LP SPOTLIGHT: Lucas Fernandez, Senior Vice President, Venture Capital, Talipot

Lucas Fernandez is an experienced private markets investor across buyouts, growth equity and venture capital. At Talipot, Lucas is focused on investing across the venture asset class, including emerging managers. Prior to Talipot, Lucas worked with pre-seed and seed companies at Simplexity Venture Studio Fund and supported the Venture Capital and Growth Equity investment team at StepStone Group (NASDAQ: STEP), focusing on building and monitoring customized private markets portfolios for pensions, family offices, endowments, foundations, and sovereign wealth funds. 

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EVCA: What is the most important factor you consider when evaluating emerging managers and funds?

Lucas: At Talipot, we evaluate emerging managers based on several key factors. Track record and/or operational experience are crucial for us, and we often like to support partnerships that have complementary skill sets at the GP level. Ideally we look for funds with a clear purpose and unique network that is additive to our already existing exposure (and doesn’t overlap with it). It’s also important to us that a new manager operates their fund like a business and lays down the right foundation to build a long-term franchise. However, at the end of the day, partnering with the best crop of founders that the GP believes are top tier, is the most important thing that drives long-term returns for LPs, and this outweighs much of the underwriting process.

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EVCA: How does your fund investment thesis inform your direct investment strategy in terms of the specific stages and sectors you focus on?

Lucas: Our fund investment strategy is comprehensive and flexible as we spend time backing both specialist and generalist funds to ensure we cover key sectors like healthcare, Fintech, climate, supply chain, and other large industries. By doing this, we capture a strong lay of the land from an innovation perspective and can double click into the themes we feel strongest about.

This approach helps drive insights for co-investment and direct investments, which stem from our existing GP portfolio partnerships and target exposure to the top Series A through Series C opportunities in the lookthrough portfolio on a sector-agnostic basis. We leverage our GPs' insights to identify top prospects within their portfolios well in advance of an upcoming raise. This diversified strategy allows us to tap into a wide range of opportunities while benefiting from specialized industry knowledge as a generalist LP.

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EVCA: What is one piece of advice you would give to emerging managers launching their first funds?

Lucas: For emerging managers, transparency is key. We advise maintaining open communication with LPs throughout the fundraising process and providing clear, accurate performance data when available. As a partner to founders, we expect GPs to know their portfolio inside and out. This openness builds trust and credibility that compounds over time, which is essential in the venture business. In an industry where reputation matters, transparency can significantly enhance a manager's prospects for both current and future funds.