Origins: Inside Venture Capital

Nina Achadjian is a Partner at Index Ventures, where she invests across seed, venture, and growth stages in AI, enterprise software, and vertical SaaS. She sits down with Beezer Clarkson, LP at Sapphire Partners, and the two discuss Nina’s predictions for M&A in 2025, the importance of product market fit and what Nina looks for in a new hire. Plus, the two dig into Index’s recent IPO with Serv...

Origins host Beezer Clarkson sits down with her colleague Laura Thompson, fellow LP and Partner at Sapphire Partners, to riff on her recent conversation with Thomas Kristensen, Partner at LGT Capital Partners. Together they discuss 2025’s sluggish exit market, and whether or not that’s a sign that venture is broken. They also discuss the importance of reinventing yourself to stay current with the...

Thomas Kristensen, Partner at LGT Capital Partners, has decades of experience backing the top players in venture, but as an LP, doesn’t love the term "franchise fund.” He sits down with Bezer Clarkson,  Partner at Sapphire Partners, to discuss why GPs can’t rest on their laurels, that being a franchise shouldn’t be every VC’s ultimate goal, and how LPs can dig deep to find firms with a great...

Beezer Clarkson, LP at Sapphire Partners, revisits her conversation from 2023 with David Clark, Investment Director at VenCap International plc. In this episode, she and co-host Nick Chirls, Partner at Asylum Ventures, dive into David’s nearly four decades of experience in investing in some of the most established VC funds across the US, Europe, China and India. David shares historical figures on...

Origins host Beezer Clarkson sits down with her colleague Laura Thompson, fellow LP and Partner at Sapphire Partners, to unpack her recent conversation with Jessica Archibald, a GP at Top Tier Capital. They discuss Jessica’s engineering-based analytical approach to answering the question “what makes a franchise?” and discuss some surprising things they learned - Jessica’s view that there’s only on...

Jessica Archibald is a GP and member of the Investment Committee at Top Tier Capital Partners, where she is co lead of the funds team and participates extensively in the capital formation efforts of the firm. She and Beezer Clarkson, LP at Sapphire Partners, sit down for the next episode in this miniseries on franchise funds - what it takes to build one, and how some firms lose their franchise sta...

Origins host Beezer Clarkson sits down with her colleague Laura Thompson, fellow LP and Partner at Sapphire Partners, to discuss her recent conversation with Stephen Bluestein, Partner of Primary Investments at Adams Street and formerly Packard Foundation, about what it takes to make (and potentially later break) a franchise fund in venture. Together, Beezer and Laura debrief their top takeaways,...

Stephen Bluestein has had an impressive career in Venture, beginning at Bessemer Venture Partners before moving to TCV, Light Street Capital, and the David and Lucille Packard Foundation, before landing in his current role as a partner in the primary investment team at Adams Street Partners. He sits down with Beezer Clarkson, LP at Sapphire Partners, to discuss what makes a fund a franchise. They...

Nick Chirls, GP at Asylum Ventures,  and Beezer Clarkson, LP at Sapphire Partners go deep into their recent conversation with Wesley Chan, the Co-Founder and Managing Partner of FPV Ventures. They unpack Wesley’s direct learnings from Sergey Brin coming up at Google, how it is the job of the investor to spot greatness, his views on company pivots (and how they oppose another recent guest, Mike Map...

Wesley Chan is a true legend in Silicon Valley. He spent time at Microsoft and HP, and in 2002 he jumped to Google. There, he worked as Sergey Brin’s Chief of Staff and founded Google Analytics and Google Voice - all before then founding and leading the seed investing program at Google Ventures as GP. Under his tenure, GV was the first institutional check into companies like Plaid, Gusto, Lucid, a...

Nick Chirls, GP at Asylum Ventures,  and Beezer Clarkson, LP at Sapphire Partners, unpack their recent conversation with Jai Das, President + Partner at Sapphire Ventures and Mike Maples, Co-Founder + Partner at Floodgate,  to answer their burning question: What changes in the way seed and growth investors think, and what stays the same? They discuss the crushing importance of team no matter the s...

With a few dozen software exits under his belt (including Box, Square, Mulesoft & JFrog), nobody knows enterprise investing like Sapphire Ventures’ President + PartnerJai Das. Likewise, Floodgate co-founder + Partner Mike Maples Jr. is often credited with pioneering seed investing as we know it, with names like Twitter, Twitch and Lyft in his portfolio. Together, they join Nick Chirls, GP at A...

A look at what’s to come on a brand new season of Origins , where we’ll dive into the VC ecosystem with the people who know it best, to learn how the people behind the capital really make decisions. Learn more about Sapphire Partners: https://sapphireventures.com/sapphire-partners/ Learn more about Asylum Ventures: https://asylum.vc Origins is produced by Sapphire Ventures in partnership with ⁠⁠ P...

Nick Chirls, GP at Asylum Ventures,  and Beezer Clarkson, LP at Sapphire Partners, go inside their recent conversation with Alt Capital’s Jack Altman to answer their burning question: What  does the journey look like from VC-backed founder to angel investor to institutional VC? How does one successfully jump from investing their own capital to taking on LP dollars? Where is Jack comfortable taking...

Jack Altman of Alt Capital has led quite a life in Silicon Valley. He’s gone from angel investing to founding a venture-backed company (HR platform Lattice), back to angel investing today, taking on outside capital as an institutional investor at Alt Capital. Jack sits down with Nick Chirls, GP at Asylum Ventures  & Beezer Clarkson, LP at Sapphire Partners, to discuss learnings from his impres...

Nick & Beezer go inside their recent conversation with Jason Shuman and Will Quist to discuss the right way to be a contrarian investor, how to do no harm as a VC, and dive into the answer to their burning question: do VCs actually add value? Learn more about Sapphire Partners: https://sapphireventures.com/sapphire-partners/ Learn more about Notation Capital: https://notation.vc/ Learn more ab...

What do Primary GP Jason Shuman and Slow Ventures Partner Will Quist have in common? At first glance, not much, given how differently their firms approach firm building and VC "platforms." At Primary, their Impact team outnumbers investors 2:1, while Slow consists of 3 GPs, and 3 GPs only. But in a surprising twist, they agree on more than one would expect.  They both see non-consensus investing a...

Joanna Rupp, Managing Director of Private Equity at the University of Chicago, sits down with Nick & Beezer to shine a light on the often opaque world of endowments, including what separates an endowment from a foundation, how they consider small funds v. big funds and the fallout from an avalanche of capital being thrown at VCs. Then (announcement!) Joanna and Beezer evaluate Nick’s new ventu...

Nick and Beezer sit down with Frank Rotman, a founding partner and CIO at QED Investors to talk about his early days as the chief credit officer of Capital One, the fundamental flaw in the way founders and investors have been funding startups, the purpose associates serve and how those associates can better their skills, and how VCs can avoid being left in the exhaust of larger firms. Learn more a...

In the first Origins episode of the year, ⁠Nick Chirls⁠ (Notation Capital) and ⁠Beezer Clarkson⁠ (Sapphire Partners) host Scott Kupor , a Managing Partner at Andreessen Horowitz. In his role as managing partner, Scott invests in growth-stage companies building in the bio and healthcare industries, manages the firm’s investor relations team, and is responsible for the firm’s growth initiatives.  Sc...

In the last Origins episode of the year, Nick Chirls (Notation Capital) and Beezer Clarkson (Sapphire Partners) host David Clark , Investment Director at VenCap International plc. With nearly four decades of experience in investing, David has backed some of the most established VC funds across the US, Europe, China and India and shares historical figures on where to find performance in venture. Da...

In this episode of Origins, Nicholas Chirls (Notation) and Beezer Clarkson (Sapphire Partners) host Ed Sim, founder of Boldstart and Seyonne Kang, Partner at StepStone. Ed is the founder of boldstart ventures, a day-one partner and true believer for developer first, enterprise infra, & SaaS founders. He is currently a board member/observer of Snyk, Blockdaemon, Kustomer (sold to Meta), BigID,...

Beezer Clarkson of Sapphire Partners and Nick Chirls of Notation host Adam Valkin, Managing Director of General Catalyst at their NYC office. Adam Valkin is a Managing Director at General Catalyst. Adam leads the firm's global early-stage practice and co-led its international expansion. He has been at GC for over ten years after joining the firm from Accel London. He has a uniquely global pers...

Melissa Lucas currently serves as the CIO for the investment vehicles of two extended families. She has decades of experience handling the unique investment needs of extended families, and investing across asset classes from venture capital to credit to equities. Prior to her work for families, she spent nearly a decade working at several subsidiaries of The Capital Group – first, as an investment...

Origins is a podcast about the VC and LP ecosystem, co-hosted by Nick Chirls of Notation and Beezer Clarkson of Sapphire Partners. We're joined by our guest Beth Ferreira, a Partner at FirstMark focused on seed and Series A investing in a broad range of consumer companies, including next-generation commerce, consumer tech, and mobile startups. Prior to FirstMark, Beth was the Managing Partner...