Institutional capital isn't a bigger check. It's a different game entirely.
This series covers what emerging managers need to understand about institutional LPs: who they are, how they actually find GPs, and what they evaluate when they do. Fund I managers won't get their capital. Many enduring VC firms never will. The ones who eventually do get institutional capital behaved like institutional-grade operators long before anyone institutional was watching.
In this Center of Excellence:
- Part 1: What Institutional LPs Are — and Why Most VCs Won't Get Their Capital
- Part 2: What Institutional LPs Actually Evaluate — Once They're Looking
Part 1: What Institutional LPs Are — and Why Most VCs Won't Get Their Capital
- Institutional LPs are professional allocators managing 200 to 300 fund relationships - they're usually NOT looking for you and NOT engaging based on cold inbound.
- Cold outreach almost never works. The filter is structural, not personal. The path in runs through referrals, original thinking, and a digital footprint that makes you findable.
- Read the full resource here.
Part 2: What Institutional LPs Actually Evaluate — Once They're Looking
- Institutional LP diligence runs on two parallel tracks: fund administration and deals. Both are pass/fail. Strong deals do not save weak admin.
- The question that catches most GPs unprepared isn't about their best deal or their worst — it's about the middle one. Whether you can speak fluently about a modest exit tells an LP everything about how engaged you actually are.
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Read the full resource here.
Our institutional LP advisory network
Decile Group has institutional LP advisors who have collectively invested in 200+ GPs across fund cycles. Their perspective on what separates managers who earn institutional capital from those who don't is available on request to top-performing early fund managers in the Decile Partner network.
About Decile Group's Centers of Excellence
Decile Group believes AI is changing how the venture ecosystem works, but there's no substitute for deep human expertise. That's why we build Centers of Excellence around practitioners who have done the work.
This content is open source because a better-informed ecosystem benefits everyone. Decile Partners get more than the articles. They get direct access to the experts behind them.