On September 3, 2026, two weeks before Cohort 22 kicked off, Kelly Schricker, who runs Decile Labs, and Max Harris, Decile's community manager, spent an hour on what incoming managers should do to get the most out of the program. Max works with GPs and LPs across every cohort stage, so he sees the difference between the people who close a fund and the people who don't.
Watch the full session here: How to Make the Most Out of VC Lab
This is a recap. If you haven't applied yet, start with the Cohort 22 info session.
The short version
- VC Lab is a 14-week accelerator, not a learning program. You're expected to close a fund, and managers who fall behind get dropped.
- The milestones are $100,000 in commitments, then $250,000 in new commitments, then at least $500,000 by the end.
- Fundraising momentum is the single biggest predictor of whether a fund closes.
- Don't build your deck early. Talk to people first, then build it from what you learn.
- It's free. No fees, no equity, and no obligation to use Decile's back office afterwards.
Commit before you start
Max's answer to what he'd tell every incoming manager was about mindset rather than tactics.
He's watched the same curve repeatedly. Managers start out following general advice, hear a lot of nos, and get in their own heads. Venture is a loud industry, full of people online sounding more certain than they are, and that gets to people.
What the strongest managers have in common is that they arrive having already decided. Not "I'm interested in this" but "I'm doing this." It doesn't have to be your only job, but it has to be treated like one. That shift shows up in how you talk to LPs and in whether you build something that outlasts fund one, because most people here want a firm rather than a single fund.
Kelly's addition was about the things the program can't do for you. The playbook exists, the tools are free, the AI is there, the live sessions are there. What nobody else can do is block your calendar, finish your sprints, and make the calls.
The milestones are real
This is the part worth reading twice if you're considering applying.
There are three fundraising checkpoints: $100,000 in commitments, then $250,000 in new commitments, then at least $500,000 to finish the program. Kelly called these very achievable for anyone doing the work, and noted that plenty of managers raise well past them.
Missing them has consequences. Managers who aren't hitting fundraising goals or completing sprints can be dropped. Kelly was direct about why. VC Lab alumni status needs to mean something, so the program stays competitive on purpose.
Attendance works the same way. Sessions are mandatory, mostly at 8 or 9am Pacific, and two absences are allowed before it affects your standing. Recordings exist, but the live sessions are where you ask about the objection you heard yesterday.
If you get dropped or step away for a genuine reason, you can come back in a later cohort. Three attempts is roughly the limit before the team asks whether you're serious.
Sprints
A sprint lands each week, and it's the fund-building work you do outside the live sessions.
Max described how they're tailored. Some weeks are about identifying or reaching out to a set number of confidants. Later weeks measure PACTs and soft commitments. If your deck has been scoring weak, a sprint will target the deck. There's reading in there too, and checkpoints on your progress.
Kelly's practical advice is to put an hour on the calendar and protect it. Every cohort has people who lose a week to a trip and then find catching up feels too big. There's also an AI button on each sprint that will help you answer the question if you're stuck or behind.
Her framing on quality was that done beats perfect. Your thesis will change after you talk to people. Your deck will keep changing. These are living documents, not boxes to tick.
Fundraising momentum is the leading indicator
Decile has looked at the data on who successfully launches a fund, and there's no background, school or pedigree that predicts it. What predicts it is curiosity and commitment, and operationally, momentum.
Max explained the mechanism. As a first-time manager you have almost nothing to derisk yourself with, so the most powerful signal available is visible progress. Interest accumulating. Thesis-aligned deals lining up. People who respect each other getting involved. That heat is what moves someone who's on the fence, because when there's little information to judge, other people's conviction fills the gap.
He mentioned working on a fund four raise where things slowed over the summer, and the team reduced the minimum check size specifically to keep momentum alive. It worked.
For a new manager that translates into one instruction. Get your first PACT as early as you can. Kelly said the first couple of weeks is realistic, and a good portion of the cohort was already having those conversations before orientation. For more on that, see closing your first LPs before the cohort begins, and Mike Suprovici's session on where those first LPs actually come from.
Don't build the deck yet
Managers consistently want to build a deck before they're ready. Kelly's position is that a deck built before you've talked to anyone will be the most generic document you could produce, and it'll work against you.
The deck gets its power from what you learn in conversations: what people respond to, what makes you specific, where the objections land. Build it after.
The same applies to the fund model. There's a session on fund structure partway through the cohort, deliberately not at the start, because a spreadsheet is useless until somebody wants to invest.
What the program gives you
Decile Hub, the agentic operating system for a VC firm, is included and stays free. It's where the work actually happens: your thesis, your network as a CRM, PACT and LPA templates, and Dex, the agent that surfaces who you haven't followed up with. Co-GPs should set up one account and add each other rather than running separate instances, with permissions for anyone who only needs partial access. Our recap of the Agentic VC Stack session shows what the agent can do.
On scripts and practice, the team has both. Language for making the ask, an objection tracker so your answers improve as you collect them, and live pitch feedback sessions. Kelly also mentioned a newer tool that Adeo built on a Monday and demoed on the Tuesday: an AI voice simulator where you pick the LP archetype you're pitching, run the conversation, get objections back, and receive a score with notes on what to improve. For the archetypes themselves, see our LP Archetypes recap.
A PACT, if you're new to the term, is a soft commitment rather than a legally binding agreement. It holds a spot in the fund and doesn't replace the LPA. It isn't jurisdiction-specific.
The things people ask about
Cost. VC Lab is free. No fees, no equity, and no obligation to use Decile's back office or fund administration later.
Your data. Fund data, LP contacts, commitments and deal activity stay private. Decile doesn't sell data. During the program a setting shares anonymized aggregates, which is where the published research on average check sizes comes from.
Location. The milestones don't change by region, and Kelly pushed back on the idea that they should. Managers hit them from everywhere, and the usual blocker is either incomplete commitment or a network that isn't there yet, which is a reason to build the network first rather than a reason the program won't work.
Max offered a reframe worth keeping. Your location is access that LPs may want. He's seen a South Korean bank write into a Silicon Valley fund purely for proximity to that culture, and the same logic runs in the other direction for managers in emerging markets.
Fund size. Set a target your network can actually reach. Raising $3 million and oversubscribing to $5 million tells a far better story than targeting $50 million and closing $3 million. If the economics are what's holding you back, look at the Start Fund, which has a minimum close of $100,000.
LinkedIn. Under 506(b) you can't promote a raise, but you can publish thought leadership, and Max has seen LPs read that, reach out to ask, and invest once they've inquired. Under 506(c) you can be direct, and he's seen checks over $100,000 originate on LinkedIn.
Capital moves at the speed of trust
Kelly closed on a line one of the LP mentors brought in, and then made it concrete.
Everyone says venture is a relationship business. What that means day to day is your say-do ratio. You show up to the call on time. You send the thing you said you'd send. When you don't know an answer, you say so and come back with it, rather than producing something that sounds good and isn't.
She suggested blocking time at the end of every day for replies and follow-ups, and separate time for outreach. An LP deciding whether to hand you money for a decade is reading those small signals long before they read your deck.
Watch the full session
How to Make the Most Out of VC Lab, recorded September 3, 2026 with Kelly Schricker and Max Harris. More sessions on the VC Lab YouTube channel.
Launch your own fund with VC Lab
Running the program this way, free and at this volume, is the point rather than a marketing tactic. Venture capital done right is one of the most powerful tools we have for solving hard problems, and the old apprenticeship route kept most of the people who could do it well out of the industry entirely. VC Lab has now helped launch 1,003 venture firms across more than 90 countries, at a scale nobody else is running.
Apply to VC Lab at govclab.com. If you want to learn how venture works before raising anything, start with Venture Institute. Managers raising funds two through four should look at the Emerging Institute, and anyone who wants to back funds rather than run one should look at the LP Institute.