LP Reporting Templates for VCs

Belle Raab

The General Partner (GP) and Limited Partner (LP) relationship is built on trust. The best way to establish trust with LPs is through transparency, authenticity, and regular communication. When LP reporting is done well, LPs should easily be able to understand how both the fund and the fund manager are performing and be able to use this information to inform their investment strategies in the future.

The best GPs view sending LP Updates as a relationship-building activity and as a fundraising tool — not as a way to simply check off a requirement from their LPA’s.

For emerging managers, your relationships with initial LPs are of critical importance for your reputation as a fund manager and future fundraising. This rapport forms the basis of the fund manager’s credibility and will surface again when future LPs are doing diligence on the emerging manager. First-time fund managers will need to have clean data to support their track record and positive relationships with current LPs to set themselves up for success in raising additional funds.

The Weekend Fund recently wrote a thoughtful article on How to Write LP Updates with four main takeaways:

  1. Send LP updates consistently
  2. Go beyond the basics
  3. Be authentic
  4. Don’t share sensitive information without portfolio founders’ sign-off

We’ve translated this guidance into actionable steps that can be streamlined with Visible’s Portfolio Monitoring and Reporting tools below.

1. Send LP updates consistently.

Weekend Fund Advice — “One of the biggest mistakes new fund managers can make is not sending LP updates consistently. Most send quarterly updates. At Weekend Fund we send updates approximately every two months. Regular, detailed, and transparent updates builds trust with your LPs, which is particularly important if you want them to write a check into your next fund.”

Visible provides fund managers with tools to make sending updates to LPs on a regular basis easier.

To start, you can Upload Your LP Contacts (including custom contact fields) via CSV within seconds. Then you can create Custom Lists to organize your contacts. We suggest organizing your LPs by Fund and also by whether they’re a current LP or a potential LP.

This means within minutes you have all your contacts organized into custom segments that are useful to you. You can then simply choose which list you want to send an Update to in the future.

Visible also streamlines the creation of your LP Update content by letting you choose from an Update Template Library. You can easily pull a template into your account, further customize it as needed, and save it as your own template to use for future updates.

2. Go beyond the basics.

Weekend Fund Advice — “Of course, you should introduce new investments, share updates from the portfolio, report performance metrics, and other key updates from the fund, but the best updates go a step further to educate and inform LPs. This might include your analysis on the market, perspective on emerging trends, or learnings from experiments.”

Visible’s LP Update editor supports rich text, videos, images, files, and perhaps best of all — custom data visualizations. This means you can visualize your custom fund analytics that will resonate with your LPs and embed them directly into your Update. The data is derived from data hosted within your Visible account and updates your charts in real time.

It’s also a great idea to include a market overview section at the top of your update to shed light on how you’re evaluating and staying ahead of the curve in the markets in which you invest. This is a great way to continue to instill LP confidence in you as the steward of their capital. On top of that, it’s important to remember that “many LPs invest in funds as a learning opportunity. The updates are the primary artifact to support that learning.” (Source)

You can also stand out to LPs by getting creative and embedding a video recording of your recent portfolio updates directly into your Updates. Open the update below to view an example of how a Visible customer incorporates video into their updates —

—> View Update Example with Video Embed

3. Be authentic.

Weekend Fund Advice — In general, people gravitate toward authenticity. Writing with personality is more engaging and magnetic. LP updates are an opportunity to share your unique voice and build your fund’s brand.

The Weekend Fund incorporates authenticity in their updates through their narrative updates and transparency, but also by including personal photos.

Visible lets you embed personal photos directly into your Update in two clicks.

—> View the Weekend Fund’s Update Template

4. Don’t share sensitive information without portfolio founders’ sign-off.

Weekend Fund Advice — “Fund managers often have inside knowledge into how a company is doing. Some founders are extremely sensitive to information shared about their company, even when the news is positive. It’s prudent to get approval for any non-public information shared with LPs.”

Visible recommends explicitly asking for portfolio company’s permission to share information with LPs. One way to do this is by incorporating it into the descriptions of your Request blocks. (How to Build a Request in Visible).

Here’s an example below —

It’s important to remember that as a GP you’re not only competing with other GPs for LP capital but also with every other asset class. So it’s to your advantage to use every tool in your toolkit to stand out and impress LPs.

Over 400+ VC funds are using Visible to streamline their portfolio monitoring and reporting processes.

You may also enjoy:
Product Updates
Shaping the Future: Unveiling Our Brand Refresh
Visible started as a way for founders to update their investors but has since transformed into a purpose-built platform for both founders and investors. Since 2014, we’ve powered over 3M interactions between founders and investors. Our brand refresh represents our commitment to equip founders and the investors who back them. Founders can now manage their investor relationships and capital raises from start to finish. Investors can centralize data, uncover insights, and report to their LPs and stakeholders—all from one place. We are excited to unveil our refreshed brand, marking the beginning of the next decade in our dedication and commitment to founders and investors. Equipping Founders and Investors for Growth Raising capital is fundamentally about building relationships. Founders and investors spend months forging connections that, once solidified by a term sheet, can evolve into partnerships lasting 8 to 10 years and beyond. We set out to highlight the people behind the investments, not just the companies or firms they represent. As we continue to grow, you'll notice more familiar faces from different startups and venture funds featured on our site (👋 Hi Lacey!). Shaping Our Future Across our website and marketing assets, you’ll see 3D shapes floating in the background. While they add aesthetic appeal, they also carry a deeper meaning. For example: We believe raising capital from VCs or LPs closely resembles a fundraising funnel, a concept brought to life through the funnel shape that appears across various pages and assets. Sphere, torus, and pill shapes symbolize the connections between VCs, founders, and stakeholders, reflecting the interwoven nature of these relationships. These forms also symbolize forward momentum and the continuous progression within the venture ecosystem. As our product has evolved to offer greater flexibility in moving data into and out of Visible, you'll notice pipes integrated into the design, visually representing the seamless flow of data through our platform. Logo and Wordmark To maintain and perpetuate our brand equity, we opted to anchor our brand to our current logo and wordmark. The Visible logomark is made from three overlapping, equilateral triangles. Each triangle is slightly transparent, allowing the mark to interact with other design elements. These triangles represent human relationships and the connection between founders and investors, which is core to our mission and vision for our company. Color Palette Our signature black primary color remains, but we've refined our palette for a fresh look. We've transitioned from a complex, rich color scheme to a more cohesive and defined palette, creating a unified and bold approach to color across our brand. Introducing the new Visible color palette: Product Guided by our core values of trust and transparency, we designed our product to embody these principles. Our product visuals across the site are predominantly high-fidelity for the first time, highlighting its capabilities visually rather than relying solely on words. The updated typography and refined color palette are seamlessly integrated into our product screens, further enhancing the overall brand experience. Voice & Tone A brand is more than just its visual identity; it requires a voice and tone that harmonizes with its design. We aimed for our voice to be authentic, credible, and consistent, supporting both investors and founders alike. This commitment led us to define key principles for our voice and tone: Be a guide Less is more Recognize that different users face different challenges As you explore our marketing site, we hope Visible reflects these values and resonates with you. Transparency = Trust As we noted earlier, raising capital is fundamentally about relationships. Trust and transparency form the foundation of any strong connection. Throughout our website, you'll notice subtle transparency elements that embody this core principle. This new iteration of our brand is built to scale, but that doesn’t mean we won’t continue to evolve and elevate the experience for the betterment of our prospects and customers. Here's to shaping the next 10 years! Up and to the right,  The Visible Team
Product Updates
Product Update: Turn Emails Into Insights With Visible AI Inbox
Customer Stories
Case Study: Airtree Venture's Transformation with Visible
Fundraising
9 Tips for Effective Investor Networking