Strategic Annual Planning for Venture Capital Firms

At Strut, we understand how difficult it can be to find time for annual planning, especially with what’s already on your plate as a fund manager. However, creating an annual plan is worth the extra effort. It serves as a critical tool to help measure success throughout the year and ensure alignment with key goals and objectives. On our latest webinar, Strut’s team of experts pulled together best practices specifically tailored to VC firms to help you prepare for the year ahead and set your firm up for success.

WHY IT'S WORTH YOUR TIME:

Learn proven strategies for VCs to create operational efficiencies in the new year.
Get deep dives into all aspects of your back-and-middle office: operations, finance, investor relations, human resources, marketing, and more!
Align your goals and budget to ensure a clear roadmap.
Be empowered with learnings you can implement immediately.

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Here's the Recap

Where to Start

Carve out time to do a strategic planning session in between now and early 2024.
Create a list of goals and objectives for your firm, with clear metrics to evaluate against.
Develop an action plan to achieve your goals with assigned roles and dates.
Schedule regular check-ins to track progress throughout the year.
Refine and iterate on your plan as the year evolves, and adapt with the business landscape.
Communication and collaboration are key throughout the planning process. Trust in your team to assist and ask that they each take on the following items that fall into their realm of responsibility, or consider reaching out to us for help with:

Operations

Identify challenges and gaps from the previous year.
Discuss operational inefficiencies and identify root causes.
Evaluate how operations can better align and support the firm's goals.
Create a comprehensive calendar of all key dates.
Evaluate current service providers & tech stack tools.
Review Management Company budget.
Review and evaluate operations processes.

Finance

Identify achievements and challenges that happened throughout the year & outline areas in the finance side that may need adjustment.
Evaluate if meeting deadlines to LPs and regulatory agencies’ requirements
Fund & Portfolio reviews
Review budgets, fees and expenses for both management company and funds.
It’s important to ensure that your budget is aligned with your firm's goals, whether it be on the fund side or the management company side.
Treasury Risk management: Identify any potential risks & mitigation tactics
Audit & tax planning

Investor Relations

Evaluate current CRM and pipeline setup
Data room materials creation and set up
Review LP onboarding and closing processes
Staffing plan: consider placement agents, outside fundraising support, and contract workers vs. Internal hires
Assess your ongoing IR engagement plan

Marketing & Communications

Assess your current marketing & public relations efforts.
Set clear objectives that align with the business goals.
Consider: events & tradeshows, sponsorships, newsletters, social media, pitching to the press, blogs, just to name a few.
Focus on a few key initiatives that are realistic to maintain.
Track your progress to see what's working and what to adapt.

Portfolio:

Review your portfolio data management strategy & catch up on historical data.
Evaluate your tech stack & data collection ease of use.
Review your current founder engagement strategy
Complete an annual resource evaluation to identify areas for improvement.
Create a roadmap for the year ahead.

HR & Talent:

Assess your hiring and staffing needs for the year ahead.
Create recruiting plan that includes: skills and attributes you are looking for, realistic job descriptions for the new roles, interview process, budget & compensation ranges.
Conduct an assessment of your current compensation structure and benefits offerings.
Create performance and growth plans for your employees.
Evaluate all HR policies and procedures and assess for any gaps.

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MEET THE SPEAKERS

Kristen Ostro

Kristen has been leading founder engagement, curating platform from scratch, and building community in VC for over a decade. She has experience supporting a variety of funds and portfolio sizes, from sub-$10m to over $1b in AUM, with a specialty in early-stage portfolio companies. Additionally, she founded and runs a 200+ member VC operator community, Let’s Talk Ops (LTO), with five established chapters across the U.S. For LTO, she delivers educational content, in-person relationship building, virtual engagement, mentorship, and a high-powered annual Summit.

Kristen is passionate about helping fund managers hone their special sauce when it comes to building their platform offering, leveraging their unique skillsets and DNA to deliver the support founders need to succeed at the highest level.

Featured

Zosia Ulatowski

Zosia is our leading VC operations expert! Before joining Strut, she spent 5+ years handling operations and portfolio support for Cornerstone Venture Partners. Prior to Cornerstone, she was a Product Manager for the marketing solutions business unit at Sprinklr, a leading enterprise tech company. Before that, she was a Project Manager at Branderati, a hybrid tech-marketing agency where she managed technical operations and customer success. Zosia is a graduate of Wellesley College with a degree in Women and Gender Studies. She speaks French fluently and is also learning multiple dialects of toddler with her 2-year-old.

Featured

Beverly Tang

Beverly brings 17 years of alternative investment fund experience from audit/tax and fund administration to the in-house finance department. She graduated from the University of California, Santa Barbara with a Business Economics, emphasis in Accounting degree. After graduating, Beverly did seven years at a public accounting firm where she specialized in audit and tax work for alternative investment funds including hedge and VC/PE. She went in-house as a controller for a Hedge Fund before joining Aduro Advisors, a premier Fund Administrator for VCs. During her seven years there, she worked her way up to being their Senior Technical Director. She now works with various Ventures Capital Funds on a fractional basis as their CFO, providing strategic planning and ensuring a smooth connection between the firm and its service providers.

Beverly was born and raised in San Francisco, CA, and moved to Oahu, Hawaii, in 2018 to soak up the island sun.

Featured

Vienna Poiesz

Vienna is the Director of Investor Relations at Strut, where she focuses on supporting our client's fundraising and IR efforts. Prior to Strut, Vienna was the Director of Operations at Data Community Fund (DCF), where she managed all fund operations and led their successful Fund II fundraise. Prior to DCF, she was a Senior Associate at Energy Impact Partners (EIP), a growth-stage venture capital fund investing in sustainable energy technologies. She started as the 7th employee and assisted in launching six funds, including their flagship funds (Fund I and Fund II), frontier, DEI, credit, and Europe. Vienna led strategic investor relations across the funds as the fund grew from a team of 7 to 50 and from $50M in AUM to $2B. She has two top-tier Honor degrees from Berkeley and Oxford in Politics.

Featured

Kayla Liederbach

Kayla heads up Strut’s marketing arm where she helps emerging managers share their thought leadership and success stories to elevate their brands and capture the attention of investors and founders. Prior to joining Strut, Kayla spent seven years as the Marketing Manager for SOSV, driving internal efforts and supporting their global portfolio of 1000+ companies. Before SOSV, she drove marketing efforts for Murfie, a Madison-based commercial music streaming service. Kayla's passion for communications started early in her career, serving as a radio host since 2009. Kayla is passionate about translating complicated science and technology into relatable stories for the media, investors, and the general public. She is the 5-time winner of "DJ of the Year" at the Madison Area Music Awards! You can catch her hosting her weekly radio show called 2 DUB on Madison's WORT 89.9FM every Saturday night.

Featured

Nicole Fuller

Nicole serves as the COO at Strut, and brings a wealth of experience from the alternative asset industry and client service space. Throughout her career, she’s supported hundreds of asset managers to set up the operational foundation of their firms and successfully launch their funds. Prior to joining Strut, Nicole spent nearly four years helping grow and scale Aduro Advisors, a strategic financial services firm for venture capital and private equity. Prior to Aduro, Nicole supported scaling multiple businesses on the Hedge Fund side.

Above all, Nicole understands how critical relationships are in the VC industry, and she enjoys fostering connections with people on all sides of the aisle. In turn, she helps Strut’s clients navigate the vast landscape of fund set-up options and pairs them with best-in-class providers who can support their growth and ensure their success.

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