

— Capital at risk. T&Cs Apply. Nothing in this article constitutes investment advice. —
Every good venture capital fund has a thesis. They can tell you what they plan to do with the money they raise. At Sprout, when we vet funds, we look for real clarity in two areas in particular:
In this blog, we are going to dive deeper into a fund’s thesis, and how different theses may influence investors’ fund preferences.
A common misconception is that venture capital funds only invest in very early stage, speculative investment opportunities; however, in reality venture capital funds pursue a range of different strategies both in terms of thesis, and stage (or maturity) of investment.
Read our previous blog on the pros and cons of investing at different stages.
As you can see, there are many considerations for us when we diligence and partner with funds. We strive to bring our community a good mix of funds across sectors, stages, and geographies, whilst always setting the bar as high as possible on quality and track record. All funds are attempting to make the best returns possible for their investors, and they just have different ways of getting there.
Sometimes, it’s easy to look at two funds and decide which is better (something we do when filtering out funds we don’t want to work with). However when faced with a selection of 3-5 top-tier funds, there’s no guarantee which fund will perform the best. Investors will often factor other criteria, such as those above, into their investment decisions, which can often be very personal, preference-based decisions.
At Sprout, we are not here to tell you how to invest your money, and into which funds. However, we curate a selection of top-tier funds, and let you choose which funds you like, taking the above into account.
We will be sharing a detailed guide to how we filter funds in the coming weeks. Stay tuned to learn more about that.