Gary Gauba

Most founders assume that power inside a VC firm follows title. It rarely does. Real authority in a venture partnership usually sits with whoever controls capital deployment, reserve allocation, and internal economics. The partner championing your deal may not control follow-on capital. The “co-lead” may not control investment committee votes. Carry structure may influence behaviour more than public branding ever will. I wrote about where power actually sits inside venture partnerships, and why understanding it matters before you take capital. When performance tightens, structure determines behaviour.

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Venture Capital Readiness Venture capital firms are not simply looking for ideas. They are professional investors focused on startups, microcaps, and SMEs that demonstrate scalability, disciplined execution, and a clear growth strategy. Because of this, they evaluate opportunities through a different lens. Beyond the product itself, venture capital investors assess: • Leadership capability and founder commitment • Product–market fit and early traction • Scalable business models • Operational discipline and execution strategy • Clear milestones and growth planning A generic approach rarely works. Many startups, microcaps, and SMEs with strong ideas still face challenges when engaging with venture capital investors. Often, the issue is not the idea—but the structure, strategy, or preparation behind it. At CapXUSA, our focus is on helping startups, microcaps, and SMEs strengthen their strategic positioning, refine their operational framework, and prepare to meet the expectations of professional investors. • Preparation builds credibility • Credibility opens meaningful conversations • Structure creates long-term opportunities Learn more: https://capxusa.com Subscribe to our LinkedIn newsletter for ongoing market insights: Capital Stack News https://shorturl.at/WkcVU #CapXUSA #VentureCapital #StartupPreparation #StartupStrategy #Microcaps #SMESupport #BusinessStructure #GovernanceMatters #StrategicAlignment #OperationalReadiness #LeadershipDiscipline #PreparedToGrow

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💵 Scoop: Sequoia alumni’s Ambition Capital set to raise $250 million for early-stage investing 📌 Former Peak XV Partners managing directors Shailesh Lakhani and Harshjit Sethi are launching Ambition Capital, an early-stage venture fund targeting a $250 million corpus. The pair is joined by Mayank Porwal, who was with Peak XV until 2023. 📌 The Bengaluru-based fund will back seed and Series A startups across sectors, including AI, fintech, deeptech, and consumer technology. The firm plans to make 26-30 investments, with themes such as digital sovereignty and India-specific innovation guiding its strategy. By Samidha Sharma & Pranav Mukul

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Your VC is not always your VC. A partner champions your deal, takes the board seat and builds conviction internally. Then they leave the fund. The fund remains on your cap table. The conviction may not. That can affect follow-on reserves, bridge support, board dynamics, introductions and how strongly your company is defended inside the partnership. Founders diligence the fund. They should also diligence key-person risk. Before signing, understand: Who owns the relationship beyond your deal champion? What happens to the board seat if they leave? Who controls follow-on and reserve decisions? Build relationships with more than one partner before you need them. Capital belongs to the fund. Conviction often belongs to the person. NUK! #VentureCapital #Founders #Fundraising #Startups

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There are timelines VC firms are LEGALLY bound to. Here’s what they are: There are tight deadlines VC firms adhere to in order to keep money flowing for their Limited Partners (LPs). It’s one of the reasons why established VCs move quickly to close deals. Below is an overview of the key timelines every fund must operate within 👇 ⸻ 🕐 FUNDRAISING (12–24 months) A VC firm’s first fund typically takes 12–24 months from first close to final close. It begins with a first close, where a portion of capital is called in, followed by subsequent rolling closes while deployment starts in parallel. ❌ Extending fundraising beyond 24 months signals weak momentum to LPs and makes raising a successor fund extremely difficult. SIDE NOTE: Management fees cannot be taken up front. They must be spread over at least two years. Typical schedule: • Years 1–4: 2.5–3.5% • Years 5–10: 1–1.5% • Average: ~2% per year over the fund’s life ⸻ 💸 INVESTING (3–4 years) The investment period generally runs about four years from the first close. This is when the fund’s committed capital is deployed into startups to build the portfolio. There is typically an overlap in the early years, when managers are both fundraising for Fund I and deploying capital simultaneously. Capital calls occur throughout this period, usually with 10–14 days’ notice. ❌ Missing the investment window signals execution challenges and undermines LP confidence. Limited Partners expect their committed capital to be deployed productively, not left idle for long stretches of time. Idle capital reflects poor fund management and weak operational discipline. ⸻ 📊 PORTFOLIO MANAGEMENT (Years 1–10) Portfolio management begins the moment the first investment is made and continues throughout the fund’s entire life. There are two main phases: A. Active phase (Years 1–6): Portfolio tracking, quarterly updates, founder support, and board participation. B. Harvest phase (Years 5–10): Managing exits, returning capital to LPs, and documenting the fund’s track record. Most funds follow a 10-year lifecycle, which mirrors the typical startup journey from seed to exit. This gives VCs enough time to invest, manage, and return capital effectively. Most funds use one or two extensions. ❌ Requiring extensions beyond 12 years usually indicates deeper portfolio issues and can significantly damage credibility for future fundraising efforts. ✅ On the flip side, if by year 3-4 you're already starting to see a couple of markups and have deployed the majority of the fund, you can start thinking about fund 2!   ⸻ ⏰ REFLECTION ON TIME Ten years for a Fund I can seem long at first, until they're not. That's why in their song 'Time' Pink Floyd wrote: The fund is young and its life is long There's always time to kill today And then one day you find Ten years have got behind you That's why I'm telling you to run 💜

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There are a lot of NPCs in venture capital.  "Our proprietary deal flow enables us to invest in category-defining companies that reshape the world, blah blah blah". It is our opinion that many pre-seed investors don’t understand the triggers that tell them to “Go!” on deals. Sure, they have some canned answers, but the truth is that most VCs just fall in love with a founder for a variety of reasons, subconsciously decide to invest, and work backwards to write the investment memo. Like a Texas landman wildcatting for oil by drilling on random spots that “feel good”. And ego too… it's natural to want to beat a competitive firm chasing a deal, but it's not investing. This is not us. We're drawn to a patch of land that we uniquely understand, and we’re punching all our holes in it.  Going into our 4th full year, we have a machine that's dialed to self-select, filter, and repeatedly invest in a distinct breed of person. We don't care what other investors are doing, I assure you we aren't paying attention. absolute focus nuclear work ethic obsessive curiosity delusional conviction radical agency undeniable competence highly opinionated etc. Then we bring them to an island where they race to $1m+ in revenue with 60+ other portco founders for 75-100 weeks. Hyperbolic and extreme? Yes. But this founder profile sure has created a lot of +500X outcomes. Jason Calacanis will opine on All-In about the reasons he “knew” Uber would become a $100B company when he invested on a $5m cap. In private, I bet he’d admit he had no idea. He just knew Travis Kalanick was a killer. Jason wasn’t right about Uber; he was right about Travis, and got lucky when Uber had legs. The idea has to be huge, but we think pre-seed investors who continue to try and pick companies will struggle going forward. Technology is changing too fast for snapshot opinions to be relevant in 10 years. People don't change though. This is why we invest in Travises, not Ubers. Since 2022, we’ve offered 56 term sheets and 53 have accepted. That's a pretty high hit rate given our odd and inconvenient terms. Last year we saw 3,500 decks and applications. This year we processed just shy of 10,000 and will be raising our third fund to do it all over again. We are going to be the best at attracting and picking extreme & competent founders at pre-seed, and betting on getting absurdly, outrageously lucky on more companies because of it. justlaybrick.com

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A great way to kick off SuperReturn!   Thank you to everyone who joined us for 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗘𝗰𝗼𝘀𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺 𝗘𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗰𝘁, our exclusive Motive Partners event in partnership with S&P Global.   We were delighted to bring together investors, operators, innovators, and industry leaders for a half-day program filled with rich content, engaging discussions, and valuable perspectives on the future of financial services and private markets.   A special thank you to our partners at S&P Global and to Sally Moore, whose partnership, leadership, and collaboration helped make this event possible.   The caliber of speakers and participants made for an exceptional afternoon. We were fortunate to hear from a group of thoughtful leaders who shared insights on the forces reshaping markets, investment models, technology, and the broader financial ecosystem.   One of the central themes of the event was the power of the ecosystem. As financial services continue to evolve, no company operates in isolation. The most successful firms will be those that can harness the strength of interconnected networks – bringing together capital, technology, AI, data, expertise, innovation and distribution to create better outcomes for clients and investors. That's the Ecosystem Effect. We also explored one of the most important questions facing our industry today: What must private markets get right to truly become Main Street? The discussion covered everything from access, transparency, and investor experience to the infrastructure required to support broader participation in private markets. As the lines between public and private markets continue to blur, the opportunity to expand access while maintaining trust, performance, and simplicity will be one of the defining challenges – and opportunities – of the next decade.   What left me most encouraged was the quality of the dialogue and the optimism in the room. There is no shortage of innovation happening across our industry, and while significant work remains, I am optimistic about what lies ahead. The future of private markets will be shaped by firms willing to collaborate, build stronger ecosystems, and create solutions that serve a broader set of investors.   Thank you again to everyone who participated, shared their perspectives, and helped make the event such a success. Looking forward to continuing these conversations at SuperReturn and beyond! Sally Moore, Andrew Tarver, Marc Andrew, Chris Sparenberg, Andy Stewart, Andrea Wildsmith, Umesh Subramanian, Nick Leopard, Chris Ford, Ramin Niroumand, Chris Nobles, Joan Kehoe, Arik Oslerne, Kyle Roemer, Enrico Ohnemüller, Jannine Ravens, Jake Walker, CFA, Scott Kauffman, Laurens Hamerlinck, Hugo Bongers, Motive Partners, S&P Global, InvestCloud, Inc., The Private Markets Forum, Mercer, Wilshire, Accordion, Electric Mind, BetaNXT, Alchelyst, Steward, bunch, ABN AMRO Bank N.V., With Intelligence, Apollo Global Management, Inc.

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US Equity Views - the trajectory of AI capex and the next beneficiaries of corporate AI adoption - The 3Q earnings season has catalyzed another move higher in AI capex estimates alongside renewed investor concerns surrounding the risks associated with the AI investment boom with consensus 2026 capex estimates for the AI hyperscalers (AMZN, GOOGL, META, MSFT, and ORCL) raising from $467 billion (+20% yoy growth) at the start of the earnings season to $533 billion today (+34% yoy). Our US strategist, Ryan Hammond notes that the "AI trade" has remained concentrated within the infrastructure complex, but return dispersion across that complex has increased. He highlights AI Platform stocks, which should experience direct revenue tailwinds from increasing corporate AI adoption and also runs a screen of potential AI Productivity Beneficiaries with elevated labour costs and high wage exposure to AI automation that have recently mentioned AI efficiency on their earnings calls.

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Over the past year, I’ve seen a noticeable shift in how founders are thinking about capital. For many, going public is no longer a distant end goal but a viable step in the growth journey. A strong IPO market is giving companies the ability to raise growth capital while also offering liquidity to long-standing shareholders. At the same time, fewer startups are chasing very large late-stage rounds. Instead, there is steady momentum in pre-IPO, mid-sized, and early-stage funding, with venture capital continuing to find its way into businesses that are ready to scale with discipline. This combination is important. When founders can move between private markets, public markets, M&A, and structured debt with clarity, the ecosystem becomes stronger and more resilient. That is a sign of progress worth paying attention to. Read more: https://lnkd.in/gAUBXX4e Entrepreneur Media India #StartupEcosystem #CapitalFormation #IPOs #VentureCapital #IndiaGrowth

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