DISCLAIMER: Things I am not: an accountant, a lawyer, a fiduciary to any reader, or a registered advisor. I’m just a guy writing a newsletter so none of this constitutes any tax, accounting, legal, life, or investment advice.

Following up from last week

Kirby at Ascend brought up a good point on X/Twitter that Net TVPI may negatively impact some managers with accelerated fee schedules, I’ve updated the web version of last week’s mailing to include a paragraph on how to account for that simply, not considering time value of money concerns. You can check out the updated version of last weeks mailing here.

This week we’ll come back to an In The News, and cover the in person summits that may be filling up your Twitter feed, or if you’re me, your WhatsApp groups. Upfront Summit and The Montgomery Summit. This will be very top line coverage talking about the events and what they are, a few oddities about them, who attends, and what they get out of them. If you’ve attended either event I’d love your feedback on what I’ve missed.

Notice for next week

Next week this newsletter will start arriving from [email protected] — It’s a new domain for me to use for email so please add andrewfielding.com to your e-mails filter to make sure you receive every issue going forward.

In The News
Summit Season! (in Los Angeles)

Every industry has its conferences, some have one, most have multiple. I’ve been to a variety of conferences including once visiting ILTA for a week to diligence a company — I learned a lot about legal tech. People go for conferences for many reasons but the key thing that conferences generally provide is an opportunity to meet others doing what you’re doing.

In Venture I’d say there are maybe three conferences that matter for GPs and LPs. Upfront Summit, Montgomery Summit, and Raise. All are put on by venture firms and two of those are put on by Los Angeles firms, Upfront Summit by Upfront, and Montgomery Summit by March Capital. Though, as a point of clarification, March Capital did not start Montgomery Summit. It was founded by one of the managing partners of March, Jamie Montgomery, when he worked with his brother Michael at their boutique investment bank Montgomery & Co.

The City of Angels

Since the restart of conferences post-COVID which included Upfront’s move to a late Februrary date, these two events have been held on consecutive weeks in Los Angeles, which means that for two weeks a year, the venture world is focused in Los Angeles. This year Upfront was hosted in West Hollywood, but it’s moved around including a stint at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. You likely noticed in the tech focused media last week everyone talking about Upfront Summit, and may have even seen the celebrities mentioned in other news media.

This week you’ll see military leaders and finance leaders (fewer celebrities) appear on CNBC and Bloomberg from the Fairmont Miramar in Santa Monica for Montgomery Summit. If you know the Los Angeles municipality geography you likely know that WeHo, Pasadena, and Santa Monica are all independent cities in Los Angeles County, so while the venture world is focused in Los Angeles, they’re actually not in my home city at all.

Size matters, somewhat

What is interesting about these two events is that they’re put on by big funds, but not the biggest. According to Pitchbook data Upfront’s most recent fund was a 2020 vintage at $280m, and March’s most recent, March Capital Partners Fund IV is a 2023 vintage fund at $650m. Both firms have well over one billion dollars in AUM but neither is amongst the class of mega funds like A16Z which has two 2022 vintage funds totaling a whopping $7.5 Billion, yes, with a B. Obviously that’s for a multistage strategy but it gives perspective for relative size. There are dozens of firms investing in the same categories as March and Upfront that are larger than them, indicating that AUM isn’t the primary driver of holding a top level event.

Raise, which is explicitly an LP/GP cap intro conference, is hosted by an even smaller firm, Akkadian ventures. Their most recent closed fund (according to Pitchbook they’re actively raising) is a ~$105m 2021 vintage vehicle. Unlike Upfront and March, Akkadian is a San Francisco based firm and holds their event in the city. Further differing from Upfront and Monty, the focus of Raise is not only solely cap intro, it’s all about cap intro for emerging managers.

Location, Location, Location

More than size, the most interesting thing to me is that both of the two top events are from Los Angeles based funds. Common knowledge will tell you LA is not the number one ecosystem for venture, and it’s likely not number even number two. From the Pitchbook/NVCA Q4 2023 Venture Monitor slide excerpted above, you can see that LA had less than half the deals of the Bay Area, and the total dollar amount was a third. In fact, Los Angeles wasn’t even second on deal volume, barely edging out Boston to nab third place behind the Bay Area and New York.*

_{*It should be noted that the numbers provided in the slide do contradict the subheading in the image, it is unclear if the subheading or the image is correct. I am assuming the image is correct.}