Venture Summit Takeaways
-- by Jessie Gabriel
Last week, a few hundred GPs and LPs gathered along California’s glorious Central Coast to talk all things venture capital. The Women’s Venture Capital Summit is always a highlight of my year. Not only do I get to catch up with All Places clients and other members of our community, but I also get to soak up all the industry intel. These themes stood out.
AI is (still) so hot right now. Yes, just like last year, conversations about AI popped up everywhere. This makes sense because AI literally is popping up everywhere, in every industry, in almost every facet of our lives. The biggest change since 2025 is that people seem to be getting a bit more perspective. Investors are taking a more circumspect approach to businesses that are branding themselves as “AI” companies. There was even more discussion on how firms are using AI tools for their back office. You know this is one of our team’s favorite topics, so I was furiously taking notes on new tools. And finally, there were meaningful conversations around the interaction between AI and humanity, and creativity in particular. After three years of being in Los Angeles, we have built up a nice roster of media and entertainment clients. So how AI and creative work together in harmony is a conversation we are always interested in–the refreshing part was hearing people in venture being interested in it as well.
Liquidity is (still) the order of the day. I’m not just saying this because I proposed to the conference organizers that we have a panel on liquidity solutions, and then moderated that panel, but liquidity was right next to AI in most-discussed topics. The bad news is that the IPO and M&A markets are still below their peaks in 2021. The good news is that 2025 continued the year-over-year upward trajectory we have seen every year since 2021. The even better news is that there are potentially some very big IPOs in the hopper for 2026, which could cause cascading liquidity events that would free up significant LP capital. In the meantime, the secondaries market (both direct and GP-led) continues to rage, and continuation vehicles remain the most-talked-about-but-least-used tool in the venture liquidity arsenal. Big, big thanks to Jennifer Randle of MaC Venture Capital, Monica Brand Engel of Quona Capital, Seyonne Kang of StepStone, and Justine Huang Burns of Industry Ventures (now part of GSAM), for an absolutely fantastic conversation (and for introducing the audience to the concept of “stapling”).
Fundraising is still really, really hard. I don’t know that I can say much else here. We’ve been having the same conversation for the last four years. It’s been hard. It’s still hard. It’s slowly getting better. I can’t tell you the number of funds out there that had flat or lower AUM for their most recent subsequent fund. If you are in that bucket, you are not alone. And given the prevalence of that situation, I’d like to believe LPs are unlikely to hold it against you when you come out for your next raise.
Optimism is back. 2025 was a dark year for many of us. Day after day, it felt tough and, at times, almost unbearable. There is a lightness to 2026. It certainly isn’t because world leaders have become better, kinder, or more humane in 2026. In fact, we just keep learning more and more about what total and absolute creeps so many people in (political, financial, technological) power are. So it must be because the human beings that inhabit this world have decided that, despite the inhuman and immoral decisions that are being made by so many people who are sitting on top of enormous stacks of cash, we are going to be better. I’m feeling positive about 2026 and so were many of the people I talked to last week. This could be a goodie.
