I have so many thoughts about this, I'm not sure where to start.

Doing a raise has always been weird, there are lots of things that impact it, and different players in PE have totally different theses and motivations.

As a founder, finding the right investment partner has always been one of the most important and difficult things.

As a rule of thumb, I recommend to founders that only about 50% of the value of the investor is their cash investment. In many cases, less than that.

The things that are at least as important are their advisors (who open doors for you), their portfolio companies that can partner with you, and the alignment of their thesis and worldview.

I don't see any of that as having really changed much recently, other than a tightnening of capital for non-AI companies, but I suspect we're going to see a big shift there over the next 18-24 months, as the pressure from the LPs to deploy stays the same, but fingers get burnt from this bubble.

Also, don't forget family offices and industry VCs (Optum Ventures, etc...) that have a lot of these features built in to their structure, not just the fund.