Origins - Inside Venture Capital, Hosted by a GP and an LP · OpenLP from Sapphire Partners

Fundraising as a Fund of Funds with Alex Edelson

·49 min·12 clips

Alex Edelson joins the conversation. The hosts trace his route from seven years of law into venture, including his time at QED Investors before he founded Slipstream in 2021. Slipstream is a fund of funds. That framing matters because the episode keeps returning to how an LP thinks about a GP, and how that judgment shifts when the LP is also weighing its own role and posture. The talk stays grounded. Instead of drifting into theory, the hosts ask what different GPs want from an LP, from hands-on engagement to the simpler promise of being dependable when money is needed. Some investors want more contact. Others want less, and the conversation leaves room for that mismatch instead of flattening it into one tidy best practice. The result is a practical reminder that LP work is partly about fit. It is also about knowing what a firm stands for before the market starts pulling it in every direction. That opens into market comparisons. Edelson and the hosts compare 2021 with today, talking through high valuations, lower ownership, and the sense that everyone is still figuring out the game they are actually playing. There is no neat slogan here. Instead, the episode keeps circling back to how funds define their special powers, how they avoid turning reactive, and why responsiveness only works when it sits on top of a clear identity. The hosts also talk about taste. They note how venture firms and LPs can each have their own lane, and how the best investors resist becoming generic just because the market is loud. That point lands. It lands especially when the discussion turns to the idea that the best founders of one generation help keep you in front of the next generation, which gives the whole conversation a longer horizon than a simple fundraising story. The conversation keeps moving naturally. That back-and-forth gives Edelson room to explain, revisit, and correct himself, so the episode feels like a real room conversation instead of a polished memo. It is venture shorthand. But the shorthand is constantly translated into examples, analogies, and quick checks on whether the logic actually holds up.

As heard by us

An LP-focused conversation about what GPs want, how investors define their posture, and how the market now compares with 2021.

Alex Edelson's path from law to VC to Slipstream gives the episode a useful anchor, but the stronger thread is simpler: what LPs actually want from GPs, how much contact they expect, and how an investor can build a point of view without just mirroring the market.

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Why you'd press play

You want the LP view from someone who went from lawyer to founding a fund-of-funds.

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