[ptrklly]

I'd add a few points: 1) management fees typically decline after the first few years of the Fund, rather than staying at 2% for the entire 10 years. This is to reflect the fact that partners are expected to do more work during the sourcing and diligence portion of a Fund's life (typically defined as an "investment period" after which they're not allowed to make new investments), and that helping portfolio companies and helping achieve exits takes less time / staff / expense. The GP also typically raises subsequent funds once the investment period is over, the management fees of which helps to fund their overall budget.

2) On the carried interest often the VC fund can only earn that after they've returned a certain amount to Limited Partners (called a "preferred return", and typically ~8%; if they don't return an 8% IRR to LPs, they only get the management fee and whatever they earn on their own out-of-pocket contribution.

In general I'd just add that this is a highly negotiated point for each Fund and differs from firm to firm and fund to fund.

Source: I work as an advisor to investors who participate as LPs in VC funds.

[nostrademons]

What's the relationship between VC funds, VC partners, and VC firms? Are funds typically associated with a specific GP, or are they associated with the firm as a whole? Does the firm offer only a single fund at a time, or does a brand-name VC (say, Sequoia, or Accel, or KP) have multiple offerings with different portfolio strategies?

Also, is there a good way to find out who is about to start raising money for new funds, and where in the lifetime of their fund a particular partner might be? (As in, have they just raised money and are looking for the first couple investments, or is the investment period about to close and the fund's capital has all been invested?)

[surfearth]

Established venture firms may have multiple vehicles (e.g. a seed fund, main fund, or growth fund), but the majority of venture firms tend to invest out of one vehicle at a time (there may be a short period of overlap when new funds are raised).

If you are not an active investor, getting quality access to information about funds can be difficult. I'd recommend the firm's website and crunchbase as free datasources. There are other, higher quality sources, but you need to pay for access (e.g. dow jones venture source).

[lilibalfour]

Yes. You can search Form Ds, which are public information.

[surfearth]

Good points, although I would note that preferred return is less commonly seen in venture funds but a typical feature of buyout/classic private equity funds.

[covercash]

What's the advisor pay structure like?