Venture Capital Access: 7 Proven Frameworks Elite Fund Managers Use to Build Billion-Dollar Portfolios
Venture capital access is the single most powerful determinant of whether a Fund Manager builds generational wealth or watches superior deal flow pass them by entirely.
Key Takeaways on Venture Capital Access
- Understand that venture capital access to top-quartile funds depends far more on long-term relationship building than on capital size alone — this is the primary insight Matthew Le Merle shares from 40 years in Silicon Valley.
- Consider how a clearly defined investment thesis, developed before deploying a single dollar, forms the essential foundation of every durable venture capital access strategy discussed in this episode.
- Explore the three-part investment strategy Matthew describes — early-stage fund of funds, concentrated mid and late-stage investing, and pre-IPO facilitation — as an educational framework for structuring a multi-stage portfolio.
- Learn how fund managers can think about the convergence of blockchain, AI, and the internet as the defining thesis driving one institutional fund’s venture capital access decisions over the next 20 to 30 years.
- Discover why dollar-cost averaging across market cycles, rather than timing peaks and valleys, represents the analytical consensus Matthew presents for how investors should approach venture capital access during downturns.
Venture Capital Access Begins With Relationships, Not Capital
Define the emerging technology space (e.g., blockchain 2013, AI today) before engaging any managers
Evaluate the full universe of dedicated managers entering the space; filter relentlessly
Sustained presence and deliberate outreach — not a one-quarter process
Concentrate capital in the highest-conviction GPs identified through deep relationship development
Framework: Matthew Le Merle, Fifth Era & Blockchain Coinvestors
Venture capital access, according to Matthew Le Merle, is fundamentally a relationship problem before it is ever a capital problem. Speaking on Making Billions Podcast, Le Merle explains that the most accomplished venture capitalists, particularly those in the top quartile, demonstrate a high persistency rate, meaning the managers who outperform tend to continue outperforming across successive funds. Getting to know those individuals and maintaining meaningful relationships with them is the prerequisite for gaining venture capital access at the elite tier.
Le Merle draws from four decades in Silicon Valley to illustrate how this works in practice. His firm, Fifth Era and Blockchain Coinvestors, built venture capital access by systematically meeting the new dedicated VCs entering the blockchain space beginning in 2013, screening more than 100 funds to identify the 20 to 30 they most wanted to back. This same screening discipline was applied to AI in more recent years, with over 100 AI pure-play early-stage funds evaluated before selecting the 10 ultimately funded.
For fund managers who do not already have institutional scale, Le Merle is direct: venture capital access requires patience, presence, and deliberate outreach over years, not quarters. Unless a manager operates at the scale of a pension fund, sovereign wealth fund, or insurance company, where access is considerably more open, the path to top-tier funds runs through sustained relationship development. This is not a shortcut-friendly process, and Le Merle’s own journey with Blockchain Capital’s founders Brad and Bart Stevens illustrates that being among the earliest investors in a category-defining fund often traces back to personal relationships established well before any formal investment conversation.
According to SEC guidance on investment adviser obligations, fund managers operating as RIAs must maintain compliance frameworks that govern how they communicate with prospective investors, a structural reality that shapes how venture capital access conversations are initiated and sustained. Le Merle acknowledges this explicitly, noting that his firm’s newsletters and research are restricted to accredited investors under RIA regulations.
Venture Capital Access Requires a Clearly Defined Investment Thesis
Venture capital access without a defined investment thesis, Le Merle argues in this episode, is not a strategy — it is speculation. He describes how his firm’s thesis was written down 15 years ago, though it was rooted in 15 to 20 years of prior observation beginning in the 1990s when the internet began digitalizing communications and content. The thesis is precise: all of the world’s business activities are moving to natively digital rails, and the next phase, digitalization of value exchange, identity, and decision-making, represents the most important driver of the coming 20 to 30 years.
This thesis, which Le Merle calls the “autonomous digital economy,” frames venture capital access decisions around the convergence of blockchain, AI, and the internet. The firm deliberately excludes life sciences, clean energy, and infrastructure from consideration, not because those sectors lack merit, but because discipline in thesis definition is what makes concentrated venture capital access meaningful rather than diffuse. Le Merle explains that fund managers who attempt to participate in every category often end up with exposure to none of them at any depth that matters.
For investors considering how to frame their own thesis, Le Merle’s educational framing is instructive. He emphasizes that any private markets investor should be able to articulate clearly why value is likely to be created around a specific innovation, technology, or area of emerging business before committing capital. Venture capital access built on a vague thesis produces a portfolio that cannot be defended to LPs, cannot attract the best co-investors, and cannot generate the concentrated returns that justify the illiquidity premium of private markets. As Harvard Business Review has noted in discussions of strategic clarity, organizations that define their focus narrowly tend to outperform those that try to be all things to all stakeholders.
Venture Capital Access Through a Three-Part Fund of Funds Structure
| Stage | Structure | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| Part 1 | Early-Stage Fund of Funds | Capital to best-in-category VCs; generates deal flow intelligence across 50+ funds |
| Part 2 | Concentrated Direct Investing | Mid & late-stage bets on emerging category leaders; a handful of selections per year |
| Part 3 | Exit Facilitation | IPOs, De-SPAC mergers, and major acquisitions; natural result of Parts 1 & 2 |
Framework: Matthew Le Merle, Fifth Era & Blockchain Coinvestors
Venture capital access at the institutional level, Le Merle explains, is operationalized through what he describes as a three-part investment strategy. The first component is early-stage fund of funds, providing capital to the best investors in a specific category, gaining a window into their deal flow, and using the signals generated by those relationships to inform the next two stages. This structure is how his firm built venture capital access to more than 50 venture funds and over 1,500 companies, with 80 unicorns represented in the portfolio.
The second component is concentrated mid and late-stage direct investing. Le Merle describes this as pulling the trigger only a handful of times per year, focused exclusively on emerging category leaders identified through the intelligence gathered at the fund of funds layer. This approach converts venture capital access into actionable deal selection rather than broad portfolio construction. The third component involves facilitating exits, including IPOs, De-SPAC mergers, and major Acquisitions, which he describes as the natural consequence of doing the first two stages well.
On the economics of the fund of funds structure, Le Merle addresses the fees-on-fees concern directly. He acknowledges that public market fund of funds often destroy value because the underlying asset class does not generate sufficient returns to absorb two layers of fees. Early-stage venture, however, is among the highest-returning asset categories in the world when venture capital access is concentrated in the top quartile. He references Cambridge Associates research, explicitly cited in the episode, demonstrating that blockchain venture was one of the highest-performing asset categories in its own right, providing analytical grounding for the additional cost layer. Investopedia’s overview of fund of funds structures provides useful context on how layered fee arrangements are evaluated by institutional allocators.
Venture Capital Access Depends on Rigorous Manager Selection
Venture capital access to the right funds begins with a disciplined manager selection process, and Le Merle walks through this framework in detail during the episode. The starting point is domain expertise, as pure-play funds focused on a specific emerging technology will always have a structural advantage over generalist funds that have hired one or two specialists in a category. For blockchain and AI specifically, the best managers Le Merle has backed for venture capital access tend to be alumni of leading AI labs, career venture capitalists with proven track records from top-tier VC firms, scientists, or founders who transitioned to investing.
Beyond credentials, the selection process involves triangulation. Le Merle describes asking other investors, other venture capitalists, and founders building projects within the ecosystem who they consider the best VCs in the space. This form of reference checking produces a signal that is difficult to fabricate and closely correlated with actual investment quality. Operational due diligence, covering Fund Administrator, legal counsel, and accounting relationships, is layered on top of this qualitative assessment. Venture capital access to genuinely elite managers, Le Merle makes clear, requires this full-stack evaluation rather than relying on any single credential or track record metric.
For first or second-time funds in a new innovation category, Le Merle acknowledges that performance data will be limited or absent. The typical venture fund is a 10-year vehicle, and the largest outcomes, the ones that actually drive portfolio returns, can take eight, nine, or ten years to reach an exit. Venture capital access decisions for early-stage funds must therefore rest on team quality, thesis clarity, ecosystem positioning, and the evaluator’s own conviction about the underlying technology, rather than on historical returns that do not yet exist.
Venture Capital Access to LP Capital Builds Incrementally Across Fund Generations
Tiny AUM. No track record. Relationship-dependent. Survives on conviction and thesis clarity. Buys the right to Fund 2.
Tens of millions. Early portfolio signals emerging. LP relationships deepen. Track record begins forming.
~$150M+ AUM. Demonstrated performance. Broader LP base. Blockchain Capital reached this in ~10 years.
Billions AUM. Institutional LP mix. Benchmarked against HarbourVest-tier operators. Full infrastructure maturity.
Framework: Matthew Le Merle, Fifth Era & Blockchain Coinvestors
Venture capital access to LP capital, Le Merle explains, is not a single event — it is a multi-year compounding process that rewards persistence and penalizes impatience. Speaking directly to fund managers in the Making Billions audience, he describes the first fund as the hardest fund, citing the structural disadvantage of having no track record, no established LP relationships, and no demonstrated performance in the specific strategy. The exception, he notes, is when a manager’s focus area becomes exceptionally hot, as AI is currently, creating a demand pull that can substitute for some portion of the relationship and track record requirement.
Le Merle uses Blockchain Capital as the illustrative case study for how venture capital access to LP capital scales over time. Their first fund was tiny. Their second fund was in the tens of millions. By the third meaningful fund, the firm was at approximately $150 million, eventually scaling to billions under management. The timeline was roughly 10 years, and Le Merle is explicit that not everyone sustains the commitment required to see that arc through.
The critical insight is that each fund exists to make the next fund possible. Venture capital access to larger pools of LP capital is earned through demonstrated investment judgment, emerging portfolio performance, and the LP relationships cultivated during each prior cycle. He also addresses the economic realities of small first-time funds with candor: three GPs running a $10 million fund will find the management fee barely covers operational costs, and carry is a decade away.
Yet Le Merle’s framing is instructive: a $10 million fund is still a fund. The manager is in the game, has bought themselves the right to a second fund, and has the opportunity to make 20 investments, knowing that even the best VCs experience 60 to 70 percent failure rates, while hoping that five to ten produce the returns that validate the strategy. Forbes has documented how Emerging Fund Managers build track records in ways that support subsequent fundraising cycles.
Venture Capital Access and the Tokenization of Financial Assets
Venture capital access to digital-native financial infrastructure is an emerging dimension of the portfolio management conversation, and Le Merle addresses it through the lens of tokenization. He describes tokenization as the technology that allows an ownership certificate, whether a share certificate, a title, or another instrument, to be placed in a digital format that can be shared, traded, and held over internet infrastructure. This enables 24-by-seven global venture capital access for potentially billions of participants.
For fund managers specifically, Le Merle does not argue that tokenization requires immediate structural changes to fund vehicles. Most LPs, including pension funds, insurance companies, and Family Offices, are not yet operationally prepared to subscribe to and hold tokenized fund interests. His firm has written into each of its funds a right to tokenize, but has not exercised that right because the LP base is not yet ready. Venture capital access to a tokenized fund structure currently requires a crypto-native LP base with existing digital wallets and familiarity with token-based ownership, which remains the exception rather than the rule among institutional allocators.
The more immediate application Le Merle highlights for builders, rather than fund managers, is in transaction infrastructure. He argues it would be commercially irrational for any agentic AI company to be built today without a clear framework for how value transactions will be conducted at scale and low cost. Venture capital access to the companies solving this problem is, in Le Merle’s framing, one of the most consequential investment opportunities in the autonomous digital economy thesis.
Paying two percent to traditional card networks on transactions where margins are five to six percent means surrendering a third of value at the point of sale. The SEC has published guidance on digital asset regulatory frameworks that fund managers should review when evaluating venture capital access to tokenized instruments.
Venture Capital Access Across Market Cycles Rewards Dollar-Cost Averaging
Venture capital access decisions made at market peaks consistently underperform those made during downturns, and Le Merle presents this as an analytically supported observation rather than a contrarian posture. He notes that analytical evidence demonstrates funds raised during downturns have historically outperformed funds raised at market peaks, attributing this to valuation dynamics. When markets are depressed, entry prices are lower and the mathematical potential for return through venture capital access is structurally higher.
Yet investor behavior consistently runs in the opposite direction, with capital deployments peaking at cycle highs and shrinking at cycle lows. Le Merle differentiates the appropriate response to market cycles by investor type in this episode. For builders, Entrepreneurs and founders, the instruction is to ignore cycles entirely and execute on the thesis regardless of market conditions, noting that reduced competition in downturns can offset the difficulty of raising capital.
For venture fund managers, the focus should remain on the innovation cycle rather than the market cycle, ensuring venture capital access entry into a thesis early enough to ride the full curve of Value Creation. For allocators to funds, the prescription is consistent with dollar-cost averaging, maintaining commitment cadence through downturns rather than pulling back precisely when vintage years are historically most favorable. He invokes Warren Buffett‘s well-known socks-and-stocks analogy to make the point accessible: if an investor believes in an asset and its price declines, the rational response is increased interest, not reduced participation.
Venture capital access strategies that attempt to time cycles, pulling back when sentiment is negative and deploying aggressively when sentiment peaks, tend to invert the risk-return logic that makes early-stage investing compelling in the first place. The Wall Street Journal has covered vintage year return patterns in venture capital that support the analytical case for counter-cyclical deployment.
Venture Capital Access Scales When Track Record, Thesis, and Infrastructure Align
Venture capital access to larger pools of institutional capital becomes available when a fund manager has demonstrated that track record, investment thesis, and operational infrastructure are all maturing simultaneously. Le Merle addresses this directly in response to a question about how a $10 million fund manager begins building toward the scale of a platform like Blockchain Coinvestors. His answer is grounded in the same sequential logic that governs every stage of fund development: the first fund exists to produce the second fund, the second fund exists to produce the third, and each cycle should compound both the investment performance and the LP relationship base.
The investment thesis must be credible enough that LPs believe the manager has a structural edge in identifying and accessing the specific category of venture capital deals they claim to specialize in. Without that conviction, venture capital access to follow-on LP commitments becomes increasingly difficult regardless of how well individual portfolio companies perform. Le Merle is explicit that in emerging technology categories, blockchain in 2013 and AI today, the thesis itself can be the differentiator, because the universe of managers with genuine domain expertise is small and the competition for LP capital from category-focused funds is limited.
Operationally, Le Merle describes how his firm benchmarks its cost structure against institutional-grade fund of funds operators like HarbourVest and Horsley Bridge, noting that institutional platforms can justify their fee structures through the quality of venture capital access they deliver and the persistency of top-quartile returns. He references his partner Alison’s background, former CFO of Barclays Global Investors and a key figure in the development and launch of iShares, now a five-trillion-dollar platform, as an example of how operational and financial infrastructure credibility reinforces the investment thesis. The core philosophy, he explains, is to minimize costs and reinvest the savings into performance, returning as much value as possible to investors.
The SEC’s capital raising guidance for investment managers provides regulatory context for fund managers building institutional-grade platforms focused on venture capital access at scale.
For Fund Managers Raising $10M to $500M+
The Room You Have Been Trying to Get Into
The fund managers closing institutional LPs are not smarter than you. They are better positioned. Fund Raise Capital works exclusively with alternative asset managers who are serious about building a capital raising machine — not guessing their way through LP conversations.
This is not a course. This is not a community. This is direct access to the frameworks, relationships, and infrastructure used by fund managers operating at the highest levels of the alternative asset industry.
About the Guest
Matthew Le Merle is the Managing Partner and CEO of Fifth Era and Blockchain Coinvestors, a blockchain and AI fund of funds now in its tenth year, backed by more than 400 investors worldwide, with positions in over 50 venture funds and more than 1,500 companies, including 80 unicorns. He spent 21 years advising Fortune 500 CEOs and boards at McKinsey, A.T. Kearney, Monitor, and Booz, and has served as chairman or director of 15 public and private companies.
Le Merle is the best-selling author of six books, including titles on Silicon Valley and Bitcoin, and holds a double first from Oxford and an MBA from Stanford. His firm operates as a registered investment adviser. More information is available at fifthera.com, and his books are available on Amazon under his name.
Questions Answered in This Article
Which unicorn companies are expected to reach billions in 2026?
The episode focuses on a concentrated thesis built around a curated set of unicorns positioned for significant value creation rather than naming specific companies expected to reach billions in 2026. Ryan Miller discusses how identifying the right unicorns requires rigorous filtering from the broader global pool down to a much smaller, higher-conviction group. The core argument is that selectivity, not breadth, is what separates disciplined fund managers from those chasing headlines.
Hear the full breakdown on Making Billions with Ryan Miller — and fund managers ready to implement join the Fund Raise Capital community of fund managers and deal syndicators learning first-hand from Ryan Miller, The Wolf of Alt Street.
How many unicorns currently exist in the global startup ecosystem?
The global startup ecosystem contains thousands of unicorn companies, a number that has expanded dramatically over the past decade as private capital flooded into venture markets. Ryan Miller’s episode challenges the assumption that more unicorns means more opportunity, arguing instead that the sheer volume dilutes the signal. The episode’s central thesis is built on the idea that only a fraction of the total unicorn population represents truly compelling capital allocation targets.
Hear the full breakdown on Making Billions with Ryan Miller — and fund managers ready to implement join the Fund Raise Capital community of fund managers and deal syndicators learning first-hand from Ryan Miller, The Wolf of Alt Street.
Why are most unicorn startups unprofitable despite billion dollar valuations?
Most unicorn startups carry billion-dollar valuations that are driven by growth metrics, market size projections, and investor sentiment rather than current profitability. The episode addresses how private market valuations are often set during funding rounds under favorable conditions that do not require the company to demonstrate earnings. This structural dynamic means a high valuation and a healthy business model can exist independently of one another, which is a critical distinction for serious fund managers evaluating unicorn exposure.
Hear the full breakdown on Making Billions with Ryan Miller — and fund managers ready to implement join the Fund Raise Capital community of fund managers and deal syndicators learning first-hand from Ryan Miller, The Wolf of Alt Street.
What percentage of unicorns successfully exit through IPO or acquisition?
The episode highlights that successful exits through IPO or acquisition represent a minority of unicorn outcomes, with many companies remaining private indefinitely or experiencing down rounds. Ryan Miller frames this exit scarcity as one of the core risks that undisciplined investors overlook when allocating to unicorns broadly. Understanding exit pathway probability is presented as a foundational filter when building a concentrated unicorn strategy.
Hear the full breakdown on Making Billions with Ryan Miller — and fund managers ready to implement join the Fund Raise Capital community of fund managers and deal syndicators learning first-hand from Ryan Miller, The Wolf of Alt Street.
How can institutional investors gain exposure to only 80 unicorns?
The episode’s title thesis centers on the idea that institutional investors can build meaningful exposure by concentrating on approximately 80 unicorns rather than attempting to access the entire universe. Ryan Miller explains that this concentrated approach requires a disciplined screening process that filters for quality, exit viability, and structural positioning within a portfolio. Accessing only 80 unicorns is framed as a feature, not a limitation, because it demands conviction and reduces the noise that comes with over-diversification in private markets.
Hear the full breakdown on Making Billions with Ryan Miller — and fund managers ready to implement join the Fund Raise Capital community of fund managers and deal syndicators learning first-hand from Ryan Miller, The Wolf of Alt Street.
Are unicorn valuations still reliable indicators of actual company worth?
Unicorn valuations are increasingly viewed as lagging or distorted indicators of actual company worth, particularly following the rate environment shifts and public market corrections of recent years. The episode makes clear that private market marks often reflect the price of the last funding round rather than a real-time assessment of intrinsic value. Fund managers are advised to treat headline valuations as one data point among many rather than as a definitive measure of what a unicorn startup is actually worth.
Hear the full breakdown on Making Billions with Ryan Miller — and fund managers ready to implement join the Fund Raise Capital community of fund managers and deal syndicators learning first-hand from Ryan Miller, The Wolf of Alt Street.
Which sectors produced the most new unicorns minted in 2025?
The episode addresses sector concentration as a key factor in understanding where new unicorns have been minted, with technology-adjacent industries including artificial intelligence, fintech, and defense tech representing significant sources of new entrants. Ryan Miller discusses how sector momentum can create both opportunity and crowding risk for fund managers building unicorn exposure. Identifying which sectors are producing durable unicorns versus valuation-inflated ones is presented as a core part of the filtering work required for a sound allocation strategy.
Hear the full breakdown on Making Billions with Ryan Miller — and fund managers ready to implement join the Fund Raise Capital community of fund managers and deal syndicators learning first-hand from Ryan Miller, The Wolf of Alt Street.
Should family offices allocate capital to pre-unicorn or established unicorns?
The episode presents the pre-unicorn versus established unicorn decision as a risk-return positioning question that depends heavily on a family office’s liquidity tolerance, time horizon, and existing alternative asset exposure. Ryan Miller indicates that established unicorns with clear exit pathways offer a different risk profile than earlier-stage companies still working toward the billion-dollar threshold. Both categories carry distinct structural considerations, and the episode frames the choice as one that should be made with full awareness of valuation reliability and exit probability rather than on the basis of valuation size alone.
Hear the full breakdown on Making Billions with Ryan Miller — and fund managers ready to implement join the Fund Raise Capital community of fund managers and deal syndicators learning first-hand from Ryan Miller, The Wolf of Alt Street.
Topics Covered in This Article on Venture Capital Access
- Venture capital access strategies for fund managers at every stage of fund development
- How to build GP relationships that open venture capital access to top-quartile funds
- The three-part investment strategy Matthew Le Merle uses to structure venture capital access across early, mid, and late-stage investing
- Investment thesis development as the foundation of durable venture capital access
- Fund of funds fee structures and how institutional platforms justify layered costs
- Tokenization of
