Always appreciate your take. Not sure how much is relevant to us, as we invest our own capital so the sole mission is to make money on our investments, not raise future capital, but a few points hit home.

It’s hard for emerging VCs to to pass on companies ‘A Players’ are betting on, as well as to make a bet knowing some (or all) have passed. But it’s absolutely necessary, and how we try to go about our business and build our brand (and getting easier by the deal as we get more comfortable). I”ve seen a few other smaller VC funds that, by mandate, can only follow on from an enumerated list of top-20-VCs. To me, that’s insane, as you won’t have access to the better ones. Better off being an LP at that point. Where this can get tricky is check size. While we can have conviction on a deal, if we can only write 250k of a $2M raise, that doesn’t help the company enough. And if they can’t raise additional funds, our conviction is meaningless. So then it’s on us to gather some like-minded groups to come along, which we’ve done successfully a few times, but is a separate job in and of itself.