2026 July 2nd Session: Erin Moore w/ Pivotal Ventures
Updated: Sep 20
Venture Capital: Insights from Erin Moore
2026.07.26
Section 1: LP Investing, Mission Alignment & Manager Selection
Q1: How is the LP market changing, and what does that mean for fund managers?
Erin Moore explained that capital in today’s LP market is increasingly concentrated among a small number of large managers, making fundraising more difficult for emerging GPs. Liquidity has also become a major concern as capital shifts toward public markets, increasing pressure on private-market managers to demonstrate how they can generate liquidity.
At the same time, family offices, university endowments, and foundations are increasingly pursuing direct investments. As a result, managers need to clearly articulate why investing through their fund makes sense and what differentiated value they provide.
Because every LP has different objectives, investment horizons, and KPIs, GPs should not approach all LPs in the same way. Finding the right fit between GP and LP is therefore critical.
Q2: How does Pivotal Ventures approach mission-aligned investing?
Pivotal’s North Star is expanding women’s power and influence to accelerate social progress. The firm seeks talent and investment opportunities that have historically been overlooked or underfunded by the market.
Its strategy extends beyond venture capital to women-led managers across growth equity, buyout, private credit, and infrastructure.
Erin emphasized that mission investing does not mean lowering existing investment standards. Instead, it means reframing the investment question by incorporating questions and information that traditional markets may have overlooked. Mission and financial returns are not treated as separate objectives; ultimately, the investment thesis must be demonstrated through performance that exceeds market returns.
Q3: What does Pivotal look for when evaluating GPs and emerging managers?
Pivotal begins by examining the fund’s strategy and how it generates returns. It then evaluates whether the GP’s experience supports that strategy, what differentiated edge and deal-flow access the manager possesses, whether the team can actually execute the strategy, and whether relevant lived experience provides additional insight into the market or problem being addressed.
For emerging GPs without extensive fund-level track records, Pivotal reconstructs experience more broadly. For former operators, it examines the organizations they built and their responsibilities. For angel investors, it considers whether they could access strong companies, select the right investments, allocate capital appropriately, and support founders afterward.
Reference checks follow a mosaic approach, incorporating information from former colleagues and bosses, founders, co-investors, existing LPs, and informal networks rather than relying only on formal references.
Section 2: Impact Investing, Emerging Managers & the Care Economy
Q1: What characteristics define a strong emerging manager?
Erin described a strong GP as having “Strong, Clear View + Longing to Grow.”
Managers need clear conviction in their investment strategy and beliefs, but they must simultaneously remain willing to learn from new information and revise previous judgments.
She cited Stacey Brown of Cherryrock Capital as an example. Her experience operating and serving on the boards of technology companies and her clear perspective on underestimated founders were important, but so was her ability to recognize gaps in her own experience. After identifying seed-stage investing as a weakness, she directly hired talent to complement that gap, which became part of Pivotal’s investment rationale.
Q2: How does Pivotal evaluate impact beyond traditional quantitative metrics?
Pivotal does not evaluate a fund simply by counting the number of women involved. It examines whether women partners actually possess ownership, decision-making authority, and direct responsibility for investment decisions, while also reviewing the fund’s own KPIs and strategy.
Evaluation also extends to underlying portfolio companies and how they are managed after investment. For example, investing in healthcare and then aggressively reducing costs and headcount in ways that harm patients would conflict with Pivotal’s mission. The firm therefore applies a Do No Harm principle.
Impact can also extend beyond quantitative KPIs. Changing the archetype of what a successful investor looks like and increasing women’s presence within influential investment networks can represent meaningful changes in social narratives and perceptions.
Q3: Why does Pivotal view the Care Economy as an investable opportunity?
Pivotal views the Care Economy as an independent investable market and has studied both its scale and monetization potential.
Around 2019, there was limited market appetite for viewing caregiving as an investment opportunity. However, the pandemic demonstrated how disproportionately the burden of care fell on women and reinforced Pivotal’s view that investment capital was insufficient relative to care’s fundamental role in society.
Rather than simply sourcing existing deals, Pivotal used multiple forms of capital to help develop the market itself. These included a direct investment in Papa, an aging-and-longevity accelerator with Techstars, an anchor LP investment in Magnify Ventures, philanthropic capital, direct investments, and fund commitments.
Section 3: Career Development, Decision-Making & Becoming a Global Investor
Q1: How did your career experiences shape the kind of investor you became?
Erin began her career at Goldman Sachs, where she learned the fundamentals of finance from highly experienced professionals within an institutionalized environment. At Summit Rock, an earlier-stage organization, she gained broader hands-on experience across fund term negotiations, client portfolios, and separately managed fixed-income accounts.
At HBS, networking helped her meet people who shared similar values and demonstrated that impact could become a viable career. Her experience at the Princeton Investment Office further showed her that managing an endowment was not simply about growing assets but about supporting an institution’s broader mission, including scholarships, education, and research.
At Cambridge Associates, she worked across different clients, global asset classes, and managers. Through this experience, she discovered that her strengths were less in modeling and spreadsheet work and more in synthesizing information, debating investment ideas, and articulating investment logic to an investment committee.
Q2: What advice would you give to someone trying to break into a scarce investment role?
Erin’s first principle is “do your homework.” Many candidates do not fully understand what an investment firm actually does. She therefore recommends researching the firm’s business and investment approach, understanding why you want to join that specific organization, and learning about the interviewer’s role in order to become the best-prepared candidate.
Her second principle is “don’t underestimate the power of the network.” While at HBS, positions at foundations, endowments, family offices, and pension funds were difficult to access through conventional recruiting, so she directly cold-emailed people in the industry. Many were willing to provide advice or introductions.
She recommends treating colleagues, program speakers, and other professional contacts as potential long-term relationships rather than one-time interactions.
Q3: How should investors think about failure and past investment decisions?
Pivotal reviews previous investment decisions through post-mortems and an anti-portfolio.
Erin emphasized that a bad outcome does not necessarily mean the original decision was poor. The appropriate question is whether the decision was sufficiently well prepared given the information available at the time. Factors that could not reasonably have been known beforehand should be acknowledged rather than retroactively treated as obvious mistakes.
When problems occur, she recommends transparently communicating what happened, what was learned, and how the team intends to respond. Rather than hiding mistakes, this transparency can help build leadership and trust.
Q4: What does it take to become a global investor?
Because investing is deeply influenced by networks and relationships, Erin believes becoming a global investor requires more than studying foreign markets from a distance. Investors need to actually expose themselves to different markets and cultures.
This can include working in an overseas office, pursuing graduate studies abroad, participating in exchange programs or global fellowships, developing local networks of investors and founders, and using existing relationships as bridges into new markets.
Combining a deep network in one’s home market with genuine experience in another market can create differentiation as an investor capable of connecting the two. Reflecting on her own experience at Cambridge Associates, Erin noted that she wished she had taken greater advantage of the opportunity to live and work in London, believing that operating directly within another culture and market would have made her a better investor.
From Our Mentees 💬
Seongeun Choi, Mentee
What stood out to me most was Erin Moore’s emphasis on the importance of relationships in investing. Her advice to treat every professional interaction as a potential long-term relationship was particularly meaningful, especially in an industry where opportunities and information often flow through networks. I also found her perspective on becoming a global investor insightful: understanding another market requires not only research, but genuine exposure to its people, culture, and investment ecosystem.
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