Episode summary
Who should NEVER start a VC fund? | Sam Huleatt
Superclusters The Emerging Lp Podcast
· · Hosts: David Zhou · Guests: Sam Huleatt
Summary
Sam Huleatt argues that starting a VC fund is less about status than inevitability, agency, and a real point of view. He distinguishes bottom-up investors, who build conviction from lived operating experience and earned secrets, from top-down investors, who synthesize markets into a broader thesis. In his view, both can succeed, but the strongest investors usually have a clear worldview and the discipline to act on it.
He is skeptical of people who launch funds because they are bored, successful, or chasing a perceived next step. Starting a fund, he says, is an entrepreneurial act with real difficulty: lower barriers to entry have not made success more likely. He also pushes back on the idea that an anchor investor solves fundraising; most LPs backing new managers are people making a bet on the individual, not on a generic strategy.
For LPs, Huleatt emphasizes three questions: why they want exposure, how many managers they need to meet to build real pattern recognition, and what value they bring beyond capital. He also sees GP accelerators as useful mainly for education, accountability, and ecosystem-building, not as a credential for weak managers.
Key takeaways
- Sam Huleatt says the best fund managers feel inevitable, while people who ask permission or chase status are usually the wrong ones to start a fund.
- He defines bottom-up investors as people whose conviction comes from lived experience, and top-down investors as people who synthesize markets into a thesis.
- Huleatt says most new-managers fundraising is really about individuals, not institutions hunting for a venture strategy, so an anchor investor is not the core solution.
- He thinks LPs should meet at least 20 GPs before investing, because pattern recognition and taste improve with exposure.
- Huleatt says GP accelerators can help with governance, fundraising discipline, and community, but they are not a substitute for a real edge.
Notable quotes
“the best GPS don't need an accelerator and I think they, you know, maybe think of these accelerators as more like driver's ed versus like Formula 1”
“If you don't have an edge already going into an accelerator, you're certainly not going to find an edge in the accelerator”
“I think of a bottoms up investor um is somebody who tends to build conviction off of you know lived experience”
“starting a VC fund is is really hard work”
How the episode opens
I think there's a category of LP who feel that the best GPS don't need an accelerator and I think they, you know, maybe think of these accelerators as more like driver's ed versus like Formula 1 or something like that. The best accelerators on the founder side really are about ecosystems, right? It's not meant to necessarily be a credential.
If you don't have an edge already going into an accelerator, you're certainly not going to find an edge in the accelerator. Superclusters is where we demystify the secrets, stories, and tactics behind the money that moves the venture capital world. It is my greatest pleasure to have my good friend Sam on today.
Sam Juliet is a good friend and someone I've known for years and has been my personal sherpa for angel investing as well as fund investing during all this time. I remember asking Sam for advice. Does another podcast need to exist right before I started this one?
And Sam was one of the special people who pushed me over the edge to start superclusters. He's created the LP Institute at VC Lad, educating LPS on how to invest in venture as an asset class and now co-founding the Sideletter, a new initiative based on network-based intelligence for asset allocators. So Sam is also on top of that, he's a serial founder.
He's an active angel investor and an allocator in venture funds. We talk about the difference between top down investors as well as bottom up investors. and what the inevitability ends up looking like in practice as well as in foresight and the three questions LPS need to be asking themselves today.
So without further ado, Sam Hley. So Sam, back in the day, silent movies were shot in 12 frames per second, but were eventually sped up to 24 frames per second to create the illusion of motion.
From the episode’s captions: roughly the first two minutes, lightly cleaned. Keep watching on YouTube →
Topics
- vc fund formation
- lp diligence
- gp empathy for founders
- incentive alignment
- side letters
Companies and tickers mentioned
- The Side Letter
- VC Lab
- On Deck Angels
- Notation Capital
- Orange Fund
- Inuka Capital
- Asylum Capital
- Outlander VC
Watch the episode
Watch “Who should NEVER start a VC fund? | Sam Huleatt” on YouTube
Summary, takeaways and quote selection by Octagon. Quotes are short excerpts; the full conversation is in the episode.
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Superclusters The Emerging Lp Podcast, this episode and its artwork belong to Superclusters by David Zhou. Octagon is not affiliated with the show; this page is an independent summary.
