Closing the deal isn’t the end. It’s the beginning of a long relationship.
Follow-up involves protecting your investment, supporting founders, and keep-ing LPs informed. The quality of your follow-up determines not just portfolio outcomes, but also your reputation as a disciplined, trusted, long-term partner.
Follow-up involves protecting your investment, supporting founders, and keep-ing LPs informed. The quality of your follow-up determines not just portfolio outcomes, but also your reputation as a disciplined, trusted, long-term partner.
This article outlines how to safeguard your position, add value without overreaching, maintain strong LP communication, and use post-investment insight to refine your dealflow strategy.
Protect Your Investment
Once the deal closes, your first responsibility is making sure the investment you’ve made stays protected.
- Monitor company health. Stay aware of key developments, challenges, and pivots. Establish a regular cadence of updates, even informal, to spot red flags early.
- Stay aware of follow-on rounds. To track the performance of your portfolio, and to log markups, knowing about follow-on rounds (and having proper documentation) is critical.
- Ensure terms are respected. Verify that the reporting, information, and governance rights you negotiated are upheld. Protect your ownership, but do so professionally and with the relationship in mind.
Example: A seed investor keeps in touch with a portfolio founder through occasional texts and quick calls, not just formal quarterly updates. When a major investor offers toxic terms in a follow-on round, the founder texts the seed investor to ask for advice and help. Because trust was built early, the investor can act fast, protecting both the company and her investment.
Support the Portfolio Actively
Every fund defines its own approach to founder support. The goal isn’t to control or guide. It’s to ensure you stay aware of what’s going on with your investments - and where needed, protect and support them.
- Choose your level of involvement. Some funds provide deep operational help. Others focus on introductions, partnerships, or strategic positioning. Match your approach to your fund’s model and bandwidth.
- Add value where invited. Offer support that founders genuinely want. Make it clear they can accept or decline. Respect autonomy. Even the best-intentioned help can distract founders.
- Do no harm. Burning out a founder by pressuring them for unrealistic growth isn't going to be helpful. It is more likely to harm than hurt, and harms your reputation, which may limit your access to future deals. Check in with your founders on a human level. Make it clear you’ve got their back.
Example: A fintech investor makes key introductions to potential customers in the weeks and months after making an investment. The founder leverages these introductions to make sales, and the investor strengthens trust without taking control.
Communicate with LPs
Transparent communication with LPs builds confidence and alignment. It shows that your process continues beyond the close.
- Report progress simply. You don’t need to model returns for every round. Clear, factual updates like valuations, round sizes, or milestone progress speak for themselves.
- Frame results in context. Celebrate wins, but also explain learning moments. LPs value honesty more than perfection.
- Keep cadence consistent. Whether through quarterly updates or newsletters, regularity builds credibility.
Example: A fund that invested $1M in a $10M seed round via SAFE shares a simple update in its LP newsletter: “Company X raised its next SAFE round at a $25M valuation - we got in at $10M.” Don’t overthink it. Just provide clarity that the company is advancing and the thesis is working.
Refine Your Dealflow Approach
Post-investment follow-up is a feedback loop for every step of your dealflow. What you learn from portfolio behavior should sharpen how you source, filter, and decide in the future.
- Sourcing. Identify the sources of your best-performing deals. Double down on those channels.
- Filtering. Notice which early signals actually predicted success. This might be traction quality, founder communication, or customer love. Recalibrate your filters accordingly.
- Diligence. Compare your initial diligence assumptions to actual outcomes. Which risks materialized, and which didn’t? Tighten your future checklists to focus on what truly matters.
- Decision-Making. Review your memos. Were you right with your Bets? Has the company made progress on key weaknesses you identified for improvement?
- Execution. Reflect on negotiation outcomes. Did trust built during dealmaking translate into smoother follow-up? Use that insight to improve how you structure and close future deals.
Example: After a year of portfolio reviews, a VC realizes that while most of her dealflow comes from accelerators, her best performing companies have come from universities where she has deep academic ties. She redirects sourcing efforts there, and uses her follow-up data to refine what “high-conviction” signals really look like in practice.