Edition #15: H1 2026 State of Fundraising, GPs Backing GPs Map, Our Private Villa Event in SF
Hey folks,
This is Pavel and welcome to the 15th edition (July, 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.
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 VC portfolio intelligence on autopilot that connects your Granola notes, iMessage, LinkedIn data and more to automate support and intelligence.
Wonderstruck is the storytelling and design studio venture-backed companies call when they outgrow their brand. Trusted by 1517, Kindred, Sunflower & 200+ founders.
5 Best Tweets
By Pavel Prata from Murph Capital
“Why mega-funds need mega-exits, and what that leaves on the table for everyone else”
By Arian Ghashghai from Earthling VC
“NY investors feel LP pressure to be in SF, SF investors don't feel pressure to leave“
By Helen Min from Articulate VC
“Committee investing protects against mistakes but kills outliers”
By Erik Bruckner from Bruckner Ventures
5 Best Linkedin Posts
“14 funds out of 208 took two thirds of all H1 2026 capital”
By Pavel Prata from Murph Capital
“Series A’s top 1% just hit $1.19B, and it’s warping how the whole market looks”
By Peter Walker from Carta
"Average fund size is up 1.7x since 2021, fund count collapsed"
By Pavel Prata from Murph Capital
“The 50 venture firms known for writing LP checks into other funds”
By Sam Huleatt from The Side Letter
“A standard term sheet for GP-led SPVs: 2% commit, 0% fees, 10-20% carry”
By Dan Gray from Odin
5 Best Longreads
“The investor closest to the AI frontier is betting against the ambitions of its biggest companies“
By Colossus
“Stop playing the mark up game“
By Nemant Taneja from General Catalyst
By Charles Hudson from Precursor Ventures
“Patience (and on owners v. tenants)”
By Nicholas Chirls from Asylum Ventures
By Andrew Ziperski from General Catalyst
5 Key Market Reports
“The half-time report: H1 2026 venture capital unpacked”
By Dealroom
By CB Insights
“The big book of VC - Q2 2026”
By Rohit Yadav
Iconic Fund Breakdown
Madrona Ventures (Angels + Fund I, 1995-2003)
Tom Alberg and three Seattle partners turned $10M of angel checks and a 1999 vintage fund into five $1B+ outcomes
Emerging Manager Q&A
The story of Robin Haak, who left growth equity to build a high-conviction solo GP franchise and closed a €15M Fund II to back early-stage enterprise leaders
Signals
We’ve been watching movement across the VC and LP arena for a while, and we finally turned it into a running column called Signals, closer in spirit to what TBPN does with news than to anything in the trade press.
We’re tracking who joined which fund, who left, who got promoted, how long people have actually been sitting inside the mega platforms, and the rest of the personnel movement that tells you where the industry is heading before anyone announces it. Follow Signals here, and it will live on our site shortly.
A few highlights from the previous month:
Arjun Chirumamilla is promoted to Principal at Hashgraph VC
Founders Fund hires former OpenAI VP Ryan Beiermeister as Partner, to back founders in AI infrastructure, defense, energy, and biotech
Pantera Capital adds Stuti Pandey as Partner, focused on founders at the frontier of AI and stablecoin infrastructure
“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 July, 2026:
3 Best Podcast Episodes
John Kim, former Chief Development Officer at General Catalyst and author of “The Tao of Fundraising”, explains why fundraising is really a trust-building exercise. He breaks down how great managers raise capital by increasing desire, reducing fear, simplifying their story, and creating consensus over time – especially useful for emerging VCs who need to build a first close and for LPs evaluating what actually drives conviction.
Aram Verdian, Partner at Accolade Partners, argues that venture has become a winner-take-all market and that fewer than 20 firms have consistently produced 3x net returns. In this episode, he breaks down the “right to win” framework, why seed has become far more competitive, and how LPs should think about concentration, fund sizing, and manager selection.
Hans Swildens, founder of Industry Ventures, breaks down how venture secondaries became a major market and why liquidity is now central to how VC gets financed. In this conversation, he explains the role of scale, why many seed managers without a real angle may struggle, how LP bases change over time, and why the secondary market may eventually be bigger than primaries.
Personal Notes
New event. August is quiet, most people are still away, and fall is coming fast with it the last realistic window to close a fund in 2026. Before that starts, we’re hosting an informal gathering for VCs and LPs at a private villa on Baker Beach in San Francisco, with a view of the Golden Gate and the ocean. It’s a chance to see the people you’d otherwise only catch on a rushed Zoom once fundraising season is underway. Space is limited. RSVP here.
First memo is out. At the end of June we launched an LP-only newsletter where we publish detailed memos on the emerging managers we find most compelling in our network, including the ones Murph backs with a small check. In July we sent the first memo on five-time unicorn operator turned solo-GP raising $10M pre-seed fund to 170+ LPs. If you want to receive the next memo, apply here.
We’re still hiring. We’re looking for a terminally online Content Lead and a VC Research Lead to take Murph’s content to a completely different level. We’ve gone through more than 100 applications and still haven’t found the person who is chronically online, genuinely understands internet culture, and has real experience and taste in private markets and venture. If you know that person, send them the link. Cash bonus for any referral we end up hiring.
July in SF. My meeting volume with emerging managers and LPs has grown exponentially since I moved here, though July remains a slow month. That has its uses, since it leaves room to be locked in on research, event planning, and building the media side properly, but it is hard to feel good about it when my entire IG feed is friends posting from Amalfi, Zurich, and Marbella… So the routine is the Murph mantra and the occasional pilgrimage to wherever LP capital happens to be concentrated. If you’re in SF and allocating as an LP or building a Fund I or II, let’s talk.
Previous Editions
Edition #14: 37 New Funds, 1000 Fund Managers Mapped, DPI Benchmark
Edition #13: 25 New Funds, Most Active Seed Mega Platforms, Top 100 US VC Firms
Edition #12: 23 New Funds, Consensus Capital Age, Best Seed Picking VCs
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.