A day in the life of a Chrysalix team member. By Greg Allen Partner, Chrysalix Venture Capital

I tried to resist the temptation of looking at my phone before my feet touched the floor, but I failed and noted that the emails from Europe had already stacked up. Some were founders updating on their runway, some were funding agents pitching a miracle solution to funding, and some were pitch decks for new start-up ideas. I grabbed a coffee and hit the home office, scrolled through deal flow dashboards, a couple of portfolio companies and checked WhatsApp for any urgent team messages. No urgent messages, but a couple of companies flagged yellow with short runways and tough funding rounds. I see an email from our CFO on capital call forecasts. Will deal with that when I hit the downtown office.

It’s the deal flow review committee with LPs this evening, so I checked that I had all the materials (I'm on deck to facilitate this month). It looks good to go. We have three potential new deals to discuss in the Chemicals, Industrial AI and Wastewater sectors.

I managed a quick walk around the block to get some air, then a 7 am call with investment team members analyzing the prospects of a portfolio company heading into a funding round. Short runway, but good customer traction, so it should be ok. Their pitch is promising, tech is almost ready to go commercial, and several customers are ready to place orders. It’s a robotics play within a massive market and high-value potential, so this enabled good brainstorming on funding options. I couldn’t help thinking about whether our fund reserves could stretch far enough to support a check size bigger than our allocation model allowed. I scribbled down some notes for next Monday’s Investment Managers meeting on how we can think about deploying our capital reserves. A mental juggling act: for sure, one eye on the exit potential, the other on investment budget constraints and trade-offs with other investment opportunities.

The commute into the office was uneventful, listening to the ‘We Study Billionaires’ podcast and a talk on AI for activists. My mind wanders between founder enthusiasm in our portfolio companies, particularly in the metals circularity space, and the cold arithmetic of which ones we can support across the various growth stages. Maintaining our top-quartile 17% net IRR for our Industry 4.0 fund (Fund IV) and hitting our DPI targets was front of mind.

OK, I’m in the office, and another bit of my job hits me in the face: fund governance. I spend time with our Managing Partner and CFO looking at operating company governance items and first-half financials. All seems on track. These are the conversations that make my dream of venture capital and doing deals seem far away, but they matter just as much as term sheets and outsized exits. Without clean audits, a clear process around booked valuations and good governance, the next fund wouldn’t get raised.

After lunch, I spend time putting the finishing touches on an investment thesis for a new technology vertical for our Industrial Innovation Fund (Fund V), linking that to start-up examples already in our deal flow. I reread the investment pitch from the Industrial AI companies we already have in Fund IV, as they set a good benchmark for future investments in this space. It feels like I am taking a long time to write the new thesis, but I want to get it right, as it could be used to direct our deal sourcing for a new thematic area.

By late afternoon, I am focusing on new LP targets for Fund V. I need to finish the introduction letter and do some research on the best entry point to ensure we get a first call. I reflect on how VCs assist their portfolio companies with fundraising while experiencing the same fundraising stress as their start-ups. I consider the feedback from a recent LP call about how we communicate our thinking on liquidity options. “We’d like to know more. What’s next?” was their closing comment, and a good sign that we might get a second meeting. I quickly outlined the next steps in my notes app and made a note to present a few models on liquidity options. I am sure we will be asked not just about returns and impact, but also about governance, metrics, and risk mitigation processes, so for that next meeting, we will draw on both investor process and governance discipline. I take a glance at the Fund V data room to make sure those questions are covered; they are!

Had to make a city council economic advisory committee meeting for 6 pm, so shut the laptop and headed for the SkyTrain. It was another day, balancing dreams of big exits, investment report writing, fundraising planning, and start-up interaction. This advisory committee meeting is a way I can step back from the VC world and give a little back to the local community.

I am home from the committee meeting by 8:30 pm, and I did an hour of email prep for the next day (I like to draft emails and stare at them again in the morning before I push send). I finally shut the laptop around 10 pm and just have time to catch the new episode of ‘Slow Horses’, my Gary Oldman fix, to finish the day.

Four years after my move from industry to VC, I now realize this game isn’t just about looking at cool new tech and finding the next ‘$1Bn exit’ but also making sure our funds are well governed, with transparent reporting to investors, and our portfolio companies are well supported and, where possible, have a positive societal impact. My day had been a mix of chasing the future and cleaning up a few past issues: deal excitement in the morning, some ops grind in the afternoon and some fundraising strategy. I’ll hit the golf course late Friday afternoon (my happy place, but some say it’s a waste of a good 9 km walk), so that should help me clear my head for the next week.