“Taylor was extremely organized and made efficient use of time while covering a complex topic. He comes prepared with a wealth of tools and templates that allow one to continue learning and practicing independently after the course.”
Portfolio Construction Workshop
How to model fund portfolio construction. Check sizes, ownership targets, reserves, recycling, and the trade-offs every fund manager has to make. Hands-on with AI-assisted modeling.
4.9(22)10+ sessions delivered200+ students taught
Date TBD
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120 minutes
Online, Google Meet
For Investors
What this workshop is about
Portfolio construction is an important part of venture fund development. The decisions you make about check size, ownership targets, reserves, recycling, and deployment pace frame your investment thesis and provide the basis for your fund return strategy. But it is much more than just math, and there is no one right answer for everyone. The "right" portfolio construction isn't just a calculation, and you can't simply solve for it with AI or simulation analysis, as it requires human judgement and decisions about an unknowable future.
Taught by Taylor Davidson, the workshop will go through a fund portfolio construction model covering the math and the strategy. I have assisted hundreds of fund managers from emerging and established firms on portfolio construction through the Venture Capital Model, workshops, and one-on-one strategy sessions. This workshop is built to help you understand the choices you are making about investment strategy and how it impacts your fund's potential returns.
You can get it two ways. Buy the recording and you have the full session plus every slide and worksheet immediately. The workshop also runs live on a recurring basis, and your purchase includes a seat at every future live session, so you can watch now and join a live run later to work through your own fund's portfolio construction.
What will be covered
The workshop works through a real fund portfolio model, starting with fund size and ending with whether the strategy can plausibly return the fund. Along the way:
- Fund size, deployable capital, and what check size you actually need after management fees and time
- Target ownership and why ownership at exit matters more than dollars at entry
- The return-the-fund test: required exit valuation given your initial ownership and dilution
- Sizing reserves as a percentage of allocation vs. by expected follow-on count, and how to pick
- Splitting reserves across Series A, B, sometimes C, and what graduation rates do to the math
- Recycling: how it expands deployable capital without raising more, and practical issues in utilizing it
- Concentrated vs. diversified strategies, how each one is supposed to work, and what breaks them
- Scenarios, Monte Carlo, and sensitivity analysis, and when the extra detail is worth the effort
- Where AI accelerates this work, and where it will confidently write a plan that may or may not make sense for you
This workshop focuses on portfolio construction and does not cover all aspects of building a full fund model, but I am happy to answer all questions throughout the session.
Who this is for
Emerging managers building Fund I, established managers reworking strategy for Fund II or III, and operators or LPs who want a sharper view of how the inputs shape returns. Some familiarity with fund mechanics helps but is not required.
What you'll walk away with
A working approach for your own portfolio construction, a clear sense of the trade-offs that matter and the ones that don't, and the judgment to use AI on this work without ending up with a strategy the math can't support.
Follow-up
Practice exercises and 1-on-1 review sessions are available for anyone who wants to apply what they learned to their own fund.
Related
- Venture Capital Model, the underlying model used in the workshop
- Docs: Portfolio Construction, the written walkthrough
- Docs: Reserves and follow-ons
- Fractional CFO, if you want ongoing help beyond the workshop
Stay in the loop
New workshops, model updates, and occasional AI tips. Low volume.
Ratings
4.9(22 ratings)
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Reviews
“Understanding the ins and outs of fund modeling is generally not a walk in the park. The resources from Foresight have been a huge help towards my learnings of portfolio construction, fund metrics and waterfall analysis.”
Michael P Edwards· Founder
“Taylor was extremely organized and made efficient use of time while covering a complex topic. He comes prepared with a wealth of tools and templates.”
Jeffrey Abbott· Founding Partner, Blitzscaling Ventures
“Taylor made it incredibly interesting, yet still managed to keep it simple. The free templates that Taylor provided were incredibly helpful.”
Lukas Grodl· Legal Counsel, Purple Ventures
“Taylor is a terrific instructor who patiently walks through every model he has built and thoughtfully answers all questions. He is quite generous with his time and additional materials.”
