2 - Venture Capital Fundraising

Summary

This chapter discusses venture capital (VC) fundraising, the very first stage of the VC life cycle, in the Chinese VC market. The general practice of VC fundraising has been discussed in fair detail in the existing literature: investors and experienced professionals partake in an investment venture, with the former contributing capital and the latter contributing expertise. In other words, capital that is pooled from investors is entrusted to specialised professionals for investment into specific portfolio companies. This fundraising process creates a number of legal problems, which have been analysed by academics. Most notable among these issues are the potentially divergent interests between investors and professionals and the best methods by which to address resulting conflicts. In developed VC markets such as the United States (US), several legal solutions are available to address this problem, including the use of specialised investment vehicles, such as the limited partnership, which demarcates distinct rights and responsibilities of investors (as limited partners (LPs)) and managers (as general partners (GPs)) in order to manage the investor–manager relationship and the imposition of fiduciary duties on managers.