Most emerging managers think about IR as something that happens after you’ve raised. The firms getting to yes faster have figured out it starts much earlier, and the person running the finance function is often the one making it happen.
We brought together four people who live at that intersection for a conversation on what venture CFOs and GPs leading finance are actually doing in IR and fundraising right now, what institutional LPs quietly notice, and how smaller firms can punch above their weight without a full team behind them.
Caleb Ollech spent nine years on the LP side, first at TrueBridge Capital Partners, then leading the $1B venture program at Johns Hopkins’ endowment. He’s now part of the Venture5 team, focused on LP and emerging manager content.
Tom Balderston is a General Partner at Bullish, a firm that pairs capital with brand and marketing resources. Tom also leads the finance function at the firm and is currently investing out of Fund 3.
Dave Rivinus is Founding Partner and Head of IR, COO, and CFO at 01 Advisors. Before venture, he ran investor relations at Yahoo and Twitter, and he’s brought that public-market discipline to the fund side. We interviewed Dave earlier this year as well, and you can find that interview here.
Ihar Valodzin leads CRM product at Carta, where he’s building the tools venture and private capital firms use to manage LP relationships, deal flow, and investor reporting. He previously founded ListAlpha, a CRM platform for private capital, which Carta acquired. Thanks to Ihar and the Carta team for sponsoring.
Scroll down to watch the recap (or just keep reading for a summary) 👇
Presented by Carta
Building the ERP for private capital
Nobody built software for the Fund CFO. While Fortune 1000s have ERPs, Fund CFOs rely on spreadsheets and legacy providers.
Carta closes this gap. By connecting the startup, investor, and LP, we’ve moved fund administration into a single source of truth. It’s the first ERP for Private Capital—giving you total control over your data.
The Question Behind Every LP Question
LPs ask about track record, team, fund size, and GP commitment. But Caleb was direct about what’s really being evaluated:
“The gist of what we’re trying to get at with all of those things is, do you understand your business well? Can you define the opportunity set where you have a durable advantage?”
Institutional LPs aren’t underwriting you for the next two years. They’re architecting for a 2-, 3-, 4-fund relationship, meaning they’re asking whether they can believe in you for 10 to 15 years.
Dave put an even finer point on it: “right to win” is consistently the most differentiating argument a GP can make. Not just as a marketing exercise, but as the actual thesis for how the firm will generate returns. Caleb’s framework for evaluating that: better top-of-funnel and sourcing network, analytical rigor, and fund size that’s genuinely matched to the opportunity. If your fund is four or five times too large for your best ideas, that’s going to catch up with you.
Early DPI Is Overrated, and Maybe a Yellow Flag
The question of manufactured DPI ahead of a fundraise came up, and Caleb’s take was more nuanced than you might expect.
“TVPI is a projection and DPI is the verdict, and really in venture, those numbers don’t coalesce into a trend that you can actually have any significant predictive meaning until, like, year 8, 9, and 10.”
His analysis at TrueBridge found that some of the best funds in their portfolio were also the worst from a DPI standpoint, because they had concentrated into compounders that took 14 to 18 years to return capital, and when they did, it came back at 200x.
Dave agreed DPI gets too much focus, but reframed the conversation: a forecast is more useful than a DPI number in isolation. If you’re recycling capital and have 110% of your commitment invested with zero DPI, that’s a story worth telling, as long as you’re explaining why. Tom added that LPs are increasingly split on liquidity timelines, with some comfortable at 10-14 years and others pushing for 5-9. The concentration question matters too: when two portfolio companies are driving 60% of a fund’s value, LPs want to understand your thinking on those names specifically.
Your Reporting Is Your Next Fundraise
Most GPs treat LP reporting as a compliance function. Caleb reframed it as one of the most underutilized tools in fundraising.
The firms doing this well don’t just send quarterly charts and graphs, they layer on strategic commentary. What’s the liquidity outlook? Where will value accrue from here? Is the strategy working? That narrative, coming from the finance function, is distinct from anything the investment team delivers and helps LPs stay oriented between fundraises.
Tom’s approach: bucket portfolio companies into tiers (exceeding, meeting, and not meeting expectations) and use scenario modeling to show what happens to fund value if a key company exits at a given valuation. It brings LPs closer to the portfolio without overwhelming them, and it answers the question they’re always quietly asking: are you on track?
Dave’s addition was simple and direct: anticipate the conclusions someone might draw from your reporting, and address them proactively rather than waiting for the questions.
The CRM Pipeline Should Be Boring on Purpose
Dave described the fundraising CRM process as chaos that has to be actively managed, and Ihar gave a pointed piece of advice on pipeline stages: keep it simple.
Five stages is enough. Prospecting, first meeting, data room, soft circle, close. The temptation to build an elaborate Kanban with conditional checkboxes and multi-stage progressions is mostly fake rigor, and it comes at the cost of time better spent on top-of-funnel. Ihar’s guidance, shaped by onboarding funds from sub-$10M all the way to multi-billion-dollar platforms: nail your process before you buy software. Prove you can execute the basics, and only then worry about tooling.
Tom’s workflow: a lightweight CRM linked into Gmail, with consistent follow-up hooks tied to real news: a portfolio company exit, a new investment, a market take. The follow-up is where the art is.
“Give your POV all day long, more, more, more and more. They just want to see your point of view.”
Caleb’s addition for later-stage prospects already in your data room: a brief, proactive broadcast message when your ODD file or track record gets updated. Low friction, keeps you on the radar, and signals that your process is organized, without explicitly asking for a follow-up call.
The full conversation went deeper on operational due diligence prep, how to use AI to knock out DDQ responses, co-investment as a strategic LP relationship tool, and how Bullish built a custom GPT to let select LPs query their data room directly. Watch the full video above.
