We recently spoke with Align Ventures’ Managing Partner Grant Hosking and Chief Operating Officer Nik Kolluru to learn how their distinct approaches to investor management and evaluating deal opportunities have helped them become a 2024 Juniper Square Top Fundraiser.
Q: Hey, Grant and Nik! Thanks so much for the time, and congratulations on being named a Top Fundraiser. Tell us about this past year. What gave you and your team the confidence to raise capital?
Hosking: First, the market shifted to more of the demand side—at least in the venture community. Then, the acceleration of AI increased our fundraising efforts significantly—we’re now at the forefront of AI investing in a company called Figure AI, a leader in the humanoid category. Also, Juniper Square was incredibly helpful. In a month, we raised about $100 million through our LP co-investment platform, and Juniper Square made that seamless. Our back office managed all the subscription processes quickly, and the speed with which we were able to close capital for that particular round allowed us to secure and guarantee an allocation.
Q: You’ve historically focused on investing in Consumer and Technology businesses. Would you attribute your success in fundraising to doubling down on what’s worked for Align, or did you have a new go-forward strategy that LPs found distinctly exciting during your capital raises?
Hosking: We started as a Consumer fund because my partner had a significant Consumer background, and we found a gap in the market where venture typically focuses on Tech. There weren't a lot of venture capital companies focused on early-stage Consumer—usually, any funding comes from private equity, who prefer to invest later-stage. We were able to get some marquee brands like FIGS, Scrubs, and Billie in early investment rounds.
As those companies grew and needed additional growth capital, we could provide significant amounts of capital through our LP network—mostly family offices and strategic investors. Coming in early from the seed fund and series A fund and then opening up to our investors via co-investment has grown our AUM significantly, helping us double down on the winners.
Q: How much of your capital-raising efforts this past year were within your existing LP base versus bringing in new partners? For those existing LPs that subscribed again, what do you think kept your LP base loyal—outside of durable returns?
Hosking: A significant portion of capital came from existing LPs increasing their commitments. Creating that base takes time. It means curating good deal flow. It means strategic alignment. It’s executing, showing, and providing consistent investor updates and communication. Long term, it means building trust with our LPs—that's our core focus. Ultimately, our best lead gen has been from existing investors. If your current investors are happy and you service them well, they’ll introduce you to their network with a strong recommendation. We’ve found that’s the best way to meet new investors and build trust in the platform.
Q: LPs appear to be consolidating their GP relationships in favor of larger, more established fund managers. It’s more competitive than ever to raise that next dollar. How have you differentiated Align Ventures in an increasingly crowded field?
Hosking: With a mixture of a few things. One, demonstrating sector-specific expertise and providing really compelling and unique deals. Our fund track record speaks for itself. But, when you're marketing on a deal-by-deal basis, you're underwriting the thought and the detail that goes into it, positioning the company, return potential, and highlighting the risks. We're highly selective, finding unique opportunities that people don't otherwise have access to.
Q: What makes a deal attractive to you? What are the things you look for when pursuing a deal?
Hosking: On the Consumer side, the team is one of the most important things we look at. We track a team for months, sometimes quarters, and look for consistent delivery, hitting milestones, and beating numbers—that’s one of the biggest considerations in early-stage venture. Then there’s proven product-market fit, traction, barriers-to-entry, market size and investing at the right valuation—there's a number of proof points or criteria we review. We try to check off as many as possible.
Ultimately, marketing and branding are differentiators, with Consumer in particular. We want to see that the brand is there, that they have the right creative assets in place, that the LTV and CAC numbers are where we like to see them—and that it has a long-term scalable platform and product line.
On the AI front, we're also extremely selective. We're still so early in that almost everyone is convinced of the potential—and it's incredibly competitive. With the market still evolving, you have to be careful, thoughtful, and disciplined in finding partners you can trust, who have a track record, and who have a high conviction thesis on the particular investment you're considering.
We want to see strong proof points—good institutional leads who are experts or domain experts. It's not a one-size-fits-all process—we see tens of deals a day. But, we have a rigid internal screening process to narrow down to the top 0.1% of deals in which we have the highest conviction.
Q: Based on your experience successfully raising capital in a market with challenging macros, what advice would you offer to other firms?
Hosking: Raising capital is really about nurturing your LP relationships. Managing them and building trust can sometimes take years. So staying in front of them is crucial—from positioning why you like the deal to continuing to update them when they do invest in a deal. More transparency builds trust. It's not just about capital-raising—you must be a strategic partner, not just transactional. LPs want to understand your strategy and how it is differentiated, and it can take a lot of time for them to get comfortable. You have to differentiate yourself, you have to find your lane, and you have to build LPs’ trust to get continued capital.
Q: Do you expect it will be easier or harder to raise capital throughout 2025? Why?
Hosking: LPs are more disciplined about allocating capital, especially more recently with market shifts. That said, we've historically been able to raise money in choppy markets because we have a differentiated strategy, a very strong track record, and LP trust. So, for funds that have resilience, high-quality deals, and are finding opportunities at attractive prices, it shouldn't be a difficult capital-raising environment—there's still a lot of dry powder looking for opportunities. But that’s not to say it will be as easy as it was in years past.
Q: How does Juniper Square’s fundraising solution help you with the fundraising process? How does it compare to past tools/platforms?
Hosking: I've been an investor with other Juniper Square funds, and that was what initially drew us to the Juniper Square platform—how easy and seamless the process is. For us, it's been a game-changer in terms of efficiency and fundraising execution. From a manager's perspective, we have real-time visibility into the book and the capital-raising process. And that funnel is really helpful for us as we move people forward from indications of interest to subscription documents. That real-time visibility is incredibly helpful for Nik and his operations team, as well.
Q: What can you do now that you have a purpose-built solution that you couldn’t do before?
Kolluru: We've been with Juniper Square for a couple of years now. Seeing the evolution from a real estate investment platform to incorporating some of the features venture capital firms need has been nice. We provide feedback, and Juniper Square incorporates it and builds it into the product. From the LP standpoint, it’s a very streamlined process, and we're very thankful for that. Being able to manage such a large raise with a relatively lean team has been huge.
Like any other tool, you need to know how to use it properly. We're still identifying the different features Juniper Square has available, seeing how they can be incorporated into our workflow, and leveraging them to keep the team linked.
Hosking: The CRM and UI that you’ve developed are incredible. We get tons of compliments from people on how easy the LP onboarding is. It's almost frictionless, and it's one of the best subscription document processes I've seen—and we've worked with others in the past.
Our investors are extremely busy, and the last thing we want is to have administrative issues on a subscription process that should be a seamless, check-the-box process. Juniper Square is a way to differentiate ourselves with better tracking and communication—we use it for emails and investor management, and uploading K-1s. It's nice to have all of that in one portal. At the end of the day, we can raise capital a lot more efficiently while servicing our clients.
Align Ventures was featured as one of Juniper Square's 2024 Top Fundraisers, based on our analysis of the capital raised by our clients using digital subscriptions. Digital subscriptions is one of Juniper Square's digital fundraising tools, helping GPs deliver a better investor experience and raise more capital.