MondayVC Newsletter: From Founder to VC

MondayVC: From Founder to VC was my weekly LinkedIn newsletter about opening a venture capital fund. It ran from April to October 2024: 17 editions, and it has nearly 1,300 subscribers today. The newsletter on LinkedIn

Why I started#

I have long wanted to open a VC fund. In July 2023 I started working out how, and treated the fund as a startup: I researched the market, worked out the unit economics and designed the processes.

In autumn 2023 I joined cohort 2 of VC Lab's Venture Institute, a training program for people moving into a career in VC. It is built to make you do your own research, so I found more than fits in a LinkedIn post. From April 2024 I wrote up what I had learned each week. Writing it down also helped me make sense of it.

Why I stopped#

The research gave a clear answer: a fund was not the right move for me then.

• A fund lives on its 2% management fee, so it needs about $30M to pay for a real team. LPs commit that much to a first-time fund when its managers already have a track record.
• The way to build that record is a micro fund or an angel syndicate, and early-stage deals worth backing are rare.
• The funds that invest early at scale, such as 500 Global, Plug and Play and Antler, run accelerator programs. That makes them operational powerhouses: a big business in its own right.

So I chose to keep building AgTech and computer vision AI products, and to advise startups.

Editions#

The editions are republished here as a record of that research. Figures are as of 2024.

• VC Management Fee Expenses: A Solo GP's $1M Budget3 Jun 2024MondayVC Newsletter · Edition 8What a solo GP VC firm in San Francisco needs from the management fee each year, as of 2024: about $1M for salaries, benefits, tax, events and office.
• VC Team Size and Composition: Fund I, II and III27 May 2024MondayVC Newsletter · Edition 7Median team size, capital per GP and yearly investments at 30 emerging US VC firms on Fund I, II or III, and which paid and non-paid roles they hold.
• Fair Startup Valuations: Pre-Seed, Seed, Series A20 May 2024MondayVC Newsletter · Edition 6Median US startup valuations in 2023 at pre-seed, seed and Series A from Carta, PitchBook and Aumni, checked against burn rate, CAC and exit values.
• Lead vs Follow Investor Check Size: Seed, Series A13 May 2024MondayVC Newsletter · Edition 5Median lead and follow investor check sizes in US VC rounds in 2023–2024 at pre-seed, seed and Series A, and the lead's share of the round.
• VC Check Size by Stage: Pre-Seed, Seed, Series A6 May 2024MondayVC Newsletter · Edition 4Average VC check and median round size at pre-seed, seed and Series A in 2024 in the US, Singapore, Germany and Australia, from Crunchbase and Carta data.
• Angels and Syndicates in VC: Market Share 2021–202429 Apr 2024MondayVC Newsletter · Edition 3Shares of funds, angel investors and syndicates among VC investors and deals in 2021–2024: global, US, and top and bottom countries, from Crunchbase data.
• Finding VC Co-Investors: Guide and Airtable Template22 Apr 2024MondayVC Newsletter · Edition 2How emerging VCs can find deal-sharing and co-investment partners from portfolio and deal data, with a free Airtable template and an outreach email template.
• VC Due Diligence Math: 3,226 Startups per Outlier15 Apr 2024MondayVC Newsletter · Edition 1Why an emerging VC has to review about 3,226 startup applications a year for a chance at one outlier startup, and how to handle the due diligence load.