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BlackRock Enters Venture Secondaries, Liquidity Ramps

Plus: Stop trusting dashboards that lie to you

Author

Avinash Duggempudi
August 20, 2025

SPONSORED BY

Undercover VC

Here's what's happening this week in the world of portfolio performance and GTM oversight:
- BlackRock moves into VC secondaries, LP liquidity tightens up.
- Texas hyperscale campus tackles AI power bottlenecks head-on.
- Keychain raises $30M to streamline CPG operations with AI.
- South Africa’s proptech fund closes with landlord LP muscle.
- TPG NEXT anchors an emerging manager, GP stakes momentum builds.

⏱️THE MINUTE READ

Your forecast isn’t slipping because of effort. It’s slipping because the system you trust is built on guesswork.

  • CRM dashboards reflect rep optimism, not buyer reality.

  • Point tools only surface fragments of truth

  • Leaders react late, chasing updates instead of driving deals.

Real visibility means one system where strategy, buyer signals, and rep execution connect in real time. That’s how CROs cut surprises, coach with confidence, and know which deals are worth their time today.

📌WEEKLY MUST-KNOWS

BlackRock is preparing its first venture-focused secondaries fund, Secondaries & Liquidity Solutions Growth & VC. This marks a major institutional step into venture secondhand stakes, expanding liquidity options for LPs and GPs as holding periods lengthen. Expect pricing discipline to tighten and more structured exits across late-stage portfolios.

Vantage, backed by DigitalBridge, announced Frontier, a $25 billion, 1.4 GW hyperscale campus in Texas built for ultra high-density GPU workloads with advanced liquid cooling. Power and scale are the bottlenecks for AI; this project signals where capital is moving to solve it on U.S. soil. Hyperscalers, AI-native platforms, and local economies stand to benefit.

Keychain secured a $30 million Series B led by Wellington and BoxGroup to expand KeychainOS, which uses AI to automate sourcing, procurement, inventory and compliance for CPG manufacturers. With more than $1 billion in monthly project volume and penetration across top U.S. retailers and CPGs, the platform is becoming core infrastructure for production decisions. Expect tighter supply planning, faster cycle times, and more predictable margins for scaled brands.

🧠LEADING VOICES

I’m A First-Time CEO - No MBA, No Business School Stamp

Just 20 years in sales carrying a number, grinding in the trenches, scaling teams, making mistakes, fixing them and doing it all over again. Now I’m in the thick of scaling an AI-native company. It’s messy, humbling, and the steepest learning curve of my life.

Here are 7 lessons I’ve learned the hard way:
1️⃣ Constrain your resources → When you don’t have endless budget you find out what really matters. Scarcity is clarity.
2️⃣ Frameworks or foundations over vibes → SPICED, Bow Tie, Rev Architecture… they stop the team from running 20 different playbooks at once.
3️⃣ AI ≠ assistant → It’s not about writing emails faster. The game changes when you rebuild the system around it.
4️⃣ Trust + dashboards → Data is useless if your reps don’t believe in the process. Change management is the hardest (and most important) job
5️⃣ Always talk to customers → The best roadmap decisions don’t come from Notion docs they come from raw customer calls - if you're not speaking to a customer AT LEAST weekly re think what you're doing and where you're focusing your time
6️⃣ Pivot AND iterate fast - most of the time if you think you need to change you're deciding too late - focus on the metrics that matter, run experiments, get in front of customers and create the feedback loops to iterate. But when it's really not getting traction PIVOT hard, be brave 7️⃣ Play the long game → Forget vanity metrics. If your North Star is daily active usage, keep your eyes there.

I loved listening to Justin Fitzpatrick with Tom Glason on Making the Grade podcast (above) - Building for a Smart Exit talk to some of these points - definitely worth a listen..

⚡QUICK READS

TPG Next Anchors New Vanara Capital: TPG NEXT will act as a significant anchor in Vanara’s debut fund, reinforcing GP stakes demand and institutional support for emerging managers.(More)

Crypto VC Sees Exit Momentum Despite Funding Slump: PitchBook reports Q2 crypto funding fell 55% QoQ while exits accelerated and early-stage valuations hit highs, raising selection and pricing discipline stakes.(More)

Norrsken Evolve Debuts €57M Impact Tech Fund: New pre-seed vehicle targets deeptech across energy, health and AI infrastructure with EIF and Saminvest as LPs, bolstering Europe’s resilience-focused pipeline.(More)

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