It's LP Season! Are you ready for your annual meeting?

Here at KBD we’ve been supporting our amazing venture clients with their annual meetings for more than a decade. It is always a stressful event for any size firm, with lots of moving parts and pieces. As we all get prepared for the 2024 meetings, I thought it might be helpful to share some perspective collected over the years.

Live, Hybrid, or Virtual??

COVID fundamentally changed how we all think of the annual meeting format. When the pandemic hit, firms were forced to find a way to broadcast their meetings online, and the vast majority leaned heavily on Zoom to do so. As we slowly came out of the COVID haze, we were all hungry to meet in person again, but LPs had gotten a taste of not having to travel, so the hybrid format became very popular. In 2023, many of our clients moved back to a fully live format, but most recorded the meeting for viewing afterwards.

As you consider the format for your meeting this year, it’s important to weigh the pros and cons for your team as well as for your LPs:

While a much heftier investment, in-person meetings will always be the most beneficial to your firm when it comes to making personal connections with your investors. The value for your limited partners remains: to spend time with your team and learn information that they couldn’t glean from your quarterly reports. If you are planning on doing a fully in-person meeting, it is important to set the date well in advance (4-12 months!)?to ensure attendance and a full room. If you know your LPs are investors in other funds that have their meeting around the same time, it makes sense to coordinate timing so they can combine their trips and attend both meetings.

For in-person meetings, there are many (many!) details to tackle. (If you’ve ever planned a wedding, this will feel familiar.) You’ll need to find a convenient and available venue, coordinate with the caterer for multiple meals, ensure the staging and AV is appropriate for your presentations, and coordinate hotel accommodations for those traveling in, among many many other details and questions along the way. Typically there will be a meeting planner at the venue who can help with many of these tasks.

Virtual meetings carry the benefit of convenience for limited partners who may be abroad or otherwise unable to attend an in-person meeting easily. They are much easier (and less expensive) to run as you can record them ahead of time and edit everyone’s presentations, even with multiple takes. You can also film it in your office and not have to worry about renting a venue, catering, etc. Online portals can be highly stylized to match your brand and have the functionality to allow Q&A or chat. Since the pandemic, this is a fully acceptable option for most attendees, as it offers the convenience of viewing the meeting either live or after the fact. However, you will lose the tremendous benefit of networking and the authenticity of meeting in person with your investors, which is often where the magic happens. Plan to work with a reliable AV team who can handle equipment, lighting, and furniture rentals as well as edit the video for posting to your site.

Hybrid meetings—held in person but also broadcast live—are an increasingly popular option as they carry all the benefits of both. Hybrid meetings?truly allow you to put your firm’s best foot forward to your investors, especially if you are fundraising. Typically planning for hybrid meetings is very similar to that of a fully live meeting: you must set the date and confirm the details of the venue and catering well in advance. Then, you’d also secure your AV team to film the conversations and help you either broadcast the proceedings or post them for your LPs after the fact. Most AV teams are well equipped to do this but will need plenty of notice to ensure availability. Additionally, you’ll need to coordinate with your digital agency to securely broadcast and house the videos.

Since all three options have their challenges, it will be important for you to select vendors with experience specific to investment firms and LP meetings to keep everything streamlined for you and your team.

Create an Engaging Agenda

Most LP Day agendas follow a similar format. We always include:?

• Firm introduction/hello from the managing partner
• Team intros, especially any new hires
• Differentiating story about your firm?
• Fund-by-fund overview, including return expectations and key metrics
• Individual portfolio companies, including commentary on winners (or challenges)
• Your thoughts on market conditions
• 2-3 Portfolio CEO presentations?
• Information on your next fundraise

Some notes: In-person meetings are usually 3-4 hours max. Online meetings should always be kept to less than two hours. Last year we had a client do a great virtual meeting in one hour flat, which got them a lot of kudos from their LPs.

To keep things from getting monotonous, have multiple partners present and breakup the fund presentations with CEO presentations.

This year, it should be noted that literally ALL of your VC peers will be talking about AI, much like they did in 2023…but even more so. So it will be important for you to differentiate your approach in this market.

For in person meetings, we’ve seen a lot of positive feedback with firm’s inviting portfolio CEOs to present, especially if they have an interesting demo of their product to share or are doing something really cutting edge.

The Dreaded Deck: The Ultimate Group Project

Creating the presentation materials for your annual meeting will be more challenging than you anticipate…100% of the time.

They include a lot of important—and potentially evolving—details and are touched by nearly everyone in the firm.

To get to a final presentation everyone can be proud of, it is important to be organized and committed. Here are some hard learned lessons from working with dozens of teams on this important presentation:

• A single person at the firm should be the official cat herder and own the master deck. This is incredibly important and often goes overlooked.
• As each section of the presentation gets to a good spot, even if it isn’t a pretty design, partners should practice presenting the material at least four weeks ahead of the meeting.

• If you are leveraging the help of an outside design resource, contract them at least 4-6 weeks before your meeting, and make sure they are fully available, ideally onsite, for ad-hoc changes the week of your event.

• Two weeks out, have an all-team dress rehearsal, and then another the day before to ensure everyone is confident in their material and understands how the AV will work, including advancing the slides, animations, and confidence monitors if used.?

• The official cat-herder should “lock down” the decks at least 2 days prior to your meeting. Do not, under any circumstances, make changes to your decks after this lockdown date, especially if you are providing them to your AV resource to include in a video.

• Avoid too many animations in your materials. They can be distracting to your audience and can often throw off the presenter when they are on stage.

• The evening before—or the morning of—your meeting, check that your presentation works on the AV system at your chosen venue. You’ll want to make sure that fonts are loaded and the whole deck is appearing as you expect.
• Thankfully, we don’t often have to worry about printing the materials anymore. But be sure to have them available electronically the day of the event so that your attendees can review them later. Many firms will also send them ahead of time, which is appreciated by the LPs.

Registration, Invitations, and Follow Ups

The tone for your meeting starts well before the day of the event. Most firms simply use their firm branding for the event. Some of our larger clients will create a sub-brand for the meeting itself and carry it through all of the deliverables and signage at the event.

Before you begin, make sure you have a reliable system that provides an event landing page detailing the event, creates compelling invitations and keeps careful track of RSVPs. Look for platforms that will automatically integrate into your LP CRM (Salesforce or Affinity).?

Typically firms will send a save the date out up to a year in advance, and another 4 months out from the meeting. (Note: be sure to include your LPs assistants on the emails if you have their information.) Six weeks out from the event, you should have a landing page detailing the agenda that can collect RSVPs. Send an invitation out that links to this page. As the event gets closer, send additional information and reminders. (RSVP prompts to those who haven’t responded and “Know before you go” emails to those who have. If you are serving food or providing SWAG, it’s a good idea to collect dietary restrictions and sizes on the RSVPs.

If you are running a virtual or hybrid event, be sure to send a final email the night before detailing how to access the broadcast online. Your online portal should give your team visibility into anyone who might be having trouble logging in.

After the event, you can use the event landing page to post the video of the event for those who weren’t able to come as well as a link to your data room. Be sure to include a link to this in a thank you letter to all attendees. Many of our clients will also send the SWAG along to attendees (and those who couldn’t make it) post-event so they don’t have to carry it home on the plane.

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Annual meetings are a lot of work. But they are also an extremely gratifying experience that brings together your team, your investors, your founders and partners and often gives you great momentum for the rest of the year. We are grateful to all the firms that have trusted us over the years to support them on these important days.

If I can answer any questions or if our team can help support your upcoming meeting, please feel free to reach out to [email protected] anytime.