New media, research, community for emerging VCs.
San Francisco, CA
Joined October 2023
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Every GP feels the power law hardest when years of conviction turn into one company that rewrites the entire track record.
VC is probably the most unfair yet beautiful industry out there.
you can spend 5 years building a fund, struggling to get noticed, and then one portfolio company absolutely explodes and changes your fund’s reputation, your career and your life overnight.
one single investment can change everything.
and the crazy part is everyone has a shot. even the smallest fund nobody has ever heard of.
Per @arian_ghashghai, the cheapest edge in venture right now is backing founders and sectors before any co-investor signal shows up.
> but if everyone is piling into the same rounds at the same prices
you can also elect to *not* do this:
> invest way earlier. not every founder starts as "legible", and I've backed a number of founders that couldn't raise to save their lives when I invested that ended up becoming "hot" later. cream ultimately rises to the top, and if you find someone great trust your gut, not co-investor "signal"
> invest in sectors/ideas *you* believe to be undervalued. this surface area is bigger than ever btw (consensus ideas in VC are very finite and concentrated atm), and you will face very little competition (i.e. generate alpha) by actively pursuing a sector you think will be big, but isn't big yet.
the problem is both require independent thinking and courage, both of which feel they are at local minima in VC atm
The 2026 RAISE Select cohort from @raiseconference, compiled into a live map on @cosign by @Trace_Cohen: 101 emerging managers, from AI and cybersecurity to healthcare and energy.
Raise Select Emerging Managers list via @cosign - which would you most want to invest in your startup?
cosign.co/lists/trace_cohen/…
Seed memos lean on 'cracked team' when a new category has no comps to measure against.
Have this longstanding theory that VCs are attracted to funding a new category until they know “how the magic trick is done”
You always see it in the run up to a sector getting hot. Software. Crypto. AI Wrappers. Defense. Robotics.
Investors use terms like “cracked team” and “relentless energy” because they don’t know enough yet to explain how the startup translates technology into a business.
As soon as the magic is known and they realize it’s all a learnable trick that takes time, effort and capital to perfect, the allure is gone and investors move on. Am I wrong?
FY2026 endowment returns averaged ~27%, about 2x their ~13% 10-year pace, with 6 of 7 above their long-run average.
A huge year for university endowments that backed VC. Especially, SpaceX. Per @WSJ
“Harvard on Thursday reported a 27.1% gain by its endowment for the fiscal year ended June 30, swelling the endowment’s coffers to almost $68 billion.
Other big winners include the University of North Carolina system, which gained 37.8%—about half of that from SpaceX
Washington University in St. Louis, which gained 37.3%;
and Stanford, which gained 31.7% in its main investment vehicle.”
Murph Capital retweeted
One firm outraised 86 emerging VC funds in Q3.
▫️ @BessemerVP closed $5.75B, about 70% of it for growth.
▫️ All 86 emerging funds raised $4.23B combined (@murphcapital).
▫️ US funds raised $108.5B through Q3, and $500M+ funds took 78.1% (@PitchBook).
▫️ The $100M to $500M "middle" is down to 10% of US closes.
Fundraising is back, but only at the top:
thefundcfo.substack.com/p/38…
Does the middle come back when distributions do?
#VC #EmergingManagers #LPs
5 $1B+ rounds made up $8.3B of the EU’s $18.1B Q3 2026, beating every quarter since 2020 on mega-round money.
Startups in the European Union raised $18.1B in venture capital in Q3 2026, up 90% on the same quarter last year and 37% on the previous quarter.
Dealroom counts 765 rounds in the quarter. The largest was Mistral AI's $3.3B Series D, backed by PSG, Samsung Electronics and the Scaleup Europe Fund.
Plus $1B+ rounds for Helsing, Quantum Systems, ICEYE, Poolside AI.
dealroom.co/quarterly-report…
Top brands let their track record do the proving, yet a case study and a strong reference move the decision when the checks are identical.
BREAKING: @LucindaHankin joins @Overture_VC as a Partner, investing in energy, resilience and industrial transformation
State of VC Fundraising: Q3 2026
At @murphcapital we tracked all 152 VC funds that announced a close between July and September 2026 and looked past the headline numbers: what the “average” fund really looks like, where emerging managers place their bets, and how different LPs allocate capital.
Key takeaways from the 2nd edition of our quarterly report:
1/ The “average” fund no longer means much. The median close was $71M against a $319M mean, a 4.5x spread, up from 3.7x in Q2. Only 31 of 144 funds with a disclosed size raised above the mean. A $100M fund sat in the top half of the quarter yet raised less than a third of the “average”, while the median emerging close fell from $55M to $31M.
2/ Mega funds raise bigger and come back faster. @Accel returned to market 4 months after its $5B close, @a16z topped up Growth Fund V within 7 months, and @_DimensionCap raised Fund III 18 months after Fund II. 94 of 152 funds enter at seed or earlier, but the money sits in growth: 13 of the 26 mega funds are growth vehicles.
3/ Emerging managers are building out entire categories. Climate is 18% of emerging dollars against 2% of the market, Defense is 10% against 3%, and Consumer is 9% against 1%. 15 of the 16 climate funds were emerging. In defense, debut and sophomore funds put in $430M, close to the middle tier ($609M) and the mega tier ($524M).
4/ Emerging capital is spread across a much wider map. The US still leads with 41% of emerging dollars, followed by Europe at 21%, Asia at 19% and India at 8%. Asia’s share comes mostly from Chinese sophomore funds, and India’s from frontier-tech debuts in defense, space and semiconductors.
5/ Each LP type has its own lane. DFIs were once again the most common LP type with 87 mentions. European state banks and public funds lead, followed by Asian guidance funds (23), DFIs backing African funds (15) and Canadian institutions (9), with just 4 on US funds. Corporates back hardware, with 27 of 59 corporate mentions on Deep Tech funds. Founder money is concentrated too: 24 of 32 founder and celebrity LPs backed just 4 debut funds.
Read the full deep dive on our Substack for more insights: murphcapital.substack.com/p/…
Mega funds stay the easiest way for LPs to deploy at scale amid AI and the physical-world buildout, and the shift back to EMs starts once strong distributions become a pattern.
I speak to 3-5 LPs every week for different manager reference calls. Three takeaways from calls this week.
1. The mega platforms raised way more than expected this year.
2. They are investing much faster than expected. They raised this year and will be back in market next year.
3. Budgets for smaller managers $200M and seed have been cut almost entirely as a result.
Across all 4 calls this week. Same message.
BREAKING: Whitney Lemmon and @Hillary__Cook promoted to Investment Partner at @NextLegacy_, both leading investments across established and emerging manager strategies
Early stage calls for wartime GPs who have a big chunk of the fund in each company and stay on board when things break, while peacetime ones pay top-of-market prices for the scale story.
BREAKING: @nkechiiregbulem joins @Sierra_Ventures as Head of Inception, writing first checks into AI and hardtech founders
I officially joined @Sierra_Ventures as Head of Inception
I'll writing first checks into exceptional teams building in AI and Hardtech. Deeply grateful to the Sierra team for the opportunity.
If you're building something technically ambitious, my DMs are open.
Murph Capital retweeted
just dropped our "state of VC fundraising: Q3 2026" report
a few insights from this edition:
> 86 debut or sophomore funds under $250M raised $4.23B: 9% of the quarter’s capital on 57% of the count, down from 13% in Q2.
> 26 funds of $500M or more absorbed 76% of all Q3 capital, and @BessemerVP's $5.75B close alone outraised all 86 emerging funds combined.
> 3 drivers explain mega funds' fundraising: AI position marks (@Accel, @GreylockVC), realized exits (@IndexVentures' Wiz payout, @blackbirdvc' Eucalyptus), and the shift to growth and secondaries products (@MorganStanley, @radicalvcfund).
> the US and Europe combined for 63% of funds and 87% of capital, but Europe raised just 18% of the US total (a 5.7x gap, up from 4x in Q2). the surprise of the quarter is Canada: 9 funds, $2.38B, and 3 mega funds, all announced around the Canada Investment Summit.
> 83 of 152 funds named at least one LP: 375 LP-fund mentions across 351 unique names, and only 16 LPs backed more than one fund. Only 8 of the 26 mega funds named even a single LP.
we’re also attaching a list of all 351 LPs we found, for most loyal @murphcapital subscribers.
read the full Q3 2026 report: murphcapital.substack.com/p/…
Per @daveclark85, the average top-50 exit grew from $1.5B to $14.8B between 2005 and 2024, and the 2025-29 projection puts it 7x higher at $110B.
BREAKING: @arasha, @ajaykam & @ShravanGReddy promoted to General Partner at @pearvc, covering AI, infrastructure, consumer, fintech, healthcare, and robotics
Alongside Fund V, we’re excited to share that @arasha @ajaykam & @ShravanGReddy have been promoted to General Partner at Pear!
All three are former founders who embody what makes this firm special. Couldn’t be more proud — congrats to all three. 🍐
Per @robgo, capital-efficient bets on $200M-1B exits seem murky and overlooked founders fail the pattern-match, yet consensus AI keeps winning seed even at 50%+ higher median valuations.
It's been about a year since I wrote my post about the Existential Crisis for Seed VC's.
Some updated thoughts here on the three paths forward for seed investors.
nextview.vc/blog/the-three-p…
