Beezer Clarkson of Sapphire Partners on the #OpenLP effort, How to Pitch LP’s, & what she sees in the venture ecosystem - Venture Unlocked 021

On today’s show we have Beezer Clarkson, Managing Director of Sapphire Partners, the LP arm of Sapphire Ventures. Not only does Beezer have tremendous depth and insight into the world of VC, but she catalyzed the #OpenLP movement, which looks to bring transparency within the LP world. She’s someone I’ve known for nearly a decade and one of the smartest minds in the LP world. Beezer began her career in financial services over 20 years ago at Morgan Stanley in its global infrastructure group. Since, she has held various direct and indirect venture investment roles, as well as operational roles in software business development at Hewlett Packard. Prior to joining Sapphire in 2012, Beezer managed the day-to-day operations of the Draper Fisher Jurvetson Global Network.Additionally, she is a judge for 100&Change, a MacArthur Foundation competition that provides funding to solve critical challenges of our time. In 2014, she was named to the Forty Over 40 list of women to watch.Today's Venture Unlocked is brought to you by Aumni. Aumni has helped well over 100 venture firms of all sizes unlock the truth of their portfolio holding. Using a combination of a team of expert lawyers and AI, Aumni’s platform extracts the key granular level detail contained in deal documents to give managers absolute visibility into their portfolio holdings. As a manager using Aumni, you’ll be able to make portfolio management decisions quickly, accurately, and with more confidence. In this episode we discuss the following topics:01:51    Beezer’s journey into VC03:50    Launch of Sapphire Partners as a fund for predominantly Series A funds05:46    What’s changed (or not changed) in Venture over the last 15 years?06:56    What “value-add” means in today’s marketplace11:27    How she evaluates managers and performance. 14:40    Does past performance really act as an indicator for future fund success?17:25    Her thought process in bringing on a new manager (or not following on an existing manager)21:22    How to get Sapphire’s attention to invest24:41    What is Minimum Viable Fund size and when to do a first close27:33    Giving away economics to get early LP’s; the pros and cons33:29    What is the diversity audit and OpenLP35:35  Diversity in emerging manager firms vs. established. 39:03    Best career advice she heard as an LP. 40:45    Her biggest missed fund opportunity42:15    The best advice for GPs pitching her for the first timeMentioned in this episode:Sapphire PartnersI’d love to know what you took away from this conversation with Beezer. Follow me @SamirKaji and give me your insights and questions with the hashtag #ventureunlocked. If you’d like to be considered as a guest or have someone you’d like to hear from (GP or LP), drop me a direct message on Twitter.Podcast Production support provided by Agent Bee Agency This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ventureunlocked.substack.com