Aspiring VCs, how to kick off your fund?
I am Jin from Shogun Capital, a seed-stage VC firm focused on supporting Asian startups through our accelerator program. We set up a fund management company as a GP in September. Meanwhile, we are working on our fund idea and finalize it to kickoff: many legal, jurisdiction, and financial regulatory. As I am learning it, I will share things that might be useful for anyone, especially for the first time fund manager. This year, we started to raise our seed-stage venture capital firm. Any of my learning related to a venture capital fund and industry-related things., I will share it.
Who could be the first time fund manager, and what type of people become it?
Here are the types of cohorts:
- Angel investors before, and decided to raise money from other investors/LPs
- Ex-Fund manager for different funds and you are planning to launch your fund
- Ex-startup founders or executive who sold your business to other companies
If you are in the first category, you can add your investment performance as a part of your traction as you invested in your Portfolio before. Even if you give up your angel investment and move to under the fund, I think your fund already has a track record of this.
If you are in the second category, I think it depends on your agreement with a previous firm, and you may be added to your pitch deck and declare that could be your traction or experience. As it is not your fund yet, nuance is challenging to tell clearly.
The last one, you don’t have any fund or investment-related experience. In this case, you should maximize your career background: previously founder, CTO, operators, or a part of hyper-growth startups.
In many ways, a fund manager needs to have a great pitch deck. I feel the difficulties for a first-time fund manager comes from a lack of traction record and network to raise money. Network, you can build and reach out to potential LPs. But for the traction is challenging to create. If raising the fund may take more time, investing as an SPV could be an option for you to start to invest in startups and have traction and Portfolios. In my case, I add my founder background as well as my previous firm’s experience too. This is just the beginning of our journey.
Here is my social media account, if you are interested in this:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/JinHTanaka
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jintanaka/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Jin.Gino.H.Tanaka
Thanks!
