Just under half of the venture funds from the 2019 and 2020 vintages on Carta have returned any capital to their investors. Even among 2017 funds, now nine years old, fewer than one in five has paid back at least what it called (Carta, VC Fund Performance Q1 2026). For many LPs, that makes distributions and the path to returning capital important subjects for the next annual meeting.
This guide is about the fund’s own annual meeting: the day a venture capital (VC) or private equity (PE) firm hosts for its limited partners (LPs). LPs are the pension funds, endowments, family offices and funds of funds that have committed capital to the fund. Meetings between LPs and fund managers at third-party conferences follow a different logic, which we cover in our guide to scheduling LP-GP meetings at investor conferences.
Use the annual meeting to help LPs understand the figures in their reports, hear directly from the team and discuss the questions that need more context. Plan the sessions and individual conversations around those needs. Below you will find the format, a sample agenda, the one-to-one meetings, the governance slots, a timeline and what to measure.
What is an LP annual meeting?
Start with the format itself, because firms use several names for it: annual meeting, annual general meeting (AGM), LP day. The idea is the same. Once a year, the general partner (GP), the firm that manages the fund, invites all its LPs to an in-person meeting. It usually lasts half a day to a day and a half and often starts with a dinner. The agenda covers fund performance, the portfolio, the team, strategy and the outlook, and portfolio CEOs often present their own companies.
How often should you hold one? Laura Thompson, a partner at Sapphire Ventures who invests in venture funds as an LP, recommends an annual meeting even for young firms. If there is little fund activity, every 18 months can be enough (Sapphire Ventures, 2019). Smaller funds can replace it with individual visits to their LPs.
Keep two neighbouring formats apart. The LP advisory committee (LPAC) is a small group of the largest LPs that handles governance questions such as conflicts of interest. It often meets on the same day, but it is a separate session with its own agenda. A portfolio summit is an event for founders, not investors. Some firms place the two side by side: Menlo Ventures held its 2023 CEO Summit over two days in Dana Point, California, and continued with its LPs the following day (Menlo Ventures, 2023).
The annual meeting is intended for the full LP group, while the LPAC session has a narrower governance role.
Picture the allocator at a public pension fund who backs your fund and a dozen others. In about 18 months she will decide whether to commit to your next fund. Your annual meeting is one of the few times she sees your whole team in one room.
What LPs come to find out
For that allocator, access to the team and candid discussion can add value beyond the presentation materials. “The true value for limited partners comes from spending time in person,” Thompson writes. The numbers alone arrive anyway, and they are getting easier to compare. The Institutional Limited Partners Association (ILPA) updated its reporting template in 2025 and added a new performance template, both applied from the first quarter of 2026 (ILPA, 2025). Use the performance section to explain the figures, assumptions and decisions behind the reporting, while leaving time for questions and direct contact with the team.
Most LPs arrive with three questions:
- When does capital come back: with liquidity this slow, distributions are the first thing on every LP’s mind. Show your exit expectations company by company. Thompson suggests grouping the portfolio into categories such as potential fund returners, laggards and write-offs, with hard metrics rather than phrases like “a lot of traction”.
- What has changed: departures, new hires and any adjustment to the strategy, with the reasons. If nothing has changed, one slide is enough.
- Why commit again: the expected timing and size of the next fund, shared for planning purposes rather than as a pitch.
Many LPs also bring a fourth topic. In Dynamo Software’s 2025 survey of more than 90 LPs, 56 per cent expressed interest in co-investments, five points more than a year earlier (Dynamo Software, 2025). Expect some of your LPs to want a conversation with the deal team, not only with the partners.
LP annual meetings in 2026
Slow liquidity, high appetite for direct deals
DPI (distributions to paid-in capital) measures how much cash a fund has paid back relative to what LPs have paid in. When most funds in a vintage still sit near zero, explain exit expectations alongside valuations, including the uncertainty around timing.
Include liquidity in the agenda rather than waiting for it to arise in the Q&A.
Choose a format that fits half a day
Those questions need time for conversation, which is why the length of the day matters more than its glamour. Thompson calls eight to ten straight hours of presentations too long for most attendees. She suggests either a dinner the night before plus a morning session, or a lunch, an afternoon session and cocktails.
| Format | Shape | Fits |
|---|---|---|
| Dinner plus morning | Dinner on the first evening, presentations until lunch, meetings in the afternoon | LP base that travels in; the most common shape |
| Lunch plus afternoon | Arrive for lunch, sessions in the afternoon, reception in the evening | Regional LP base that can come and go in one day |
| Attached to a founder event | LP day directly after a portfolio summit, as Menlo Ventures did in 2023 | Firms that already run founder events; saves partners a second trip |
| Short meeting or visits | A compact meeting or individual visits instead of a full event | Small and first-time funds |
| Hybrid stream | In-person meeting with a live or recorded stream for LPs who cannot travel | Widely spread LP base; the stream keeps people informed but cannot replace the conversations |
The dinner deserves the same care as the programme. Seat partners, portfolio CEOs and LPs at mixed tables, so nobody spends the evening only with their own team. Our guide to planning an executive dinner shows how to build a seat plan in which every guest sits next to the right host.
Two scheduling rules come from the LP side. Announce next year’s date at this year’s meeting. And check the dates of other GPs your LPs back, particularly firms in the same city, because an allocator with twelve funds cannot attend twelve meetings in the same fortnight (Sapphire Ventures, 2019).
A sample agenda for the most common shape
Take the dinner-plus-morning format and the day could look like this. The times are an editorial example, not a standard.
| Time | Session | Who leads |
|---|---|---|
| Day 1, 18:30 | Reception and seated dinner, mixed tables | All partners, invited CEOs |
| Day 2, 8:00 | Breakfast | Informal |
| 8:15 | LPAC meeting, ending with a session without the GP | LPAC chair, then LPAC members alone |
| 9:30 | Welcome and the fund against its original plan | Managing partner, about 20 minutes |
| 9:50 | Portfolio by category, with exit expectations | Two or three partners |
| 10:30 | Break | |
| 10:50 | Two CEO spotlights, 15 to 20 minutes each | Portfolio CEOs |
| 11:30 | Market and strategy panel with real questions | Partners and one outside guest |
| 12:10 | Open questions | All partners |
| 12:40 | Lunch | |
| 13:30 to 16:00 | Scheduled one-to-one meetings | Partners, deal team, CEOs |
Three details from Thompson’s LP view are built in. CEOs present their own businesses, because “nothing beats hearing the pitch directly from the CEO”, and two are usually enough. Several partners speak, since LPs notice who presents, and a meeting where one partner does 95 per cent of the talking contradicts any message about a partnership of equals. The panel asks hard questions instead of soft ones. For the minute-by-minute version that your team and the venue work from, our run of show template shows how to build one.
Protect time for individual questions after the shared programme.
Plan the one-to-one meetings, not just the stage
Without a booking process, access to partners can depend on who happens to catch them during a break. Ask LPs what they would like to discuss and arrange conversations in advance. There are usually three kinds of one-to-one meeting worth planning:
- an LP with the partner who looks after that relationship
- an LP with the deal team about a co-investment
- an LP with a portfolio CEO, ideally one the LP has asked about
Then do the arithmetic. Here is an illustrative calculation, not a benchmark:
| Step | Calculation | Result |
|---|---|---|
| People available for meetings | 4 partners plus 2 deal team members | 6 hosts |
| Slots per host | 2.5 hours in 25-minute slots, including changeover | 6 slots |
| Meetings you can offer | 6 hosts x 6 slots | 36 meetings |
| LPs attending | 60 |
Thirty-six meetings for sixty LPs means you cannot meet everyone in person that afternoon. So ask LPs at registration which person they want to meet and on which topic. Give priority to LPs with an upcoming re-up decision or an open question about a specific company, and offer the rest a call in the weeks after the meeting. Our article on event meeting no-shows explains why a short reconfirmation the day before protects those scarce slots.
For example, an LP with questions about a significant write-down may want time with the partner responsible for that investment. Identify the request early enough to offer a suitable slot.
Governance slots and who pays
Not every slot on the day is yours to design. Some follow from your fund documents rather than from good hospitality. ILPA Principles 3.0 recommend that every LPAC meeting includes an in-camera session, meaning a part of the meeting without the GP. LPAC members should prepare from the materials in advance and be able to add items to the agenda (ILPA, 2019). In practice, that means a separate room, a fixed time and a GP team that leaves when the session starts.
The same principles suggest a split for costs. The fund pays for hosting the meeting, “including meeting venue, materials and supplies”. The GP pays for entertainment, including speaker fees (ILPA, 2019; Torys, 2020). Keep two budget columns from the first quote onwards.
ILPA principles are guidance. What applies to your fund is set out in the limited partnership agreement, so check the rules on meeting costs, LPAC procedure and confidentiality there, and ask your fund counsel where anything is unclear. Portfolio metrics shown at the meeting are confidential, so share the materials electronically with access control rather than leaving printed decks on the tables.
Keep the agreed cost allocation visible throughout budgeting and approval.
A timeline from date to follow-up
All of this works best when the date is fixed early. A twelve-month runway is realistic for a meeting that LPs travel to.
Planning timeline
LP annual meeting, from date to follow-up
- 12 months Fix the date Announce it at this year's meeting and check the dates of other GPs your LPs back, especially in the same city.
- 6 months Venue and hotels A comfortable room with good light and enough tables, a separate room for the LPAC session and a hotel block at a group rate.
- 3 months Invitations and registration Ask who will attend, who joins the dinner and whom each LP wants to meet one to one.
- 6 weeks Programme and LPAC agenda Confirm the two CEOs and any outside guest, and collect agenda items from LPAC members.
- 2 weeks Materials and meeting schedule Send pre-reads electronically, including one-page summaries per investment, and confirm the one-to-one slots.
- 1 week Brief the hosts Every partner knows their LPs, the open questions and the follow-up each conversation should lead to.
- Within 1 week after Follow up Send the final materials, answer open questions and schedule the calls you could not fit into the afternoon.
The one-pager per investment is another of Thompson’s suggestions: ownership, cost, value, a short description, an update, revenue and growth on one page. It gives LPs something to scan before the meeting, so the conversations can start at a deeper level.
How to measure an annual meeting
The timeline ends with follow-up, and that is also where the meeting is judged. Attendance is useful, but add measures of access, understanding and follow-up:
- the share of committed capital represented in the room, not just the number of attendees
- one-to-one meetings held compared with meetings requested
- questions raised in the session and follow-up requests within two weeks
- one survey question asked right after the event: what did you learn today that was not in the quarterly report?
Use the survey responses and outstanding requests to improve the next meeting and follow up on questions the team could not resolve on the day. If your firm also runs investor days with founders and outside investors, our comparison of matchmaking platforms for investor meetings helps you shortlist the tools.
Converve can handle the registration and the one-to-one part of the day. LPs register and say whom they want to meet, and a rule-based meeting matrix that you configure sets who may request meetings with whom and how many meetings each person takes. Confirmed meetings land in free slots of both agendas, so the afternoon is planned before anyone arrives. The startup and investor solution and our event registration page show how the pieces fit together.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is an LP annual meeting?
An LP annual meeting is the yearly meeting a venture capital or private equity firm hosts for the limited partners who have invested in its funds. It usually lasts half a day to a day and a half and covers fund performance, the portfolio, the team, strategy and the outlook, often with presentations from portfolio CEOs and a dinner.
How long should an LP annual meeting be?
Half a day of sessions plus a dinner or lunch works for most firms. Sapphire Ventures partner Laura Thompson calls eight to ten straight hours too long and suggests either a dinner the evening before with a morning session, or a lunch with an afternoon session and cocktails (Sapphire Ventures, 2019).
What should be on the agenda of an LP annual meeting?
Cover the fund against its original plan, the portfolio by category with exit expectations, team changes, strategy and the market, two short CEO presentations, open questions and the timing of the next fund. With fewer than 20 per cent of 2017 and 2018 venture funds at a DPI of 1x or more (Carta, Q1 2026), address liquidity directly.
Who pays for the annual meeting, the fund or the GP?
ILPA Principles 3.0 recommend that the fund pays for hosting costs such as the venue, materials and supplies, while the GP pays for entertainment, including speaker fees (ILPA, 2019). The rules that apply to your fund are in its limited partnership agreement, so check it before you budget.
What is the difference between an annual meeting and an LPAC meeting?
The annual meeting is open to all LPs and focuses on performance and outlook. The LPAC meeting involves only the members of the limited partner advisory committee and handles governance questions such as conflicts of interest. ILPA recommends that every LPAC meeting includes a session without the GP (ILPA, 2019).
Should an LP annual meeting be in person or virtual?
An in-person format gives LPs time for direct conversations with partners and portfolio CEOs. A live or recorded stream can support those who cannot travel; plan how remote LPs can ask questions and arrange follow-up conversations.
Conclusion: plan the day around the questions LPs bring
An LP annual meeting is judged by what LPs learn that they could not read in the quarterly report. Plan backwards from their questions: when capital comes back, what has changed and why they should commit again. Keep the programme to half a day, give the afternoon to scheduled one-to-one meetings, book the LPAC session and its separate room, and split the budget between fund and GP from the start. Review what LPs learned and which questions still need follow-up, alongside the attendance figures.
If you are planning an annual meeting or an investor day with scheduled one-to-one meetings, get in touch with Converve.
