📶 another GP leaves

Felicis GP transitions out, Hamilton raises massive first fund, the agentic era of commerce is here, new VC jobs listed

February 07, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 7 minutes

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Good morning 👋

And happy Friday - what a week.

We have another notable GP stepping down, and we’re covering it in today’s piece.

ICYMI we also announced a GP / LP meetup in Miami in April.

Today’s highlights

Pezeshki to step down at Felicis
Hamilton raises massive first fund
The agentic era of commerce is here
New VC jobs listed

TOP
Pezeshki steps down at Felicis

Niki Pezeshki, a GP at Felicis Ventures, will step down and transition to venture partner in April.

He has not publicly shared his next move, but he told Felicis limited partners that he is moving from the Bay Area to Southern California, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Why it matters: If you’ve followed this newsletter for a while, you’ve started to notice a pattern of notable VCs playing musical chairs. We’ve covered it a lot (here, here, here, and here), and the trend doesn’t seem to be slowing down any time soon.

In the past, VC talent wars were limited to mostly junior roles.

Analysts, associates, and principals would make a name for themselves, then they would leave for a better opportunity, more cash, or more carry.

But the past 12 months have shown that the talent wars are not limited to junior investing roles anymore, and we’ve seen dozens of partners and GPs leave too.

What happens next: We can’t generalize why this is happening, but there are a few reasons why the larger trend of VC job instability has played out:

Carry splits: If you look through the top 100 funds in the US, you’d be shocked at how lopsided some of the carry splits are. From our experience, there are usually 1-2 people that own the majority of the upside; everybody else works for salary and maybe a bonus.
It has become easier to spin up your own fund: A decade ago, a variation of golden handcuffs existed solely because of how complex it was to launch your own fund. “Want more carry? Great launch something yourself” was more of a threat than an invitation. Today that has changed with platforms like AngelList making it easy to get up and running in a few months.
Seed funds have scaled to asset managers: I could write a book on this. Most of the funds you look up to today started as seed investors (perfecting the craft of venture) and have graduated to asset managers (perfecting the ability to maximize AUM). These are two entirely different professions and they attract totally different people.
RTO mandates: Maybe the most obvious. Not everybody was willing to move back to working in an office, and that has created career choices.

GP / LP Mastermind
The “anti-conference” for fund managers 🌴

We don’t like conferences, so we created our own version that we would actually look forward to going to.

Small group of 6-10 LPs, GPs, and partners
Golf and padel
Boat charter
Private dinners
No outside sponsors

We only have space for 6-10, so if you’re interested, we’d recommend applying sooner rather than later …

LINKS

⚠️ The Risk (and Reward) of Standing Out—Why Your Story Shouldn’t Fit a Mold: Monday.com shared with Mostly Metrics how their team resisted the pressure to conform and doubled down on the unique DNA of their company

5️⃣ Startups—5 Tips for Fundraising: The Bird’s Nest offers advice for any startup that is raising in a contrarian market

😀 The Dumbest Career Hack That’s Worked 100% of the Time: Smiling more costs nothing, requires no experience, and works instantly

💵 It Pays to be an AI Company: There’s truth to the narrative that AI is the new platform and companies that embrace it are rewarded with lower costs of capital

🫵 Getting “In the Way of the Money”: This powerful position comes with both significant opportunities and responsibilities that allows the use of data for customer success or customer exploitation

No.
— VV (@visualizevalue)
2:53 PM • Feb 5, 2025

HEADLINES

Hamilton Lane raises $615M debut VC fund (Axios)
OpenAI’s Operator Signals The Agentic Era Of Commerce Is Here (Crunchbase)
a16z hires acquitted former Marine Daniel Penny as an investor (TechCrunch)
These foreign PE firms are growing their footprint in the Middle East (Pitchbook)
Silicon Valley venture capital pioneer Dick Kramlich, an early investor in Apple, dies at 89 (MSN)

MEME

As traditional private equity and venture capital converge, more and more deals will get done on the course.
In practice that means founders should not expect to raise from a tier 1 firm if they have more than a +5 handicap.
— Technology Brothers (@tbpn)
7:51 PM • Feb 1, 2025

JOBS

Two Sigma is looking for a senior investment analyst in NY
Fin Capital is looking for a chief of staff in SF
Bain is looking for a senior finance associate in Boston

MARKET MAPS

📶 Growing revenue-per-employee: The companies powering the next era of efficient scaling

💲 Recreating the modern investment firm: The companies helping modern investment firms act like tech companies

Thanks for reading this far and giving us a little bit of your attention this week.

Feel free to unsubscribe whenever this stops becoming valuable to you.

- Clay

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📶 another GP leaves

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