How to Map Partners Inside US VC Firms

Last month a founder told us he'd been "pitching Sequoia for three weeks." We asked which partner. He didn't know there were different partners with different theses. The firm passed two days later.

Most founders pitch funds. The ones who close pitch partners. At top US VCs, each partner operates with their own thesis, their own deal flow, and their own IC pull. Sequoia's "thesis" is actually the union of Pat Grady's late-stage SaaS focus, Sonya Huang's AI infrastructure bets, and eight other partners doing eight other things. If you pitch the fund generically, you're pitching no one.

This is the framework for partner-level research: how to find the right person, what to look for in their work, and how to adjust your pitch once you know who you're talking to.

Why partners matter more than the fund brand

Partners at tier-1 firms have latitude. They source their own deals, build their own theses, and champion companies through IC. A partner who's excited about your space will push. A partner who isn't won't, even if your metrics are good.

We've watched this play out: a founder gets a warm intro to "Lightspeed" through a mutual friend. The intro goes to a partner who does consumer hardware. The founder is building dev tools. The partner takes the meeting out of politeness, doesn't engage, passes with a form rejection. The founder thinks Lightspeed passed. Lightspeed didn't pass—one partner who was never the right fit passed.

The fund's portfolio page shows you what the firm has done. A specific partner's last six investments show you what they're doing now. That second thing is what matters.

How to research a partner's actual thesis

Start with their recent investments. Pull the last 12-24 months of seed and Series A deals from Crunchbase or the fund's press releases. Note the lead partner on each. Group by partner name. You'll see patterns immediately.

One partner leads every B2B SaaS deal. Another does fintech. Another hasn't led anything in eight months, which tells you they're either out of cycle or capital-constrained. That last one is not your target.

Once you have the investment clusters, triangulate with public content. Read the partner's last ten tweets. If they're active on X, their recent posts will show what they're thinking about right now. Sonya Huang wrote the "Generative AI's Act Two" essay in late 2024—if you're building AI infra and you didn't read that essay before pitching her, you're unprepared.

Check recent podcast appearances. Partners go on podcasts when they want to talk about a thesis. If a partner spent 40 minutes on a16z's podcast talking about vertical SaaS, and you're building vertical SaaS, that's your person.

The best signal: a partner who has publicly written or spoken about your specific category in the last 90 days. That means it's top of mind. That means they're actively looking.

If you can talk to a portfolio founder, ask them directly: "Who's the partner most aligned with what I'm building?" and "Which partner is currently most active?" Portfolio founders know the internal dynamics. They'll tell you if a partner is heads-down on their existing companies or if they're actively hunting for new deals.

Named examples (with the caveat that theses shift)

Here's what we see as of early 2025, with the understanding that partner focus areas change:

Sonya Huang at Sequoia leads AI infrastructure and frontier model bets. If you're building the picks-and-shovels layer for LLMs, she's written your thesis for you.

Pat Grady at Sequoia does growth-stage SaaS. He's not taking seed meetings. If you're pre-Series B, he's not your champion.

Sarah Guo at Conviction (formerly Greylock) focuses on AI applications and infrastructure. She's vocal on X about what she's seeing in the market.

Lachy Groom is a solo GP, ex-Stripe, generalist with a technical bias. Solo GPs move faster because they are the IC. One conversation can close a deal.

Elad Gil writes big checks at late seed and Series A. If you've read High Growth Handbook, you know his operator-first lens.

Bilal Zuberi at Lux Capital leads deep tech and defense. If you're doing hardware or dual-use technology, he's the conversation.

Olivia Moore at a16z has been vocal about consumer AI. If you're building consumer products with LLMs baked in, she's been writing about it.

These are examples, not a directory. The point is to do this research yourself for the 8-10 funds you actually want to raise from. Partner theses shift every 12-18 months. Refresh your map quarterly.

What changes when you pitch a specific partner

Generic pitch: "Hi Sequoia, we're building X for Y. Here's our deck."

Response rate: maybe 5%.

Partner-specific pitch: "Hi Sonya, your essay on Act Two resonated because we've been building the orchestration layer you described for multi-model workflows. Here's our deck. Would love 30 minutes."

Response rate: 30-40% if the intro is warm and the fit is real.

The difference is signal. The second message proves you did the work. You read their writing. You understand their thesis. You're not spraying decks at every fund with "AI" in their portfolio page.

We see founders skip this step because they think it's extra work. It's not extra work. It's the work. The founders who close fast are the ones who know exactly why they're talking to a specific partner at a specific firm, and they can articulate that reason in one sentence.

Validating fit through portfolio companies

Beyond the partner's own writing, look at their portfolio. Which 2-3 companies are most analogous to yours? Were those investments led by the partner you're targeting? Are those companies still doing well?

A struggling portfolio company in your space can hurt you. If the partner already has a bet that's not working, they're less likely to double down on the category. A thriving portfolio company can help if you're building something complementary, but it can hurt if you're directly competitive and the partner has loyalty.

This is where the research gets specific. If you're building sales enablement software and the partner led a $10M Series A into a sales enablement company 18 months ago, you need to know that before you pitch. Either you're differentiated enough that it doesn't matter, or you're pitching the wrong partner.

How IC structures affect your approach

At Sequoia, a16z, and Greylock, the partner you're talking to needs IC approval. They're your champion, not the decision-maker. Your job is to give them the ammunition to sell you internally.

At smaller partnerships like First Round or Initialized, decisions are more decentralized. Partners have more autonomy. The IC is smaller and moves faster.

With solo GPs—Lachy Groom, Elad Gil, Charlie Cheever—the partner is the firm. There's no IC. You can close in one conversation if the fit is right. This is why solo GPs often move faster than multi-partner funds.

Understanding the structure tells you how much internal selling your champion has to do. If you're pitching a junior partner at a large fund, they have less IC pull. If you're pitching a senior partner, they can move the room.

The multi-partner mistake

Sometimes you'll get introduced to two partners at the same fund. This usually happens when your intro doesn't know who the right partner is, so they punt to "someone at [Fund]" and the fund's platform team routes you.

This creates problems. Partners may compete internally for the deal, which slows everything down. Or one partner defers to the other, and you've now burned two intros for one conversation.

Best practice: one partner per fund, the right one. If a partner says "this isn't for me but you should talk to [other partner]," take the handoff. That's a clean internal intro. If you're cold-pitching or asking for intros, be specific about the partner you want. "Any intro to Sequoia" is a wasted ask. "Intro to Sonya Huang at Sequoia because we're building AI infra and she wrote Act Two" is a useful ask.

The mistakes we see every quarter

Founders pitch the fund instead of the partner. They pick the most famous partner regardless of thesis fit. They ask for "any intro to [Fund]" and waste their introducer's social capital. They pitch a partner who hasn't led a deal in six months.

The other common mistake: skipping the public-content research. If a partner has written three blog posts about your exact category and you haven't read them, you're telling them you don't care about their work. That's a bad signal.

The last mistake is pitching multiple partners at the same fund without coordination. If two partners at Lightspeed get your deck in the same week from different intros, it looks like you're spraying. Firms talk internally. Pick one partner, get one clean intro, and if it's not the right fit, ask for a handoff.

Your partner-mapping homework

For each of your top 10 target funds, identify the specific partner you'd want to pitch. Read their last five tweets, their last two podcast appearances, and pull their recent investments. Write a one-line "why this partner" statement for each. Adjust your warm-intro requests to be partner-specific, not fund-generic.

This takes 3-4 hours of research. It's the highest-leverage 3-4 hours of your fundraise.

For more on the funds themselves, see our top US seed VCs piece. If you want help mapping partner-by-partner, book a call.