How to map US VC partners (and why "pitching Sequoia" means nothing)

Last month a founder told us he was "pitching Sequoia." We asked which partner. He didn't know. He had a warm intro to the fund's general inbox and a deck tailored to Sequoia's portfolio. Two weeks later: passed without a meeting. The problem wasn't the deck. He pitched a fund, not a person.

US VC firms don't make decisions. Partners do. Each partner has their own thesis, their own deal flow, and their own authority to lead or pass. When you pitch "Sequoia" or "a16z," you're pitching nobody. When you pitch Pat Grady or Sonya Huang, you're pitching someone who can actually say yes.

This is the framework for partner mapping: how to find the right partner inside a fund, what to look for, and how to pitch them once you know who they are.

Why partners matter more than funds

Top-tier US VCs operate as collections of semi-autonomous partners. Each partner has their own investment thesis. The fund's "thesis" is just the union of those individual theses, not a coherent strategy.

Three things follow from this. First, a pitch matched to a specific partner's focus lands better than a pitch matched to the fund's overall portfolio. Second, if you pitch the wrong partner, even a strong company gets passed—because that partner won't push it through IC. Third, the fund's brand doesn't help you if the partner you're talking to doesn't care about your space.

We've seen founders waste warm intros by asking for "any intro to Greylock" instead of "an intro to Sarah Tavel." The first gets routed to whoever has time. The second gets routed to the person who led Benchling and Faire and writes about marketplace dynamics every quarter.

How to research partners

Start with the fund's recent investments. Pull the last 12-24 months of seed and Series A deals from Crunchbase or the fund's own portfolio page. For each deal, note the company, the sector, and the lead partner. (Lead partner is usually listed in the press release or the company's "investors" page.)

Group those investments by partner. You'll see patterns immediately. One partner leads every B2B SaaS deal. Another does consumer. A third does AI infrastructure. Some partners lead five deals a year; others lead one. Some partners haven't led anything in six months, which means they're either out of capital or out of cycle.

Once you have the investment map, triangulate with public content. Read each candidate partner's last ten tweets. Read their recent blog posts. Listen to their podcast appearances. You're looking for explicit thesis statements, recent excitement, and stated investment criteria. The best signal is a partner who has publicly written or spoken about your specific category in the last 90 days.

If you can talk to a founder in the fund's portfolio, ask them three questions: Who's the partner most aligned with what I'm building? Who's currently most active? Who would you introduce me to if I asked?

Named examples

To make this concrete, here are partners with publicly known theses. These are current as of early 2025 and will shift over time.

Sonya Huang at Sequoia focuses on AI infrastructure and frontier models. She wrote the "Generative AI's Act Two" essay and led investments in companies building model infrastructure. Pat Grady, also at Sequoia, focuses on late-stage SaaS and growth-stage operators—different thesis, same fund.

Sarah Guo runs Conviction and invests in AI infrastructure and applications. She was previously at Greylock and has written extensively about the AI stack. Lachy Groom is a solo GP, ex-Stripe operator, and generalist with a technical bias. Elad Gil is another solo GP who invests at late seed and Series A, mostly in companies with strong technical founders.

Bilal Zuberi at Lux Capital invests in deep tech, hardware, and defense. Garry Tan, now president of Y Combinator, was previously at Initialized and invests across generalist seed. Olivia Moore at a16z has recently been vocal about consumer AI and has led investments in that space.

These names change as partners move firms or shift focus. Refresh this list against current Twitter and blog content every quarter.

How the pitch changes

A generic pitch looks like this: "Hi [Fund], we're building X for Y. Here's our deck." Response rate is maybe 5%.

A partner-specific pitch looks like this: "Hi [Partner], your essay on [specific topic] last month resonated because we've been building exactly the [specific framing] you described. [One sentence on how their stated thesis maps to your company.] Here's our deck. Would love 30 minutes." Response rate is closer to 30%.

The difference is signal. The second message proves you know the partner's actual work, not just the fund name. That alone changes the response rate by 6x.

We've seen this work in both directions. A founder pitched Sonya Huang with a direct reference to her "Act Two" essay and a one-line explanation of how his company fit the infrastructure layer she described. He got a meeting in 48 hours. Another founder pitched "Sequoia" with a generic deck and a warm intro to the fund's general email. He got a form rejection in two weeks.

Validating fit through portfolio companies

Beyond the partner's own writing, look at their portfolio. Which 2-3 companies are most analogous to yours? Were those investments led by the partner you're targeting? Are those companies still doing well?

A struggling portfolio company in your space hurts you. If the partner led a deal in your category two years ago and that company is now dead or stalled, they're unlikely to do another deal in the space. A thriving portfolio company helps—it proves the partner understands the space and has conviction.

You can also use portfolio companies to validate the partner's working style. Talk to founders they've backed. Ask what the partner cares about, how they run board meetings, how they handle tough conversations. This matters more than the fund's brand.

Decision-making structures vary by fund

Different funds have different IC structures. At Sequoia, a16z, and Greylock, the partner needs IC approval. The partner is your champion to IC, but they can't unilaterally say yes. At smaller partnerships like First Round, Initialized, or Founder Collective, decision-making is more decentralized. At solo GP funds like Lachy Groom or Elad Gil, the partner is the firm—the decision can happen in one conversation.

Knowing this changes how you pitch. If you're pitching a large fund, you're pitching the partner first and IC second. If you're pitching a solo GP, you're pitching the decision-maker directly.

Multi-partner intros are risky

You'll occasionally get intros to two partners at the same fund. This creates three problems. First, partners compete internally for deals, which slows decision-making. Second, partners talk to each other, so you can't tailor your pitch to each one independently. Third, if both partners pass, you've burned the entire fund.

Better to pick one partner per fund—the right one. If you get a handoff ("this isn't for me but you should talk to [other partner]"), take it. That's the partner endorsing you internally, which is stronger than a cold intro.

Where founders go wrong

The most common mistake is pitching the fund instead of a specific partner. The second most common mistake is pitching multiple partners at the same fund without coordination. The third is picking the most senior or famous partner regardless of thesis fit—pitching Marc Andreessen because he's Marc Andreessen, even though he hasn't led a seed deal in five years.

Other mistakes: skipping the public-content research and asking a generic introducer for "any intro to [Fund]," which wastes the introducer's social capital. Pitching a partner who hasn't led a deal in six months. Pitching a partner whose last investment in your space failed.

What this looks like in practice

For each of your top ten target funds, identify the specific partner you'd want to pitch. Read their last five tweets, their last two podcast appearances, and their recent investments. Write a one-line "why this partner" statement for each. Adjust your warm-intro requests to be partner-specific, not fund-generic.

If you're already in the middle of a raise and you've been pitching funds instead of partners, go back and re-route. It's not too late. A well-targeted intro to the right partner beats ten generic intros to the wrong ones.

For more on which funds to target, see our piece on top US seed VCs. If you want help mapping partner-by-partner, book a call.