Thread by @close_first

We green lit 2 more investments into venture funds today. Last week, we had initial calls with new managers about their funds & also spent time with other LPs sharing deal flow, serving as references & discussing the diligence we had done on funds under mutual consideration

We’ve watched several funds in which we were early LPs garner some additional institutional investors, which has been great to see.
We also added 3 friends in Europe to our partnership.

It has been great to work together meeting additional underrepresented managers in venture. Our pipeline is larger than we expected & we want to be respectful of all the managers who reach out. It’s definitely been taking us longer to cycle through to arrange initial calls

We’ve reviewed >60 VC funds. Our process entails reviewing decks, doing 📱/zooms, “off book” reference checks & reviewing portfolio companies & portfolio construction. We also call upon subject matter & geography experts. Admiral @reginabenjamin reviews all our health tech funds

We still have > 100 venture funds in our pipeline. We have also been refining our rubric (which @joshk has helped with) & our rules. It’s important to us that the venture capital firms in which we invest are owned by the #underrepresented managers (URMs) running the funds, b/c

It’s important to us that the URMs managing the funds are building enduring venture capital firms and personal wealth for themselves - that wealth-creation is a crucial component. We also want at least half the GPs & economics to be URMs (in any given fund).

Would it be helpful for us to name some funds in which we’ve now invested/committed in
🇺🇸
Africa &
Europe?
We’re looking for more
- Black fund managers in Europe
- 🏳️‍🌈 lgbtq+ managers

What else would you like to know about First Close Partners?
DM us or email via our site
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