Edition #13: 25 New Funds, Most Active Seed Mega Platforms, Top 100 US VC Firms
Hey folks,
This is Pavel and welcome to the 13th edition (May, 2026) of Murph Capital newsletter.
This is my monthly brain-dump of the most useful stuff I’ve come across as an operator in the emerging GP/LP world.
Follow me on X and LinkedIn for more frequent insights.
In Partnership With
Legion is a high-signal marketplace matching emerging GPs with relevant LPs, featuring seamless fund admin, built-in secondary liquidity, and over $300M in investor capital flows. Raise your next fund or write your next check on Legion.
Harmonic aggregates real-time data on 30M+ companies and 190M+ people to surface the signals that actually matter – all through AI-powered workflow.
Rings AI is an intelligent CRM built for VCs and LPs with auto-enriched data on 100M+ contacts, and a visual map of who-knows-who across your network.
Cura is a portfolio intelligence on autopilot that connects your Granola notes, iMessage, LinkedIn data and more to automate support and intelligence.
5 Best Tweets
“What data reveals about the scale of Zombie VCs”
By Pavel Prata from R136 Ventures
“Pierre Lamond and the case for studying the VCs we've forgotten”
By Delian Asparouhov from Founders Fund
“The same crowd that chased web3 is now all-in on AI”
By Turner Novak from Banana Capital
“How the Musk/OpenAI case revealed a $20M university endowment bet”
By Ben Casnocha from Village Global
“The $1B milestone that makes the 'emerging manager' label obsolete”
By Alex Klein from Nucleus Talent
5 Best Linkedin Posts
“Are mega-funds really taking over Seed?”
By Pavel Prata from R136 Ventures
“Why early-stage VC risk is really a portfolio construction problem”
By Steve Kim from Verdis Investment Management
“Do solo and emerging GPs actually have a network edge?”
By Pavel Prata from R136 Ventures
“Capital follows conditions: the uncomfortable truth about European VC”
By Kasper Wichmann from Balentic
“The emerging manager bright spot hiding in Carta's latest data”
By Peter Walker from Carta
5 Best Longreads
“VC Fund of Funds: the market”
By Pavel Prata from Murph Capital
“The disappearance of the ten-year fund”
By Dan Gray from Odin
“Deep tech companies are built different”
By Leo Polovets from Susa Ventures
By Dan Gray from Odin
By Ilya Strebulaev from Stanford GSB
5 Key Market Reports
By Carta
“Global fund performance report“
By Pitchbook
”Family Office Report: Q1 2026 Trends & Intelligence”
By Fintrx
”Q1 2026 Global Unicorn Tracker”
By Pitchbook
”AC/VC: Rivian, Tesla, and the Private-Market Liquidity Trap”
By Dan Gray from Odin
Iconic Fund Breakdown
Hummingbird VC Funds I-II (2010-2012)
Two founders flew to Istanbul and Athens before anyone else had a term sheet ready and turned overlooked European bets into 12x TVPI on each fund.
Emerging Manager Q&A
Aaron Samuels and Brian Hollins spent a decade building the ecosystem for underrepresented founders – then raised a $95M fund to back them. We asked Aaron 10 questions about how they did it.
New VC Funds
Upcoming VC/LP Events
“Seed-to-Scale Signal” with Harmonic
Every month, we analyze all mid-market US and European startups that recently raised a Series A, B, or C round to uncover the hidden track records of the seed investors who backed them early.
Using a custom data model powered by Harmonic, we score funds based on the stage, round size, and whether they led the seed.
It’s not a static ranking, but a real-time signal showing which emerging managers possess genuine picking skill. Read the full breakdown of our methodology here.
Below is the ranking for May, 2026:
3 Best Podcast Episodes
Cyan Banister has built one of the most distinctive early-stage track records of the last 15 years (Uber, SpaceX, DeepMind, Pokémon Go) – by paying attention to signals most investors ignore. In this episode of The Generalist, the co-founder of Long Journey Ventures breaks down her "Biz, Tiz, Rizz" framework for spotting exceptional founders, and explains why the trifecta is rarer than most VCs admit.
Kevin Hartz has backed Airbnb, Eventbrite, and PayPal. Now he and Bennett Siegel are rethinking seed investing from the ground up. In this episode, they argue that AI is quietly separating the managers who will define the next decade from those still running a 2019 playbook – and walk through what sourcing, diligence, and founder evaluation actually look like when you rebuild the process around it.
Ali Partovi missed PayPal at three employees and Google at three employees. Those misses became the thesis behind Neo – a people-first fund that got into Cursor and Kalshi at seed by obsessing over outlier talent before anyone else cared about the company. On The Peel, he walks through how to identify and hire exceptional people, why the best entrepreneurs start young, and what two 10x funds taught him about betting on humans over ideas.
Personal Notes
I moved to SF. After two years in Chicago, I finally made the move to San Francisco. The main reason was simple: I wanted to be closer to the GP and LP community I spend most of my time thinking about anyway – and, admittedly, closer to mountains, trails, and the Pacific. It already feels like the right place to build Murph from! If you’re in the Bay and want to chat, grab coffee, or talk venture, my DMs on LinkedIn and X are open.
Event in NYC. We’re planning our next Emerging Manager & LP Mixer in New York City for mid-July. A large portion of the Murph community (both readers and managers) is based there, so it felt like the natural next stop after San Francisco. If you know great venues with character (lofts, rooftops, galleries, creative spaces), I’d love recommendations. More details soon.
We signed with Legion. We’re excited to welcome Legion as one of Murph’s anchor partners. They’re building a platform designed specifically for emerging managers, combining LP matching, fund administration, secondary liquidity, and other infrastructure into a single experience. Legion is onboarding managers gradually through small cohorts, which allows them to stay hands-on with every fund. If you’re currently raising and want an intro, drop your comment below.
VC Marketing Survey. My friend Laurie Owen from Refinery VC is running a benchmarking survey focused on marketing and content across venture firms, and Murph is helping support the initiative. It takes less than 3 minutes to complete, and everyone who participates will receive the results to benchmark their firm against peers. We’ll also be publishing a few data-driven takeaways and insights from the survey on Murph in the coming weeks. Feel free to contribute if you’d like to see how your firm stacks up against the industry.
Murph swag is coming. We finally put together our first Murph merch drop. It’s intentionally limited and won’t be publicly available. We’ll be giving it out to LPs, emerging managers, partners, and people who have been part of the journey from the beginning. More details soon.
Previous Editions
Edition #12: 23 New Funds, Consensus Capital Age, Best Seed Picking VCs
Edition #11: 31 New Funds, How Mega Funds Actually Work, Emerging VC Tech Stack
Edition #10: Thrive’s Path to $10B, 132 VC Predictions Mapped, Fund Benchmarks 2025
What would you like to see in the next episodes? I'd love to hear your ideas – just hit reply and let me know what would be most valuable to you.