Membership Criteria

This community is for representatives of venture capital firms, and your firm must be pursuing a venture capital strategy (as defined by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, with criteria adoptable globally).

Your firm must be focused on deploying 80% of your AUM, or more in "qualifying investments", or the direct purchase of equity securities in a diversified portfolio of private companies. Exceptions may be made for otherwise aligned PE and GE firms that make majority investments in private companies.
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Your firm should generally have a dedicated pool of registered investment capital from a group not exceeding 249 limited partners. U.S.-based firms may be asked to provide a copy of your publicly filed SEC Form D. In general, this excludes investors that operate as angel investment groups, investment syndicates, rolling funds, or crowdfunding platforms from joining the community.

You must be supporting a portfolio companies, and therefore have a need for platform efforts to support a large set of companies. Eligible funds are expected to have at least $20M USD in AUM.

You must be actively deploying capital. For those applying under firm's that are actively fundraising their first fund and have not yet done a first close, or that have less than three active portfolio investments made from a formal fund entity, we will be unable to accept your application. Applicants from a first-time fund are required to have closed their fund and meet or exceed the minimum thresholds prior to being accepted.

We are industry agnostic and accept firms that invest in all types of private. The majority of our community is focused on consumer, enterprise and frontier technology investments or healthcare, but we also have members focused on clean-tech, consumer products, food and beverage, and more. We love to work with impact and ESG-focused funds, but we are first and foremost a community for financially driven funds.

Your fund must be apolitical and focused on financial returns. We typically do not accept applicants that work for government-affiliated or regional investment funds that prioritize economic development in a specific region as a primary criteria for investment allocation.

You are not a member of a startup accelerator or incubator. We do not approve applications from individuals who work for startup accelerators or incubators. Application based funds or programs that provide programming and support during a fixed-duration program do not qualify for membership in the community. While many of these programs may have standalone or affiliated funds that are used to invest in participating companies, the distinction we make is that these funds are only accessible to companies that take part in the program, and the funds typically invest a minimal dollar amount (less than $1 M USD per company) with limited or no follow-on investment and often with a fixed-valuation term sheet. Additionally, these firms typically limit their involvement with the companies to the duration of their program, sometimes with nominal 'alumni' support, and provide minimal long-term support for these companies, while rarely taking a formal company board seat.

Some venture studios are eligible to join the community. Venture studios that launch ventures inside their organization with the short-term goal of handing the business off to an external management team, partnering with co-investors, and maintaining a long-term minority equity ownership position in the business do qualify and admission may be limited by our criteria.

Individuals who work at a traditional corporate venture fund can quality to join the community, so long as their fund makes equity investments in external businesses with capital invested through a dedicated pool of investment capital with a primary investment objective of financial returns. Teams that operate more like traditional corporate development organizations, or act as internal innovation teams or scouts for a parent corporation do not fit our criteria. Firms that limit their investment scope to only invest in their current or prospective clients or use corporate investing as a business development strategy are not eligible to join the community. Non-cash investment schemes (such as service for equity) will not be considered a qualifying corporate venture investing initiative.

You must be a permanent full-time employee of the firm that you are affiliated with to qualify for membership in the community. We do not extend community membership to interim executives, part-time team members, advisory operating partners, consultants, interns, EIRs/XIRs, or individuals in other similar roles.

All applicants wishing to join the community must have their role publicly listed as current and it must be verifiable on a third-party website, such as the firm's team page or a press release. Individuals who have recently joined a firm and have not had their role publicly announced yet should wait to apply for membership until their role is public.

Your firm is actively involved with your portfolio companies post-investment and maintains a meaningful target ownership. For many firms, this looks like a target ownership of 10-20% of each company in their portfolio after your initial investment and a board-level role with the business. We require all firms in the community to target a minimum of 1.00% ownership in the majority of their portfolio companies upon the firm's initial investment. Firms must provide regular ongoing support for their founders post-investment.

All members must be a role that is primarily focused on one or more of the following efforts, which we collectively define as "platform":

Marketing: efforts to support the establishment of a firm's brand, including content creation, event, public relations and creative and/or marketing efforts focused on supporting a firm's portfolio companies.

Talent: portfolio focused efforts to support companies with hiring, culture, DEI and other people-oriented efforts that help the portfolio succeed. In general, this does not include individuals who are exclusively focused on internal recruiting and human resources for the fund.

Community: efforts to build, cultivate and engage a community of individuals across certain groups through in-person events and/or digital engagements that support the firm on a regular basis as advisors or supporters often contributing to a firm's dealflow and supporting their portfolio companies and broader ecosystem strategies.

Business development: efforts to build relationships and connections with companies or individuals who actively partner with portfolio companies as customers, go-to-market partners, or potential acquirers and who may support diligence efforts.

Fund operations: efforts focused on supporting the ongoing fund operations, typically including investor relations and fundraising. In general, this does not include individuals exclusively focused on backoffice or finance operations and is more focused on firms or individuals who take a holistic and modern approach to a firm's fund operations that is typically integrated with other components of a firm's platform efforts.

Tools & systems: efforts to build and implement tools and systems that support the fund and portfolio in their daily activities, often focused on portfolio support (this may include product, data strategy, and AI strategy roles). While some firms that implement these efforts may have a technology team on staff, this does not extend membership qualifications to engineers who are building tools - but rather is intended for the end users or those leading these efforts, such as a product lead. This also does not generally extend to individuals overseeing information technology at a firm.

ESG & impact: Efforts to support portfolio companies and, in some cases, the firm iteself in implementing and measuring ESG efforts including diversity and inclusion efforts.

Members who focus on these efforts, but who have a primary focus on investment activities, will not qualify for membership in the community. For the sake of our community guidelines, investment activities include deal sourcing, diligence, and investing. While some of our members support those activities from their platform role, any applicant who spends more than one-quarter of their time focused on investment activities will not qualify for community members.

We do not accept applications from General Partners or other senior firm leaders. Our community is dedicated to be a safe and curated space for platform professionals and, because of that, we do not extend membership to General Partners, Managing Partners, or other senior firm leaders. While we understand that GPs have very broad oversight at their firm, and often spend a significant amount of their time on platform-related work, we find that our community is less relevant for these individuals.

Our community is not intended for administrative professionals or executive assistants.

Our community reserves the right to impose limits on the number of active members that one firm can have in the community at any time. Historically, we have measured limits by a firm's total AUM.

There have been trends of more consulting firms and individual freelancers that focus on supporting VC firms with their platform efforts joining the community. We have adopted the following criteria for those individuals who are working on platform efforts, but are not employed full-time with a single VC firm:

1. The applicant must have been employed by a qualifying venture capital firm for at least 12 months in the last five years in a full-time platform role.

2. The applicant must have been approved members of the VC Platform community in good standing while in their former role for at least six months.

3. The applicant must actively be working with at least two qualifying venture capital firms as retained clients at any given time.

4. The applicant must have a full-time-equivalent level of work that qualifies as platform-focused work.

5. The applicant understands that under absolutely no circumstance can they use the community to promote their freelance or consulting work. Any engagement that is considered direct or indirect solicitation in the community will result in immediate and permanent removal from the community.

The VC Platform community is made up of a mixture of professionals from all over the world, working in different types of roles and firms. Our commonality is that we are all focused on our community's mission: to elevate the venture capital platform profession globally. We are committed to being a community that everyone feels good about joining.

Our goal is to maintain a safe, helpful and friendly community for everyone, regardless of age, culture, ethnicity, gender identity or expression, national origin, physical or mental difference, politics, race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, and subculture. We welcome people regardless of the values of these or other attributes.

We will try to make accommodations for all community members to ensure that the community supports everyone equally. We will acknowledge a few limitations, the most pressing being language fluency. Currently, the community's online platform is only accessible to members who are fluent in English, and content creation is encouraged in English. For community members that find this a barrier for accessibility, please reach out to the community leadership to explore creating a member hub that is more accessible to your locally preferred language.

VC Platform has adopted its Code of Conduct which applies equally to all community participants, including staff, board members, community members, and sponsors.

This code and related procedures apply to unacceptable behavior occurring in all community venues, including behavior outside the scope of community activities - online and in-person - as well as in all one-on-one communications, and anywhere such behavior has the potential to adversely affect the safety and well-being of community members.

Below are our expectations:
--Maintaining a professional and civil tone in all messages with welcoming and inclusive language
--Contributing with a give-first approach and share openly to help other in the community
--Understand that there is a varying level of expertise in the community
--Don't be afraid to throw our radical ideas but do so in a way that would make your parents proud
--Be respectful of differing viewpoints and experiences
--Sharing negative experiences or perspectives fairly and objectively, although we do not accept defaming individuals or organization
--Maintaining responsibility for sensitive information and confidentiality
--Ensure you have the legal right to post your content and are not violating copyright, confidentiality, non-disclosure, or other laws

Harassment in any form and other exclusionary behavior is not acceptable and should be reported. This includes sexualized language, unwelcomed sexual advances or attention, trolling, insulting or derogatory comments, personal or political attacks, publishing private information, violent threats, discriminatory language, personal insults, racist remarks, harassment, offensive comments, deliberate misgendering, stalking or following, harassing photography or recording, sustained disruption of discussion, inappropriate social contact, continued one-on-one communication after requests to cease, publication of non-harassing private community without explicit permission, and other conduct which could reasonbly be considered inappropriate in a professional setting.

Our community prioritizes marginalized people's safety over privileged people's comfort. The community's leadership will not act on complaints regarding: 'reverse'-isms, reasonable communication of boundaries, refusal to explain or debate social justice concepts, communicating in a 'tone' you don't find congenial, and/or criticizing racist, sexist, cissexist, or otherwise oppressive behavior or assumptions. These guidelines apply unversally to all in-person community sanctioned events, whether formally or informally affiliated with the VC Platform community, except for when a community guideline is in violation of a federal or regional law in the location that the event is taking place.

Possession or use of weapons of any kind, and possession or use of drugs are not allowed at any VC Platform affiliated event.

Any concerns can be reported to the staff team or Board Members. We will respond as promptly as we can. While this Code of Conduct applies to VC Platform sponsored spaces, if you are being harassed by a member of the community outside our spaces, we still want to know about it. We will take all good-faith reports of harassment by community members seriously. Our team reserves the right to exclude people from the community based on their past behavior, including behavior outside VC PLatform spaces and behavior towards people who are not in the VC Platform community. We also reserve the right to reject any report we believe to have been made in bad faith. The VC Platform leadership team will be responsible for notifying the alleged offender of the complaint, determining the violation, if any, determining the appropriate penalty and communicating the resolution to the alleged offender and the target of the violation of the Code of Conduct. We respect confidentiality requests for the purpose of protecting those who raise concerns.

Our Community leadership will take the any action deemed appropriate, up to including membership termination.

While the guidelines below are different from our Code of Conduct, repeated disregard for the norms may result in removal from the community.

🔎 Search before you post: use the Portal or Slack search tools to find topics to avoid redundant queries.
👍 Do not reply with comments like "+1" or "following."
🤝 Ensure that your posts are relevant to all and professional. Topics related to a subset of the community (such as office sublet availability, local vendor requests, regional meetups, etc.) are best suited to the relevant subchannel
🤫 Respect information privacy and avoid sharing information that could violate your employer's confidentiality and non-disclosure policies.
🏆 Avoid self-promotional posts that aren't relevant to the broader group
🗂️ No solicitation or vendor promotion (including for yourself, a portfolio company, or a business that you have a personal relationship with). You can, however, respond to posts suggesting a service or offering but we ask that relationships be disclosed.
💰 Do not solicit investment opportunites, deal-flow, or promote your firm's investment related initiatives
👥 Post job openings and share activate candidates in the appropriate sub-channels and not in the general chat.
✈️ Do not post about your personal travel plans, rather use the member directory to find folks in the city you are travelling to.
👋 Transition from the community graciously - we're sad to see you go but please do not send a mass goodbye post.

We follow a three-strike warning system for behavior that doesn't align with our community guidelines. A first occurrence is a public or private reminder that the behavior is inappropriate. A second occurrence is a private message warning the community member that any additional violations will result in removal from the community. A third occurrence (depending on the violation) may be terminated temporarily or permanently. Obvious spammers as well as individuals soliciting members or otherwise overtly promoting the use or purchase of certain products or services that may result in personal benefit or profit will be banned on first occurrence.

All members will have complete and equal access to the community for the entirety of the time that their membership is active. There are multiple reasons that individuals' membership can be terminated. Those include (but are not limited to):

--Self-requested membership termination
--Termination of employment affiliation
--Violation of the code of conduct

When a member is terminated, they will receive notice by email to the email address on file at the member's time of application. If a member believes that their membership was wrongly terminated, they can contact us to appeal their removal.

Any membership dues paid to the community are non-refundable. If an individual's membership is terminated prior to the ending of their paid membership dues, those excess fees will not be returned to the individual or their sponsor organization (employer).