How should I use references during a VC fundraise?

The five kinds of reference, and what each is actually for

Allocators weight these differently, and knowing which is doing what tells you where to spend preparation effort.

• Founder references. The strongest available to a first-time manager, because they speak to behaviour rather than to intent. The most useful one is a founder whose company struggled or failed, since that is where an allocator learns how you behave when the outcome is not good.
• Former colleague references. What they are testing is attribution: whether the decisions you describe as yours were yours, and how you behaved inside a partnership. Expect these to be reached whether or not you offer them.
• Co-investor references. Speak to how you conduct yourself in a round, whether you do the work, and whether you are somebody they would sit beside again.
• Service provider references. Counsel, administrators, and auditors speak to whether you are organised, responsive, and realistic, which is operational diligence conducted informally.
• Peer and allocator references. Other managers and, where they exist, allocators who have looked at you before. These are the most likely back-channel and the least likely to be on your list.

Consent, and the boundary that matters legally

Ask before you list anybody, every time, including people who have told you before that they are happy to help. Consent is a courtesy for most references and a requirement for some, and the distinction is worth knowing.

Where a reference involves a former employer, confidential information, or performance from a prior seat, the question stops being etiquette. What a former colleague may confirm about deals, ownership, or results can be constrained by confidentiality obligations that survive employment, which is the same territory the track record portability page covers. Settle that before the reference is contacted rather than after.

Where a founder reference touches a company's confidential information, the founder decides what they can say, not you. Brief them on the questions rather than on the answers, and never ask anybody to say something they would not otherwise say.

The reference preparation checklist

Blueprint's own, run before the first allocator asks rather than the week they do.

• Build the list early, with names, relationships, dates, and what each one is best positioned to speak to.
• Ask each person directly, and confirm they are willing to speak to a specific kind of question rather than in general.
• Include at least one difficult reference: a company that failed, a partnership that ended, or a deal that went wrong. Its absence is conspicuous.
• Brief each reference on context rather than content: which fund, what stage the process is at, what the allocator is likely to ask, and roughly when the call may come.
• Check what each person actually remembers, since an enthusiastic reference who cannot recall dates or specifics is weaker than a measured one who can.
• Match the list to the claim. If your deck says you led a round, the reference should be able to confirm that you led it.
• Keep the list current during the raise, and tell references when a process has ended so nobody is surprised by a call months later.
• Never coach the answers, which is both wrong and easily detected: allocators speak to several people and compare.

What references can prove, and what they cannot

Being precise about this stops a manager from over-relying on the strongest thing they have.

• Can prove: your role in specific decisions, how you behaved under pressure, whether founders would take your money again, whether you did the work in a round, and whether you are straightforward to deal with.
• Can prove: that your account of a prior seat matches the account given by people who were there, which is the attribution test.
• Cannot prove: that your judgment will produce returns, since nobody's reference can.
• Cannot prove: fund-level performance, or that a strategy is repeatable at a larger size.
• Cannot fix: a mandate that does not fit, materials that contradict each other, or an operating layer that does not exist.

When references come back mixed

Mixed feedback is common and it is not fatal. What determines the outcome is whether the manager already knew.

A manager who has named the difficult relationship in advance and explained what they learned has framed the reference before the allocator hears it. A manager who is surprised by it looks either unaware of how they are perceived or unwilling to say so, and allocators find the second reading easy to reach.

So the useful preparation is not managing the message. It is knowing, honestly, what each person on and off your list would say, and naming the hard one yourself early enough that it arrives as context rather than as a discovery.

Questions to be ready for after references are contacted

These arrive in the meeting after the calls, and they are the real reference conversation.

• We spoke to someone who was not on your list, and their account differed. Help us understand.
• Tell us about the company that failed, from your side, before we speak to the founder.
• Why did that partnership end, and what would your former partners say about it?
• Two of your references described your role differently. Which is right?
• Who would say something critical about you, and what would they say?
• Who did you consider putting on this list and leave off, and why?

The last two are the ones most managers are unprepared for, and answering them plainly is worth more than any positive reference on the list. Blueprint's page on the questions a general partner should ask a prospective limited partner covers the other direction of the same diligence.

What references do not do

They do not close a commitment, and a strong set will not move an allocator whose mandate cannot hold your fund. What they can do is end a process quickly when the manager's account of themselves does not survive contact with people who were there.

The checklist and the question set on this page are Blueprint's own rather than a published standard. The one external claim, that allocators back-channel beyond a manager's list, is ILPA's own statement from its November 2017 emerging manager publication and is carried with that date attached.

This page is educational and general. It is not legal, tax, securities, or investment advice, and what a former colleague may confirm about a prior firm's results may be constrained by obligations that require counsel to interpret.