The Venture Capital Investor Podcast with Fexingo: Startup Investing for Limited Partners

This episode of The Venture Capital Investor Podcast dives into the growing role of fund-level ESG scores in LP due diligence. Lucas and Luna unpack how institutional investors are integrating environmental, social, and governance metrics into venture fund selection, using real examples from the $1.2 trillion European pension fund APG and the industry-standard GRESB framework. They discuss why ESG...

Episode 78 of The Venture Capital Investor Podcast digs into distributions to paid-in capital, or DPI—the metric that tells limited partners how much cash has actually come back versus what they committed. Lucas and Luna examine why DPI matters more than IRR in mature funds, how it exposes the gap between paper returns and real money, and what a 0.5x DPI in year six means for an LP's portfolio. Th...

This episode of The Venture Capital Investor Podcast dives into the often-overlooked mechanics of net IRR waterfalls—how limited partners calculate their true returns after fees and carried interest. Lucas and Luna break down a real-world case: a $100 million fund targeting 22% gross IRR, but netting only 14.5% after a 20% carried interest and 2% management fee. They explore the waterfall structur...

Episode 76 of The Venture Capital Investor Podcast dives into an emerging due diligence tool: fund-level climate scenario analysis. Lucas and Luna break down how a growing number of Limited Partners are asking VC fund managers to model portfolio outcomes under different climate pathways—like a 2-degree Celsius warming scenario. They walk through a real example from a $600 million climate-tech fund...

Episode 75 of The Venture Capital Investor Podcast dives into a growing LP due diligence frontier: fund-level cybersecurity audits. Lucas and Luna break down why institutional investors—from CalPERS to university endowments—are now requiring venture firms to open up their own security posture, not just the portfolio companies'. They walk through a concrete case: how one $2 billion VC firm added a...

Episode 74 of The Venture Capital Investor Podcast explores a niche but powerful tool in LP due diligence: the manager compact. Lucas and Luna break down how a written compact between a VC firm and its LPs can clarify expectations around communication cadence, co-investment access, follow-on funding discipline, and key-person replacement. They walk through a concrete example from a $400 million Se...

In this episode of The Venture Capital Investor Podcast, Lucas and Luna explore how limited partners use co-investment rights to access high-conviction deals without paying management fees. They break down the mechanics of co-investment provisions in side letters, focusing on the tension between GPs and LPs over allocation size and governance. The hosts cite a 2025 study from the University of Chi...

Episode 72 of The Venture Capital Investor Podcast explores how limited partners are evaluating and sizing fund-level exposure to artificial intelligence. Lucas and Luna examine a specific case: a $200 million Series C AI startup that received bids at a 35% valuation haircut, and how LP capital is flowing into AI-focused venture funds. They discuss the rise of dedicated AI funds, the role of data...

Episode 71 of The Venture Capital Investor Podcast breaks down the rise of side letters in venture capital — the bespoke agreements between LPs and fund managers that secure preferential terms. Lucas and Luna explore a real-world case: a $50 million university endowment negotiating fee discounts, co-investment rights, and information access via a side letter in a top-tier VC fund. They explain why...

Lucas and Luna pull back the curtain on the LP-only breakfast — an invite-only gathering where limited partners share fund allocations, debate emerging managers, and sometimes commit capital before a fund even formally opens. Lucas explains how an LP breakfast at a recent VC conference in San Francisco led to a $15 million anchor commitment for a first-time climate-tech fund within six hours. The...

Episode 69 of The Venture Capital Investor Podcast explores a rising trend among limited partners: using fund-level insurance to hedge against downside risk in venture portfolios. Lucas and Luna break down how this works, using a concrete example of a $200 million fund that bought a policy protecting against catastrophic loss from a lead investor's fraud. They discuss the premium costs, typical co...

Most limited partners benchmark venture capital funds against a generic VC index — but that comparison tells you almost nothing about whether a specific GP is earning their fees. In episode 68 of The Venture Capital Investor Podcast, Lucas and Luna unpack a more rigorous approach: the reference portfolio. They walk through how the Yale Endowment builds a custom passive benchmark from public-market...

Episode 67 of The Venture Capital Investor Podcast with Fexingo dives into the nitty-gritty of how limited partners actually assess fund fees beyond the headline '2 and 20'. Lucas and Luna walk through a real-world case: the 2025 fundraise of a mid-size venture firm that proposed a 2.5% management fee with a 25% carry. They break down the key due diligence steps an LP takes, from benchmarking fee...

Episode 66 of The Venture Capital Investor Podcast explores how limited partners use fund-level data rooms to streamline due diligence before committing capital to venture funds. Lucas and Luna break down the anatomy of a modern data room — from track record spreadsheets to legal documents — and discuss why LPs are increasingly demanding standardized digital deal rooms. The episode highlights how...

In Episode 65 of The Venture Capital Investor Podcast, Lucas and Luna explore a controversial but increasingly relevant tool for limited partners: gaining crypto exposure through VC fund allocations. They break down how institutions like Yale Endowment and Fairfield County Teachers' Pension approached token allocations via venture funds rather than direct coin purchases, and discuss the structured...

In Episode 64 of The Venture Capital Investor Podcast, Lucas and Luna explore how sophisticated limited partners decompose a general partner's track record into its true alpha components. They break down the methodology behind attribution analysis — separating top-quartile returns that come from vintage year tailwinds versus genuine manager skill, and examining how LPs use cohort-level data, time-...

In this episode of The Venture Capital Investor Podcast, Lucas and Luna explore how limited partners are using secondary markets to sell their VC fund stakes for liquidity. They walk through a real-world example: a 2018 vintage fund stake that an LP sold on a secondary platform at a 12% discount to NAV. The hosts explain the mechanics of GP-led versus LP-led secondaries, the role of intermediary p...

Episode 62 of The Venture Capital Investor Podcast digs into a less-discussed but essential LP tool: fund-level liquidity metrics. Lucas and Luna explore how sophisticated limited partners—like the University of Texas Investment Management Company, which manages $65 billion—use metrics such as the percentage of unrealized NAV older than five years and the ratio of distributions to paid-in capital...

Episode 61 explores how limited partners increasingly scrutinize the general partner's own capital commitment as a key alignment indicator in venture capital fund selection. Lucas and Luna break down why LPs look for GP commitments of 1-5% of fund size, how that percentage signals conviction and skin-in-the-game, and what recent data from 2025-2026 vintage funds reveals about LP preferences. They...

Episode 60 dives into evergreen venture funds — open-ended vehicles that let limited partners maintain continuous exposure to venture capital without the traditional 10-year lockup. Lucas and Luna break down how these funds work, why they've grown from roughly $15 billion in 2020 to over $80 billion today, and what LPs should watch for: valuation smoothing, liquidity terms, and fee structures. The...

Lucas and Luna explore a little-known but increasingly important tool for limited partners: fund-level insurance. They break down how policies like 'management liability' and 'key person' coverage work in venture capital, why large LPs like CalPERS now require them, and what happens when a fund's GP dies or a portfolio company gets sued. Specific examples from the 2025-2026 vintage years show how...

In this episode, Lucas and Luna dive deep into GP-led restructurings, a growing tool for limited partners seeking liquidity in venture capital funds. They break down how these deals work using a real 2025 example: a $400 million single-asset continuation fund for a late-stage cybersecurity company. Lucas explains the mechanics—how GPs roll a top-performing startup out of an older fund into a new v...

Episode 57 of The Venture Capital Investor Podcast dives into how limited partners are increasingly using fund-level ESG scorecards to evaluate venture capital managers. Lucas and Luna break down a real-world example: the California-based public pension CalPERS, which in early 2026 began requiring all its VC fund managers to complete a standardized ESG questionnaire covering portfolio carbon footp...

Episode 56 of The Venture Capital Investor Podcast digs into an unconventional but increasingly used metric in LP due diligence: Net Promoter Scores from a VC fund's portfolio company founders. Lucas and Luna explore why NPS matters, how it correlates with returns and governance, and what LPs should look for when reviewing these scores. They reference a 2025 study from Top Quartile Insights showin...

Episode 55 of The Venture Capital Investor Podcast explores a little-known but increasingly important tool for limited partners: fund-level insurance policies that protect against downside risks like litigation, IP theft, and fraudulent GP behavior. Lucas and Luna walk through how these policies work, what they cost, and why some large institutional LPs are now requiring them as a condition of com...