Navigating Career Progression in Venture Capital

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 one real way to do succession, the importance of breaking good and bad news in a way that creates a performance culture, and whether or not they’re going to adopt Jessica’s policy of assigning letter grades to funds at Sapphire Partners.

Learn more about Sapphire Partners: sapphireventures.com/sapphire-partners

Learn more about OpenLP: openlp.vc

Learn more about Asylum Ventures: asylum.vc

Learn more about Top Tier Capital Partners: ttcp.com

Read Laura Thompson’s blog on why venture reserves aren’t always a good thing:

sapphireventures.com/blog/dirty-secret-venture-reserves-are-not-always-a-good-thing/

Read Laura Thompson’s blog on fund recycling:

sapphireventures.com/blog/fund-recycling-moves-the-needle-for-both-lps-and-gps-heres-how/

Read Laura Thompson’s blog on QSBS:

sapphireventures.com/blog/how-lps-gps-and-founders-can-leverage-qsbs-to-make-more-money/

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CHAPTERS:

(0:00) - Intro

(1:08) - Jessica Takes It In a Different Direction

(3:41) - Communicating with your LP base (So There Aren’t Surprises)

(7:15) - Franchise Funds Are Intentional

(9:44) - Getting to 1x DPI in Nine Years

(15:55) - 2x is the new 3x

(19:43) - Giving Funds Letter Grades