The Life of “Little P’s” and Non-Partners: How to Make the Most of the Opportunity

I had the good fortune of starting my career working for two of the most recognized names in venture capital — Fred Wilson at Union Square Ventures and Josh Kopelman at First Round Capital. 

When I was at Union Square, Fred Wilson was the most visible VC in the NYC ecosystem. That meant I had a door-opening name I could drop. The problem was that when the door opened, people were often a little disappointed that I was the only one who walked in, instead of my boss.

At First Round, the dynamic was different but the lesson was the same. The first deal I ever did was a co-investment with a prominent East Coast firm. Their lead partner pushed to have Josh Kopelman named as the board member — not me — even though Josh had nothing to do with the deal. I had sourced it and done the work. 

It didn’t matter. They wanted the name on the board.

If you’re a junior investor right now, none of this is surprising. You’ve felt it. You send the email and it goes unanswered. You get the meeting, but the founder is clearly waiting for your partner to join, or even explicitly asks. You make the intro internally and someone senior takes over. You’re working hard for the firm, but it’s not clear that your long term value as an investor is accruing. 

Are you actually gaining “juice”, or just renting someone else’s?

When a prominent GP walks into a room — especially one who built and sold a company — they carry things you don’t yet have. They have a track record. They’ve signed checks that mattered. They’ve sat on boards that produced outcomes. Founders can Google them and see proof. They’ve made money for LPs. They’ve made money for themselves. They’ve made mistakes publicly and survived them.

They also carry pattern recognition that’s been stress-tested. They’ve seen cycles. They’ve seen companies break and recover. When they give advice, it’s coming from scar tissue, not theory. And, maybe most importantly, they have accumulated trust — with founders, LPs, and other investors. That trust shortens the sales cycle for everything they do.

You don’t have that yet. Not because you’re incapable of earning it. You just haven’t yet. You can’t compress two decades of reps into two years of hustle.

So if you’re trying to compete on the same axis — pure authority, pure brand, pure “take my meeting because I’m important” — you’re going to lose. The question isn’t how to fake that signal. It’s how to build leverage in a different way.

The Disadvantage Is Real

When you’re the low-status person at a firm, the math is simple. Founders want the GP. Operators want the GP. LPs want the GP. The firm’s signal sits with the most senior person, and everyone else is trying to borrow it. If your firm has a strong brand, you draft behind it. If it doesn’t, you’re pushing uphill.

So your outbound doesn’t convert. You’re emailing founders who don’t know you, don’t know your firm, and don’t have a clear reason to take a meeting with you specifically. When the numbers don’t convert to enough high quality deals, the instinct is to do more outbound, but that’s usually the wrong move.

What You Already Have (But Aren’t Using)

Most junior investors miss this: you already have access to a network that most people would never get. 

Your firm’s GPs, portfolio founders, and LPs — especially operators, founders, and successful executives — are sitting there, dramatically underutilized. They chose to invest in your firm, they are aligned with your success, and many of them have the exact networks and perspective you’re trying to build from scratch.

The problem isn’t access. It’s that you’re not using it. Start reaching out.

You’re actually not asking these people for favors. You are offering them something. Smart, accomplished people have a constant need to stay relevant. They have ideas they want to express, perspectives they want sharpened, and stories they want told. They need to feed the beast of staying relevant in a changing technology landscape. If you show up with real curiosity and offer to capture that conversation, you’re solving a problem for them.

Don’t overproduce it or pitch it as a podcast. Just say: “I’m trying to get smarter on [topic]. You’ve seen more of this than almost anyone I can think of. I’d love to record our conversation — not sure what I’ll do with it yet, but I’d love to have it.” 

Almost nobody says no, and if they do, it doesn’t matter. There are other fish in the sea.

The Flywheel

Start inside the firm. Ask your GPs who the two or three people in their network that you should talk to about your focus area. Get the intro, have the conversation, record it, ask good questions, and actually listen. 

At the end, ask one simple question: who else should I talk to?

That question compounds everything. A warm introduction from someone credible is worth far more than dozens of cold emails. If you do this consistently, patterns start to emerge. You hear the same problems repeated, you notice what smart people disagree on, and you begin to form a point of view. That’s your thesis—not something you declare, but something that emerges.

Only after that should you start sharing it publicly. Not to perform, but to signal. When you’ve had real conversations in a space and write something thoughtful about what you’ve learned, the right founders start finding you.

P.S. If you really want to level up, ask them what their needs are–and spend some extra time trying to offer an intro back to them. Are they looking for customers? Is one of their angel investment founders looking to install OpenClaw and see what they can do with it? Be that resource.

Other Winning Recipes

In Margin Call (which is a highly under the radar movie with an amazing cast) Jeremy Irons says:

“There are three ways to make a living in this business: Be first, be smarter or cheat.

Now, I don't cheat.

And, although I like to think we have some pretty smart people in this building, it sure is a hell of a lot easier to just be first.”

While you lament the fact that everyone wants to talk to your boss, you need to see that as a window. The GPs at your firm have their time taken up by LP fundraising, firm administration and a ton of other commitments–and they’re often limited in the hours they’re working by additional family and outside commitments.

That supply demand imbalance is an opening for you–an opening to get to things before they have an opportunity for those things to find them.

So if the hot shot team that built the whole backend stack for Plaid has a new deal with three term sheets on it and your main GP is your firm’s only shot at getting in, you should be out figuring out who else at Plaid might be ready to leave, or who the most backable and trusted folks are.

That kind of thing is how I sourced Moat for First Round Capital. I was out at a networking event (a Blip.TV event for you NYC OGs) and met Mike Walwrath, former CEO and founder of Right Media, an online advertising exchange marketplace that was acquired by Yahoo for $850 million four years before. We got into a conversation about cycling and all the bells and whistles one can have on road bikes when you sell a company for that much. (I’m now that bike guy, only without the big exit to justify the expense.)

Someone stepped into the circle that he introduced as one of his investors… not someone who was one of his investors–meaning he clearly had a new company going.

I stepped aside and immediately called Josh Kopelman from the event–because I knew my rung on the ladder. I wasn’t going to be able to get us into that deal, but I knew that Josh could. He made the call and we wound up with a small but very profitable slice of Moat, which later sold for almost exactly what Right Media had sold for.

I wasn’t upset about not having the juice to pull the deal off myself. I was glad to be attached to a partner that did. 

The Time Audit

Do yourself a favor and check on whether you’re making the most of the opportunity you have being connected to far more experienced investors.

Pull up your calendar from the last month and bucket your time honestly. What meetings are you getting into that you could only get into because of where you are? Does your calendar reflect being associated with the best people in the network around your firm or is it basically at replacement player level–no different than anyone else who is connected to some money.

Think about the founders you’re trying to back–the ones you would feel lucky to be in a deal with. Would they be spending time answering cold emails from analysts? Who in the ecosystem would they be trying to spend the most time with? 

You should get to those people first and your partners are the ticket.

The gap between those two is your roadmap. Block two or three slots each week for higher-quality conversations that your GPs enable and protect them. 

If a slot opens up, don’t fill it with whoever happens to ask. Fill it intentionally with the best people in your firm’s network–the ones your GPs don’t have time to engage with but you do.

Remember, you didn’t sneak into the building. You’re in venture because your firm—your General Partners—chose you. They saw past the lack of a track record and recognized a specific, high-potential signal in you. 

You are an outlier in a hyper-competitive field just by being on the inside.

So, let's stop with the imposter syndrome and get to work.