New fund, same mission

When we launched The General Partnership in 2022, we set out to redefine what partnership meant in venture capital. We knew that when the traditional VC model scales, it breaks, failing to deliver the hands-on support that founders truly need. So, through our evolution from Sweat Equity Ventures to The General Partnership, we applied a new approach: deploying a team of experienced recruiters, engineers, designers, and GTM leaders to work alongside founders for months at a time.

We called the model “Sweat Equity,” and it was a bet to prioritize service over scale. That bet paid off because it aligned our incentives with those of our founders. We quickly learned that the best partnerships emerge when both sides do the work. 

Fund I has been a rewarding and intense journey in terms of successful partnerships and how we’ve refined our model. Today, we’re excited to announce the close of TheGP II, a $300 million fund that will double down on delivering both capital and sweat to experienced founders who value true partnership. 

This wouldn’t have been possible without our incredible Limited Partners. We’re deeply thankful for the institutional support that allowed us to raise an oversubscribed fund in today’s market. All of our existing institutional LPs have recommitted to our vision, and we were able to add a small number of outstanding new institutions with this raise. Backed by leading nonprofits, educational institutions, and healthcare research centers across the United States, it's a privilege to know that our investment returns will help advance their critical missions. We’re grateful to every investor, from the smallest individuals to the largest institutional endowments, for believing in our model and supporting our work as we continue to build TheGP. 

The state of Sweat Equity

Over the past six years, we’ve learned that Sweat Equity works best when it embodies three foundational principles: 

1. Bespoke support.

Every founder and company is uniquely different. That’s why each partnership we enter is 100% custom. Founders can choose to use us only for capital or add a talent/product/GTM “Sweat Equity agreement” as they see fit. We are designed to deliver 1:1 support, not playbooks, and we trust the founders we partner with to craft our engagement. 

Through our partnerships in Fund I, we:  

• Incubated TurbineOne within TheGP, recruited eight members of their technical team. and invested capital to support them from pre-seed through their $15M Series A. 

• Deployed infrastructure software at Promise, hired 13 team members, and invested in their Series B. 

• Helped SPIRL get from no code to MVP in six months, established an enterprise sales motion, and led their seed round. 

• Hired key members of Stainless’s founding technical team and supported their self-service launch across engineering and comms. 

2. Veteran expertise.

Sweat Equity only works with a team of leaders who have seen and done it before. 

Our recruiters designed Stripe’s recruiting playbook, scaled Robinhood from dozens to thousands, led executive search at Slack and brought tech talent to the White House. Our product team built companies acquired by Stripe and Salesforce, designed LinkedIn’s publishing platform and scaled YouTube to 1 billion. Our GTM team led sales at Oracle, Square, Grafana and Zendesk. And our marketers were at The Information in its early days, built Product Hunt’s content operation, and led branding for some of the biggest startups today. 

In Fund I, this team worked alongside our founders for an average of nine months at a time. TheGP II is structured to provide the same level of support. 

3. Real skin in the game.

We only earn Sweat Equity grants when we deliver on specific milestones—whether that’s driving product-market-fit faster, saving years of engineering time, or recruiting a world-class team. To date, over 70% of our investments include a Sweat Equity agreement and these agreements account for over 20% of our position in these portfolio companies. 

Building a new home for learn-it-all misfits 

We often describe both our team members and the founders we invest in as “learn-it-all misfits.” These are typically experienced builders, whether they’re working on their second startup or applying deep technical expertise to a new idea. They also recognize the importance of senior leaders engaging in dedicated work to shape a company's DNA from the outset.

As we launch TheGP II, we're excited to continue crafting a new home for these types of builders. Our model allows these folks to work shoulder-to-shoulder with founders, activate their network as part of a VC firm, find their next idea, and then build with the rest of our team from the jump. 

In Fund I, five of our technical team members incubated companies within the firm, and we plan to continue this with TheGP II. 

We raised this new fund because our entire team is dedicated to deepening our focus on supporting founders at the two most critical times in their company’s life: 

1. Formation: Pre-seed and seed-stage startups, from pre-product market fit ideas to early traction businesses where we typically invest $1-$5 million, with reserves for follow-on support.

2. Breakout: Companies with proven product-market fit poised for substantial growth. These businesses are typically not constrained by capital but require specific senior talent, technical expertise, or go-to-market optimization to win. We begin these partnerships with Sweat Equity and, as capital becomes a constraint down the line, we can expand our partnership to support further scale with investments ranging from $5-$15 million or more.

If what we’re building at TheGP resonates, we’d love to get to know you, understand your vision for your business or your career, and do the work together.