How do I find LPs for my VC fund?

Step one, define the profile before you source a single name

Write down what has to be true of an allocator for your fund to be investable by them. These ten fields are the profile, and each one eliminates names cheaply.

• Stage. Whether they hold pre-seed and seed exposure at all, or only later-stage venture.
• Sector. Whether your sector is inside their allocation or excluded by policy.
• Geography. Where they invest, and whether they require local presence or a local vehicle.
• Fund size. Their minimum viable fund size and the maximum share of a fund they will take.
• Ticket size. What a normal commitment looks like for their programme, and whether your fund can absorb it.
• Ownership and concentration. Whether they cap the percentage of any single fund they will hold.
• Mandate. The specific pool the cheque would come from, and what that pool is for.
• Emerging-manager history. Whether they have backed a first or second fund, and when.
• Current activity. Whether they are committing this year or paused, which is a fact with a shelf life.
• Relationship path. A named route to the person who decides, or an honest note that none exists yet.

Step two, the channels, and what each one is actually good for

Every channel below produces names. They differ in cost, in how well the names are pre-qualified, and in whether the introduction arrives warm.

• Public sources. Regulatory filings, annual reports, and allocators' own published policies. Slow, free, and the only channel that tells you what an institution has actually committed to rather than what it says it likes.
• Databases. Comprehensive and stale in the fields that matter most. A 2020 Emerging Europe article on finding limited partners makes exactly this point, noting that contact details are likely to be out of date and cold-email responses limited while the fund information is often accurate, which remains a fair description of how to use one.
• Conferences and allocator programmes. Structured access, sometimes with pre-matched meetings. ILPA's Emerging Manager Showcase publishes its criteria: it is aimed at managers raising a first or second fund, meaning a first institutional fund or a small spinout, excludes infrastructure, real assets, and real estate, and names a minimum target fund size of 100 million dollars, with applicants reviewed and qualified by a committee of limited partners. Those are that programme's criteria rather than a market standard, and they are a useful example of how explicit some access routes are about who they are for.
• Referrals from committed limited partners. The highest-converting channel available to a first-time manager. In the Signature Block collection of general partner accounts, one manager reports that roughly 80 percent of the introductions obtained this way converted, which is one manager's experience rather than a benchmark, and the underlying logic generalises: an allocator who has already committed is staking their own judgment on the introduction.
• Founders in your portfolio. Underused, and credible for the same reason: a founder describing how you behaved as an investor is evidence an allocator cannot get from your deck.
• Other general partners. Managers a stage above or beside you know which allocators are actually writing cheques this year, which is the single most perishable fact in the process.
• Portfolio and service-provider relationships. Fund administrators, auditors, and counsel see the market continuously. They will not hand over a client list and they will often tell you whether a category is moving.
• Content and public research. The slowest channel and the only one that compounds. It works by making the first conversation a continuation rather than an introduction. Several managers in the Signature Block piece describe writing publicly as their main source of inbound allocator interest, which is field experience rather than a rule.

Step three, the qualification worksheet, five states rather than two

Every name sits in exactly one state. Moving a name forward requires evidence, not optimism, and the evidence is named for each state below.

• Potentially relevant. The institution invests in venture. Evidence: a public commitment, a published policy, or a credible secondary source. This state contains almost every name you will ever collect, and it is worth almost nothing on its own.
• Strategically relevant. Their mandate could hold your specific fund, on stage, sector, geography, fund size, and ticket. Evidence: the ten profile fields filled in at the institution level, not the category level.
• Accessible. You have a named, plausible path to the person who decides. Evidence: a specific introducer who has agreed to make the introduction, or a prior relationship. An unfilled field here is the honest answer more often than managers admit.
• Currently in market. They are committing to new managers in this period. Evidence: a recent commitment, a stated pacing plan, or the allocator saying so. This state expires, so date it.
• Actively diligencing. They are doing work on your fund specifically. Evidence: a document request, a reference call, a second meeting with new people in the room, or a questionnaire.

Two disciplines make the worksheet work. Date every state change, so a name that has been accessible for eight months is visible as the stall it is. And record the reason for every downgrade, because the pattern across ten downgrades is usually a fixable problem with the fund rather than ten unrelated passes.

What limited partners are testing while you are sourcing them

Sourcing is not invisible to the people being sourced, and the process itself is read as evidence.

• Did this manager understand our mandate before the first email, or are we one name on a list of two hundred?
• Is the introduction coming from someone whose judgment we already trust?
• Is the fund's stage, size, and geography consistent across everything we have seen from them?
• Does the manager know what they are asking us for, and what the next step would be?
• Are they still in market, and is the story the same as it was three months ago?

Where the answer changes by market and by manager

The process is global. Three inputs move.

• Which channels exist. In markets with fewer institutional allocators, public capital programmes, development finance institutions, and family offices carry more of the base, and Blueprint's own directories of state programmes and development finance institutions are built for exactly that research.
• How much marketing you may do while sourcing. In the United States, the offering route decides whether you may publicise a raise at all. In the European Union, showing a strategy to potential professional investors before a fund exists is pre-marketing, with conditions and a notification to the home regulator within two weeks of starting. In the United Kingdom, marketing a fund needs the right permission or a private placement notification. Sequence the sourcing around that rather than discovering it mid-process.
• Who a spinout can approach. A manager leaving an established firm often inherits relationships they may not be free to use, and the permission question belongs with counsel before the first email rather than after it.

What this process does not do

It does not create demand. A well-run process finds the allocators who could commit and reaches them efficiently, and it cannot make a mandate exist where none does.

It also does not produce a conversion rate you can plan around. The one figure on this page belongs to the manager who reported it, and no source verified for this page publishes a reliable conversion benchmark for first-time venture funds.

This page is educational and general. It is not legal, tax, securities, or investment advice, and marketing rules differ by jurisdiction.