Camilo Acosta

The only reason your firm exists is because you have

been able to bring LPs into your capital base, and stewarded that capital well, and then continue to market your performance and your ability to continue doing that over and over and over again.

Venture, if you look at the studies about successful venture firms starting all the way back

Sequoia, etc.

They are successful today because of the success they had in the past, and they continued marketing of that success.

And a lot of venture managers don't like marketing and they don't like fundraising and they don't like investor relations.

But that's the key to building a successful firm.

I think the key to being a successful venture manager is having a very strong network.

And people think that that just means a founder network.

I think that's half of it.

And the other half is having a strong LP network.

Again, if you don't have the money, you're not an investor.

So you have to have a strong LP network to begin with.

It just happened in terms of how my life came together, my career, that I did know a lot of LPs and I had raised money as a founder.

So I already knew how to do that.

So I already had the network built in to go out, tap it and start my firm.

And from there,

Word spreads.

LPs are very insular, talkative group of people.

They like to share their deal flow in terms of venture managers that they're finding.