When I ask most venture capital firms about who their limited partners are, or the investors supplying the money for their funds, I get the same cryptic response: endowments, pension funds, family offices, and high net worth individuals. It’s a closely guarded secret for most VC operations. The New York-based Lead Edge Capital takes a different approach: It proudly lists the more than 700 individuals who back its fund right on its website, though it doesn’t include its institutional backers.
The sheer number of LPs is a staggering figure for any venture firm, and especially one with a relatively modest $5 billion of assets under management. But Nimay Mehta, Lead Edge’s managing partner, swears by the strategy, even as he gears up to raise the firm’s seventh fund this year, which will entail more than 700 calls. He affectionately referred to the labor-intensive process as “an insane amount of brain damage.” But in the increasingly competitive field of software investing, it’s what sets Lead Edge apart from its peers.
