LPs and GPs: Who's Really on the Other Side of the Table

When you raise from a venture fund, you are technically being invested in by a Limited Partnership. Below the surface, that legal vehicle is a layered cake of people with very different jobs, incentives, and amounts of authority. Knowing who you're actually talking to is half the battle.

The two structural roles

The fund itself — the entity that holds your equity — has two kinds of partner.

Limited Partners (LPs). These are the people who put money into the fund. They are passive: they don't pick companies, they don't sit on your board, they don't return your emails. Their job is to write a cheque to the fund and wait. Typical LPs include university endowments, pension plans, insurance companies, sovereign wealth funds, fund-of-funds, family offices, and high-net-worth individuals.

General Partners (GPs). These are the people who run the fund. They raised the money from the LPs, they make the investment decisions, they sit on boards, they raise the next fund. They are who you're pitching, ultimately. Their economic upside comes from the carry — the share of profits they keep when the fund does well.

The legal structure binds these two groups: LPs trust GPs to do the investing job; GPs are obligated to deploy capital responsibly into companies that the LPs broadly agreed (in a "mandate") to back.

When founders say "I raised from Sequoia" or "I'm pitching Index", they're really saying "I raised from / I'm pitching the GPs of a fund managed by Sequoia / Index Ventures". Those firms have done multiple funds, and each fund has its own LP base.

The cast inside a venture firm

Now zoom in on the GP side. A venture firm is not just two or three partners around a table. The bigger ones, in particular, are layered organisations with distinct roles.

Managing Partner / Founding Partner. Often the named founder of the firm. Outsized influence. Final say in sticky cases. Their personal track record is the firm's brand.

General Partner / Partner. A senior investor who can lead deals, sit on boards, and vote in investment committee. They typically own carry. When an investment is described as "Sarah's deal", Sarah is a partner who advocated for it inside the firm.

Principal. A senior non-partner. They source deals, do diligence, sometimes lead deals, and are often on a path to partner. They can move things forward but cannot, on their own, get a deal across the finish line. They will need a partner sponsor.

Vice President / Senior Associate. Senior to associates, junior to principals. They lead diligence, do market work, and increasingly source. Often the person doing the heavy lifting on your deal.

Associate. Frequently your first point of contact. They source, they take initial meetings, they bring the most interesting ones up the chain. They don't make investment decisions. Sometimes called "deal-flow associates", sometimes also called "investment associates". An associate getting excited about you matters because they advocate internally — but you can't close them.

Analyst. Often youngest in the firm. Sometimes more research-focused. Limited authority but valuable for specific market questions.

Scouts. Some firms run scout programs: founders, operators, or domain experts who get a small cheque-book to write tiny investments on the firm's behalf. A scout cheque is a soft signal of interest from the firm but not a "real" partnership decision.

Operating partners. People with deep operational backgrounds (former CFOs, GTM leaders, technical leaders) who don't make investment decisions but help portfolio companies post-investment.

Platform team. The people who run founder events, hiring help, content, comms. Less involved in your investment, more involved in helping you after.

Who can actually fund you

The single most useful sentence inside a venture firm is: who can write your cheque?

The answer, almost always, is: a Partner with carry, after a vote at the firm's investment committee (IC).

That has consequences for sequencing.

• An associate or scout reaching out to you is a positive signal, but it's not investor interest yet. They can champion you internally, but they cannot fund you.
• A first meeting with a principal is more meaningful, but they typically still need a partner sponsor.
• The deal becomes real when a partner says "I'd like to take this to the team next Monday" or schedules a partner meeting.

A fundraise that stalls at "I keep meeting nice associates" almost never converts. You need to graduate to partner conversations. We cover the mechanics of that progression in meetings and process.

Why this matters when you're pitching

Three practical implications.

1. Calibrate your time. If a partner has agreed to meet you, that meeting is worth significant preparation: deep research, strong narrative, pre-empted objections. A first call with an associate is also worth attending, but it's a screening call, not a closing one. Don't burn your A-game to be screened in.

2. Know who's championing you. At every step, you should know — or be able to ask — who inside the firm is your champion. The deals that close are the deals where someone internal is fighting for you. If you can't name your champion, your deal is in trouble.

3. Know what they're risking. A partner who backs a deal that fails ugly takes a reputational hit. A partner who backs a deal that succeeds becomes more powerful inside the firm. They are not just deciding whether to invest; they are deciding whether to spend internal political capital on you. Understanding that lets you help them — by giving them the strongest internal pitch you can, with evidence they can quote in IC.

The LP side: when it touches you

Most founders never interact with LPs directly. But there are moments where they show up.

• Strategic LPs as customers. A corporate strategic LP might also be a logical buyer of your product. The fund won't promise customer access (usually), but warm intros happen.
• Annual meetings. Some funds invite "founder showcase" appearances at LP days. It's good for relationship-building, modest for capital.
• Co-investment. Larger LPs sometimes co-invest alongside the fund directly into your round. This usually happens at later stages.

Knowing the LP base of a fund — even at a high level — can be useful when you're choosing among investors. A fund whose LPs are mostly endowments behaves differently from one whose LPs are mostly individuals. We get into investor selection in investor research and outreach.

The bottom line

When somebody says "I'm raising from VCs", what they really mean is: I'm pitching the GPs of one or more partnerships, who will eventually have to convince an investment committee that I'm worth backing with money they raised from a separate set of people called LPs.

Every time you meet someone at a venture firm, ask yourself two quiet questions:

1. Can this person, by themselves, fund me?
2. If not, what does it take for them to make that happen?

The answers will tell you almost everything about how to spend the meeting.