 3.0 deck)

Appendix

Here’s a miscellaneous collection of additional materials that might be useful to include:

  • How you communicate with LPs, including examples of past LP updates
  • Screenshot or link to your full portfolio with details (e.g. name of the company, tagline, logo, associated markup, etc.)
  • Case studies of how you got into specific deals that showcase your ability to win
  • Examples of how you helped specific portfolio companies that show your value-add
  • Deep dives into specific portfolio companies you’re most proud of
  • Legal disclaimers
  • An FAQ of common questions that you anticipate from LPs

Fund deck collection

And here’s the collection of fund pitch decks (and memos) featured. Note that some GPs redacted sensitive information.

Awesome People Ventures Fund 2 Memo

Earl Grey Capital Fund II Memo and Primer Deck

Long Journey Ventures Fund I Deck

Not Boring Capital - Fund I Memo

Not Boring Capital - Fund II Memo

Precursor Fund III Deck

Shrug Capital IV LP Email + Shrug Founder Deck

Spacecadet Deck

Susa Ventures IV and Opportunity Fund II Deck

Todd and Rahul’s Angel Fund II Deck

Weekend Fund 3.0 Deck

WorkLife 2 Deck

Worklife 1 Deck

If you’re a new fund manager, thinking of starting a fund, or just curious, subscribe to Signature Block if you haven’t already. If you think this might be useful for emerging managers, share on Twitter.

Lastly, let us know what topic you’d like us to cover in the next edition.

Until next time,
Ryan and Vedika :)

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