Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503)

Why It Matters

Kimmer’s framework converts fundraising into a scalable, reproducible process that can materially improve capital-raising success and team performance for GPs and portfolio companies. Adopting his meeting and sales-structure practices can shorten fundraising cycles, raise conversion rates, and professionalize investor relations.

Summary

John “Kimmer” Kim, who has helped raise more than $70 billion across venture and private equity, outlines a practical playbook for fundraising built around meeting structure, persuasive persona, and repeatable sales processes. He emphasizes that every investor meeting must quickly establish rapport, credibility, attention and interest, and that likability and presentation often matter as much as facts. Drawing on decades in placement, investor relations and recent work as chairman of Lila Sciences, Kimmer distilled these lessons into his book The Dao of Fundraising and discusses frameworks for investor taxonomy, sales-team design and compensation. The conversation frames fundraising as a disciplined, teachable craft rather than artful intuition.

Original Description

John Kim, or Kimmer, has raised more than $70 billion across his career for leading venture capital and private equity firms. Kimmer recently distilled three decades of lessons into The Tao of Fundraising, the best book I’ve ever read on fundraising for investment managers. Since then, Kimmer joined a General Catalyst portfolio company, Lila Sciences, as Chairman and President of Corporate Development.

Our conversation covers Kimmer’s philosophy about raising capital, the sales process, art of persuasion, best practices in a meeting, frameworks determining fundraising success, taxonomy of institutional investors, ideal sales team structure and compensation, and the features he carried over from capital formation for funds to a new operating role.

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Original Publish Date: 05/25/2025