Secondaries are an active conversation both when I speak with Emerging Managers and in the LP community of EE. I found this new report from Sydecar helpful to shed some more light on secondary activity and deal volume.

This report specifically looks at how SPV activity is affected by IPOs. Big IPOs have two residual effects that are important for emerging VCs: 

Sydecar dug through their 2025 platform data to uncover how secondary SPV activity is affected by IPOs and what it means for Emerging Fund Managers. Here are a few key takeaways:

You can download the full report here.

In 2026, I launched something new with Embracing Emergence: The Fund Circle.

It’s a formalized series of lectures, guided discussions, and reflection guides I developed and formalized into a program spanning several weeks.

This program was birthed out of my last several years as an LP, having worked closely with selected managers, and through bringing together actively deploying Limited Partners in a dedicated peer to peer community.

I believe that genuine differentiation emerges from within. But over the more recent years, Venture Capital has become saturated with sameness: funds that sound alike, invest alike, and think alike.

And one of the key reasons for this movement towards this homogeneity is that starting a fund has become easier than ever before. We have seen many benefits from this. But the ease of launching has simultaneously created a temptation to accelerate without the work of formation being done.

So, through The Fund Circle, I am guiding participants to do the slower, deeper work of clarifying what they are uniquely positioned to build, while working their position into an investment lens that they can articulate to LPs and founders in a compelling way.

Success for The Circle is two-fold:

Acceleration without formation stands the risk to eventually collapse.

Speed typically amplifies whatever foundation already exists behind the curtain.

If conviction is thin, then speed eventually exposes it.

If coherence is missing, momentum can magnify the cracks.

Formation is the slow, still work that determines how much weight an idea and person can carry.

In today’s volume I want to provide a peak behind the curtain of this program and share a section of a lecture from Session 01.

Session 01: Desire, Motivation & The Shape of The Road Ahead

Venture Capital is in the process re-voicing the whisper for those who want to challenge the status quo, the tinkerers, the people redefining the craft of investing, the refiners, the explorers, and those who want to do it different, not just better.

And in order to do something that is different, not just better, and to communicate it in a compelling way, you need:

This is where desire and motivation are important to understand. Why are you doing what you’re doing? What problem doesn’t get solved if you don’t do what you're doing? Why are you uniquely positioned to do what you’re doing?

The “basic-sounding” nature of these questions would lead most people to assume that every GP would have a compelling answer or at least a good answer to them, but many Limited Partners would confirm that that’s not the case.

But if you look at the best funds and those who manage to consistently raise from Limited Partners, you realize that they are marked by strong convictions and a unique ability to communicate those to LPs.

Even further, their convictions is something they LEAD with. Not as an additional argument to underline why their thesis makes sense, but their why seems to be a core product they sell to their customer, their LPs.

Take for example a16z and their American Dynamism fund. If you go on their website, the first thing you see is “What We Believe”. It’s not a manifesto page on their website menu, not something you have to find in an article they published, it’s the hero section of their website.

It’s because people buy our why, not our what. In an age where there are over 6,000 active Venture Capital firms, approaches will be the same and strategies can look alike, but why you do what you do is something that can be unlike any other.

So, how do you tell your why to Limited Partners and how do you even identify it? This is something we covered in one of my lectures in the Fund Circle.

Below are a few slides I used to share my convictions around the importance of a clear and compelling why, frameworks from different thinkers that can help you understand and categorize your why, and finally a small group discussion exercise.

I am sharing these freely below. These of course lack my notes and explanations, but still can provide a framework for everyone on how they can start thinking about their why and how to tell it to Limited Partners.

Here is the crux of this “Golden Circle” of Why, How, and What: most GPs talk through this circle from the outside in. They go from their what, to their how, and rarely even make it to their why. It goes something like this (it’s typically more polished, but you’ll get it):

Now take American Dynamism and how they lead:

“The flourishing of all Americans.” That will land with Limited Partners. This is an American Problem. If these companies do not get backed, the flourishing of America is at stake. Etc, etc, etc.

I am trying to draw a picture of how important it is how you communicate with the “Golden Circle” of Why, How, and What.

You need to communicate from the inside out. Why → How → What

Or take Apple or Nike. They don’t sell computers or shoes in their marketing efforts. They sell the challenge of the status quo or the story of the people who want to actualize their full potential by just doing it. They sell their why. And you feel it when you associate it to their company.

Do people feel your why when looking at the firm you are building? What happens when your fund doesn’t exist, does the problem get solved without your existence? How clear of a why do you have? Is it something you can articulate in 3 sentences in a way that will get me out of bed?

I end every lecture / Circle Session with a reflection guide document that I create and pass out for the participants to go through over the following week. This is not optional. In our next session the participants have to share their insights from their reflection exercises.

I want to share two reflection exercises here, so everyone can go through them. If you want to share your insights with me, please reach out to me!

These exercises are all about:

So we are doing introspective reflection in combination with communicating your internal world to others. This goes back to what I said at the very start: I believe that differentiation emerges from within. I will radically lean into this belief.

Here are the two reflection tasks you can go through:

We are halfway through the first Fund Circle cohort, which means I am starting to prepare for another cohort in the second half of this year.

This cohort will be a faster version of this current Circle program. A 4 week cohort, with weekly sessions and lectures.

I have received a few messages already for another cohort this year, if you would like to learn more, please reach out to me!

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