Diary of an Emerging Manager - Part 5: THE FIRST BAG OF CASH
XoXo, Venture Whisperer (The VC Gossip Girl)
Editor’s Note – Andreas Munk Holm, co-founder of eu.vc
This one’s for the grinders. The ones building a fund deck at midnight and refreshing their inbox at 7:00 a.m., praying that one “promising” coffee turns into a commitment.
In this fifth installment of our Emerging Manager Diary, we hit pause on the hype and rewind to the chaos. The founders behind Upper East Side Ventures just bagged their first 100k commitment—but before the confetti, there were Excel hallucinations, amateur law degrees, internal drama, and a shockingly short “people with money” list.
This entry is real, hilarious, and painfully accurate. It captures the mental gymnastics of pre-seed fundraising in Europe—where even the fanciest angels feel broke by VC standards, and your first LP might come from a friendly coffee that you almost didn’t take.
If you’re raising, planning to raise, or still licking your wounds from the last round, this one’s a must-read.
Stay tuned for the next chapter: ghosts, heartbreak, and all the messages left on "seen."
I know... the title is exciting - but let’s hit pause for a second and do a quick retrospective revision, just to set the right tone. Honestly, we consider ourselves insanely lucky to have bagged a 100k commitment right after our very first serious LP meeting. Reading back my previous entries, though, I realised that diving straight into our fundraising win wouldn’t quite do justice to the brutal struggle we went through to get here.
So here’s the pause... and a friendly reminder of the reality behind this milestone: We spent endless hours staring at Excel sheets until the cells started dancing, practically earned an unofficial master's degree in fund-related law, and somehow became amateur therapists, HR managers, and key strategists while navigating internal team dramas. But eventually, there it was -something presentable enough for LPs. (At least this is what we thought at that point in time.)
We faced the next daunting question: who exactly would be crazy enough - I mean, lucky enough - to join us on this journey? And how would we even find these elusive, new wealthy BFFs?
Yes, BFFs – as institutional investors, the big guys are off the table for first-time fund managers – cruel world it is!!
We had to start somewhere. So we did what everyone does - we made a list.
A list of people we knew, we thought might know something, or at least people who could politely give feedback without laughing at us.
Quickly, it became painfully obvious that our network’s “wealthy” contacts were few and far between - and that even the fanciest angels seemed alarmingly poor once we factored in VC-scale numbers. (Referring back to my previous log while highlighting the differences between the US and EU tech scene.)
But we didn’t give up, combing through LinkedIn, shuffling through old business cards, and silently wondering, “How on Earth did we ever think we knew anyone with money?”
The list was depressingly short… so we decided we’d be strategic about our outreach, carefully warming up with those safe "feedback-only" types first, and gradually moving toward people who might actually consider becoming LPs.
Initially, we planned a few safe test runs with knowledgeable-but-broke contacts, just to practice and make sure we wouldn't embarrass ourselves too badly.
Keep it gradual, right?… Absolutely not.
Okay - maybe with a little patience: I think we did exactly two dry runs before approaching our first Family Office..
She was a friend of my business partner, we liked her, trusted her - and thought, “Why not? What’s the worst that could happen?”
She listened carefully to our pitch, threw a bunch of thoughtful questions our way, and then casually said "yes"—seriously, that was it. Well, we did have to resend the materials (because, of course, who gets it perfect on the first try?), but honestly, that was the extent of the process.
Lesson learned: fundraising outreach boils down to actually doing it.
Sure, it wasn’t exactly an anchor LP, but it was more than enough to launch our confidence through the roof. Not bad for the 3rd meeting.
Next time, I'll dive into the opposite end of the spectrum—the soul-crushers. The ghosts. The masters of silence. The "seen-but-no-reply" legends who vanish without a trace. Stay tuned!
XoXo, Venture Whisperer (The VC Gossip Girl)
Upper East Side Ventures
