This article frames it nicely why small, early stage, helpful and active is how you build your reputation as a VC. You may not have a lot of financial capital, but because VC is a reputation market, you will still generate a lot of social capital by investing in great companies, that then allows you to build a bigger fund because you now have the reputation to systematically get better deals and into big deals with a big checks. Too often I see managers who have no brand go and raise a $150m fund, but they don’t have the network to get pulled into great deals.
