VC Firm Vetting Report

Overview

A VC Firm Vetting Report is a paginated, twelve-section due-diligence document on a venture capital general partner being evaluated by a Limited Partner for a fund-vintage commitment. It is generated on demand from SEC EDGAR Form ADV and Form D filings, ILPA published GP standards, public LP commitment news (CalPERS, CalSTRS, Yale, MIT, Texas TRS investment-committee minutes where VC funds are disclosed), Crunchbase fund pages, and reputable tech-finance press search via Serper. It takes three to five minutes to produce, costs 50 credits (about $20 USD), and is delivered as a shareable HTML report with a printable PDF view.

It is intended for a university endowment, family office, fund-of-funds, pension fund, sovereign wealth fund, or qualified-purchaser high-net-worth backer evaluating a $1M-$50M commitment to a VC firm's next vintage.

The Six Frameworks We Adopt

ICD 203 — Analytic Standards (Office of the Director of National Intelligence)

The U.S. Intelligence Community’s Directive 203 defines nine tradecraft standards for analytic products: properly describing quality and credibility of sources, properly expressing and explaining uncertainties, distinguishing assumptions from judgments, incorporating analysis of alternatives, demonstrating customer relevance and addressing implications, using clear and logical argumentation, explaining change to or consistency of analytic judgments, making accurate judgments and assessments, and incorporating effective visual information where appropriate. We treat these as binding for every VC Firm Vetting Report.

ICD 206 — Sourcing Requirements (Office of the Director of National Intelligence)

ICD 206 requires that every analytic product disseminated by the U.S. Intelligence Community classify each source by source class. Section 12 of every VC Firm Vetting Report aggregates every URL cited above and classifies each by source class (Primary / Authoritative Secondary / Tier-1 Press / Trade Press / Other) so the LP Due Diligence team can see the source-class distribution at a glance.

UK PHIA Probability Yardstick (UK Defence Intelligence)

Every probabilistic claim — GP track-record consistency, vintage performance inference, key-person risk, governance-integrity assessment, partner-thesis specialization — is expressed using the seven-band PHIA yardstick (remote chance / highly unlikely / unlikely / realistic possibility / likely / highly likely / almost certain) paired with an analytical-confidence rating (Low / Moderate / High).

ILPA GP/LP Best Practices (Institutional Limited Partners Association)

The ILPA Principles 3.0 and the ILPA Reporting Template define the LP-side standard for evaluating GP governance, fee transparency, key-person provisions, LPAC composition, and fund-level reporting. Section 9 (Fee Structure & LPA Terms) and Section 10 (Governance Disclosures & SEC Form ADV) explicitly map their evaluation criteria to ILPA-aligned signals where the firm has publicly disclosed comparable terms. VC-specific differences from the standard PE-side ILPA frame: VC funds often run with 0% hurdle rate, 2.0-2.5% management fee, and 20% (occasionally 25-30% for top-tier firms) carry — all surfaced where public.

Counterparty Due Diligence Framework (MentionFox)

Section 3 (Firm History & Stage-Thesis Evolution) and Section 4 (Principal Team Roster) apply the Counterparty Due Diligence framework that anchors the Counterparty Vetting Report (vertical 10): legal name, jurisdiction of incorporation (Delaware LP/LLC standard for U.S. VC firms), registered address, prior name changes, regulatory enforcement history, related-party transactions disclosed in fund documents.

AML/KYC + SEC Form ADV ERA Compliance Framework

Section 10 (Governance Disclosures) cross-references SEC EDGAR Form ADV Items 11.A-11.J (disciplinary history) and SEC litigation releases for any enforcement actions naming the firm, its named partners, or affiliated entities. Most U.S. VC firms qualify as Exempt Reporting Advisers (ERA) under the Dodd-Frank VC adviser exemption (Investment Advisers Act §203(l)) — they file an abbreviated Form ADV but still disclose disciplinary history, custody arrangements, and conflicts. Where the firm operates as a Registered Investment Adviser, full Form ADV is cited directly.

The Twelve Sections of a VC Firm Vetting Report

Scoring Methodology

The VC Firm LP-Suitability Score is a 0-100 composite of four equally-weighted sub-scores:

1. GP track record (0-25) — depth of named investment professionals, partner-level exit pedigree, partner tenure, key-person continuity. Higher score = deeper, more experienced, more durable team with multi-cycle pattern recognition.
2. Fund-vintage performance (0-25) — DPI / TVPI / MOIC where publicly disclosed; cohort-by-cohort exit pattern. VC performance is dominated by power-law outliers — one or two breakout exits drive an entire vintage's return. Higher score = consistent ability to source and back power-law outcomes across vintages.
3. Stage focus discipline (0-25) — coherent stage thesis (early/seed/A/B/multi) vs stage drift across vintages; consistency between stated thesis and realised check sizes. Higher score = clear, durable stage focus. VC firms commonly drift from seed → multi-stage → growth as AUM grows; this drift carries real LP-side risk because stage skill is not transferable.
4. Governance integrity (0-25) — Form ADV cleanliness, ILPA-aligned LPA terms where disclosed, transparent fee structure, no SEC enforcement actions. Higher score = better governance hygiene. Lower governance-integrity sub-score = higher LP risk; this direction is spelled out explicitly in every report.

Headline recommendation is one of: commit / commit with diligence / additional research / pass. The choice is anchored in the composite score and red-flag aggregation, not in cohort-following or marketing tone.

Data Sources — Free Public Only

• SEC EDGAR Form ADV — every U.S. RIA or ERA discloses Items 11.A-11.J (disciplinary history), Schedule A (named investment professionals), and custody arrangements. Free + immediate. Most U.S. VC firms file the abbreviated Form ADV under the §203(l) ERA exemption.
• SEC EDGAR Form D filings — every U.S. Reg D private-fund offering. Discloses fund name, offering size, named selling commission recipients, Form ADV linkage. Free.
• Public LP investment-committee minutes — CalPERS, CalSTRS, NY State Common, Texas TRS, Florida SBA, Washington State Investment Board, Yale endowment annual reports, MIT endowment annual reports, Notre Dame, Princeton, Stanford (where disclosed). Most endowments do NOT disclose individual VC fund commitments.
• Crunchbase fund pages — public data on fund names, vintages, portfolio companies, exits.
• Reputable tech-finance press — TechCrunch, The Information, Forbes, Bloomberg, Axios, PitchBook News (free articles), Reuters, Wall Street Journal, Wired, The Verge, Stratechery, Substack publications by named partners.
• Conference and podcast appearances — partner-thesis specialization is often stated in conference talks (TC Disrupt, Web Summit, Slush) and podcasts (Lex Fridman, Tim Ferriss, Acquired, 20VC, Logan Bartlett, All-In) — public signal of partner posture.
• SEC enforcement actions database — for any prior enforcement against named officers, the firm entity, or affiliated entities.
• Serper — for general press / news search across the above sources.

What we do NOT use: PitchBook full subscription data, Preqin full subscription data, Cambridge Associates Benchmarks, Bison data, Bloomberg Terminal LP due diligence modules, or any subscription-gated LP database.

Honest Limits — what we do not do

Corrections Policy

Three commitments modeled on the BBC editorial corrections process:

1. Identification window. Errors flagged within thirty days of report generation are corrected on the canonical view URL within five business days.
2. Re-publication, not silent edit. Corrections preserve a redline diff between the original and corrected text, time-stamped, with a one-line explanation.
3. Subject right of reply. The firm named in any Vetting Report may submit a one-paragraph factual rebuttal to corrections@mentionfox.com. Verifiable rebuttals attach to the report alongside the original section.

Data integrity floor — ALCOA. Every VC Firm Vetting Report carries an ALCOA Methodology footer (Attributable / Legible / Contemporaneously / Original / Accurately) — the FDA's data-integrity framework, applied to LP due diligence analytic products.