{"id":26011,"date":"2025-06-23T02:35:27","date_gmt":"2025-06-23T02:35:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/digify.com\/?p=26011"},"modified":"2026-02-26T07:37:52","modified_gmt":"2026-02-26T07:37:52","slug":"lp-relationship-management-2-frameworks-you-need","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staging-x.digifyteam.com\/ko\/blog\/lp-relationship-management-2-frameworks-you-need\/","title":{"rendered":"LP Relationship Management: The 2 Frameworks You Need to Build Trust"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Digify note:<\/strong> This guest article has been written by our friend David Zhou, who is well connected in the IR and VC world. He also shares his musings on his <\/span><\/i>personal blog<\/span><\/i><\/a>. Here, he offers a candid guide to investor relations, sharing unconventional yet deeply practical strategies for building lasting relationships with LPs beyond fundraising cycles.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Author\u2019s note:<\/strong> My promise to you is that we\u2019ll share advice you\u2019ve likely never heard before. If you\u2019re intimidated by the time you get to the end of this article, then we\u2019ll have done our job. Because that\u2019s what it takes to fight in the same arena as people I\u2019ve personally admired over the years. That said, this won\u2019t be comprehensive, but a compilation of N of 1 practices that hopefully serve as tools in your toolkit. This article is part 1 of a 2-part series. Here, I share the overarching frameworks that govern how I think about managing relationships. The second<\/a> focuses on tactical elements governed by these frameworks.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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One of the best pieces of advice I got when I started as an investor relations professional was that you never want your first conversation with an allocator to be an ask. To be fair, this piece of advice extends to all areas of life. You never want your long-anticipated catch up with a childhood friend to be about asking for a job. You never want the first interaction with an event sponsor to be one where they force you to subscribe to their product. Similarly, you never want your first meeting with an LP to be one where you ask for money.<\/span><\/p>

And in my years of being both an allocator and the Head of IR (as well as in co-building a community of IR professionals), this extends across regions, across asset classes, and across archetypes of LPs.<\/span><\/p>

So, this begs the question, how do you build and, more importantly, retain rapport with LPs outside of fundraising cycles? The foundation of any successful LP relationship lies in consistent engagement beyond capital asks.<\/span><\/p>

To do this successfully, you need two frameworks, which I like to call:<\/span><\/p>

  1. Three hats on the ball<\/span><\/li>
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    This is <\/span>something I learned from Rick Zullo<\/span><\/a>, founding partner of Equal Ventures. The saying itself takes its origin from American football. (Yes, I get it; I\u2019m an Americano). And I also realize that football means something completely different for everyone based outside of our stars and stripes. The sport I\u2019m talking about is the one where big muscular dudes run at each other at full force, fighting over a ball shaped like an olive pit. And in this sport, the one thing you learn is that the play isn\u2019t dead unless you have at least three people over the person running the ball. One isn\u2019t enough. Two leaves things to chance. Three is the gamechanger.<\/span><\/p>

    The same is true when building relationships with LPs. You should always know at least three people at the institutions that are backing you. You never know when your primary champion will retire, switch roles, go on maternity leave, leave on sabbatical, or get stung by a bee and go into anaphylactic shock. Yes, all the above have happened to people I know. Plus, having more people rooting for you is always good.<\/span><\/p>

    Institutions often have high employee turnover rates. CIOs and Heads of Investment cycle through every 7-8 years, if not less. And even if the headcount doesn\u2019t change, LPs, by definition, are generalists. They need to play in multiple asset classes. And venture is the smallest of the small asset classes. It often gets the least attention.<\/span><\/p>

    So, having multiple champions root for you and remind each other of something forgotten outside of the deal room helps immensely. Your brand is what people say about you when you\u2019re not in the room. Remind people why they love you. And remind as many as possible, as often as possible. This multi-touch approach is essential for nurturing a robust LP relationship strategy.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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    Scientists, celebrities, and magicians<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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    My buddy Ian Park told me this when I first became an IR professional. \u201cIn IR, there are product specialists and there are relationship managers. Figure out which you\u2019re better at and lean into it.\u201d Since then, he\u2019s luckily also <\/span>put it into writing<\/span><\/a>. In essence, as an IR professional, you\u2019re either really good at building and maintaining relationships or can teach people about the firm, the craft, the thesis, the portfolio, and the decisions behind them.<\/span><\/p>

    To caveat \u2018relationship managers,\u2019 I believe there are two kinds: sales and customer success. Sales is really capital formation. How do you build (as opposed to maintain) relationships? How do you win strangers over? This is a topic for another day. For now, we\u2019ll focus on \u2018customer success\u2019 later in this piece.<\/span><\/p>

    There\u2019s also this equation that I hear a number of Heads of IR and Chief Development Officers use.<\/span><\/p>

    track record X differentiation \/ complexity<\/i><\/strong><\/p>

    I don\u2019t know the origin, but I first heard it from my friends at General Catalyst, so I\u2019ll give them the kudos here.<\/span><\/p>

    Everyone at the firm should play a key role influencing at least one of these variables. The operations and portfolio support team should focus on differentiation. The investment partners focus on the track record. Us IR folks focus on complexity. And yes, everyone does help everyone else with their variables as well.<\/span><\/p>

    That said, to transpose Ian\u2019s framework to this function, the relationship managers primarily focus on reducing the size of the denominator. Help LPs understand what could be complex about your firm through regular catchups\u2014these touchpoints are crucial for maintaining a strong LP relationship:<\/span><\/p>