Posted on 18th October 2023 by Harry
Beezer Clarkson leads Sapphire Partners‘ investments in venture funds domestically and internationally. Beezer has invested in some of the best firms of a generation including USV and Point Nine to name a few. Beezer began her career in financial services over 20 years ago at Morgan Stanley in its global infrastructure group. Prior to joining Sapphire in 2012, Beezer managed the day-to-day operations of the Draper Fisher Jurvetson Global Network, which then had $7 billion under management across 16 venture funds worldwide.
In Today’s Episode with Beezer Clarkson We Discuss:
- LP Landscape: WTF is Going On:
- Are LPs really all closed for business?
- What has changed in what LPs want to see from managers they are looking to invest in?
- What has changed about the size and pace of new commitments for LPs?
- Are all LPs moving away from growth?
2. 2020-2022: Years in Review:
- Are LPs frustrated by managers who reduced deployment timelines to 12-18 months?
- Are LPs frustrated with managers who did not take liquidity when they could have done?
- How does Beezer advise managers on when and how to take liquidity in their best positions?
- Are managers accurately marking their portfolios to their LPs today?
- Why does Beezer believe the incentive mechanism for LPs is broken today in many ways?
3. How To Build a Top Decile Firm:
- Why does Beezer believe if you want to have the best returns, you have to have one company that returns the fund? Can you not do it with multiple half-fund returners?
- Is ownership core to all the best firm’s top performance? Is it the size of outcome or the size of ownership that drives the best performance across the board?
- What does data show on how the best funds take significant risk? What are their loss ratios?
- What are the core tradeoffs to Beezer between scaling AUM and providing top decile returns?
4. LP Markets: The Times They are a Changing:
- Does Beezer believe LPs will remain cold on large $1BN+ growth firms?
- Which segments of the market are hot? Which are cold?
- What are the most significant changes we will see in the LP markets moving forward?
- Is today the new normal or are we in a downturn that we will come out of?
