Silicon Roundabout Ventures learnings on raising a fund

Francesco Perticarari started a fund called Silicon Roundabout.

If you think raising funds for a startup is hard, you haven’t tried to raise a VC fund!

Francesco got Jonathan Sibilia, partner at Draper Esprit to review his deck and share his key learnings.

This is his content and I’m sharing it here as I aggregate learnings to help you learn faster.

14 lessons on pitch decks for LP raising

Whether you’re an entrepreneur, another fund manager, or perhaps an LP investor yourself, these key takeaways could help you mirror what we nailed in our own pitch deck as well as to avoid the mistakes we made.

1. What LP investors care about the most is what makes you and your strategy special (and why) – everything else is secondary;
2. Any VC fund deck must include the following: 1) Strategy / Investment Thesis, 2) Portfolio Construction, and 3) Competitive Advantage;
3. Use numbers! LPs want to measure your past record in TVPI and IRR: If you don’t have a real portfolio of investments, make a virtual one based on your non-traditional work with startups!
4. Having a unique aspect to your fund (our is our community) is not a differentiator in the eyes of an LP UNTIL you can put NUMBERS behind it;
5. Your team is your greatest asset: make sure you make it clear why you’re the best out there to execute on your thesis;
6. Don’t use too much text and don’t try and convey two messages with one slide;
7. Remember ‘6’ above, however: a deck file to be sent via email can allow a bit more text and content than a presentation deck: ours had some slides that I’d never use to present live without some serious cuttings but were clearer with some extra text (not too much);
8. 15-25 Slides for a VC fund deck is a good number. We had 22. You can use appendices if you need to link more data;
9. You can give some market context if your thesis is sector, industry, or technology specific but you should not spend too much to convince LPs about your market choice – one slide is plenty, Appendices can be used to give further data to non-tech-savvy investors;
10. Selecting a few key demonstrators is OK, but make sure you represent your message in a way that does not make LPs think you’re hiding something;
11. Make sure you do your research on your portfolio construction strategy and that you know your numbers: it will pay off!
12. Show you have preferential access to your target startups (and put names and numbers to back it up!)
13. A single number can be more powerful than 1000 words: each “key” slide should have its key number you want LPs to walk away with;
14. Consider fee recycling (if you can).

Want to learn more?

I’ve not added color to explain terms and concepts on his learnings. If you want to understand more, tell me in the comments and I’ll expand this blog so you understand (if you are new).