A screendoor is pretty much half a door.Mesh and semi-transparent, screendoors are most associated with sticky summer Sunbelt days, but they’re not fundamentally aesthetic—they’re meant to improve air circulation for homes. “What it also symbolized was that, as a kid, you knew when your friends were home, and you could go over and open the door,” said Hunter Walk, cofounder of LP Screendoor and cofounder at VC Homebrew. “It meant ‘come on in.’ It was an invitation… So, when we were thinking about starting Screendoor, it was from the standpoint of inviting and easing new managers into the ecosystem. The metaphor of the screendoor as a symbol and signal just stuck for us.”Walk—known for his online writing and for backing companies like ShieldAI, Plaid, Gusto, and Chime through Homebrew, the firm he cofounded with Satya Patel—launched Screendoor with Patel in 2021, at what’s now become an almost apocryphal moment in venture capital: the height of the ZIRP (zero interest rate policy) era. At the time, Patel and Walk got together with eight other GPs—including Forerunner’s Kirsten Green, Cowboy Ventures’ Aileen Lee, and Precursor’s Charles Hudson—who agreed to serve as advisors to emerging VC fund managers. Their idea was straightforward—act as an LP to the most promising emerging managers long before they became obvious winners. If it worked, it would be a win-win.“Usually, LPs will say, ‘great, let’s wait until your fund three or four, when you quote-unquote have a track record,’” said Walk. “We looked at our own experiences—Homebrew’s fund one was quite successful—and thought that LPs who take that perspective are missing out on alpha…So, we saw Screendoor originally as the bridge between the best of new emerging managers and large institutional LPs who wanted to build relationships with those emerging managers while also capturing some of the upside.”Screendoor’s now been around for nearly five years, a time frame in which much has changed. The AI boom has materialized, but overall the ecosystem has grown increasingly split between the haves and have-nots. In 2025, for all but the most elite firms, fundraising has been challenging: In the first half of the year, the top 30 firms collected 74% of all venture dollars raised from LPs, and 12 firms in the U.S. comprised 50% of that total value, according to PitchBook.“Unless you’re spinning out of an established multi-stage venture fund, it’s a challenging environment for emerging managers,” said Precursor’s Hudson via email. “LPs are cautious, preferring to reinvest in funds they already know. This concentration of capital makes it harder for emerging managers to break through, especially if they don’t have strong LP networks, a strong track record, and an obviously differentiated thesis.”Screendoor is key, Hudson adds, in the “growing ecosystem of support for emerging managers,” which also includes organizations like Raise and Venture Forward. Some emerging managers naturally have buzz, like those spinning out of giant platforms like Andreessen Horowitz, but for those with unconventional backgrounds, they’re a harder sell in a tough environment, especially for the deluge of investors who raised funds in the ZIRP era. According to PitchBook, among managers who raised first funds in 2021, only 33% have raised a second fund so far. There’s still time, of course, for those who haven’t, but the landscape remains tough. It’s still early for all involved, but Screendoor says 100% of its VC managers who have pursued a subsequent fund have succeeded in raising it. Among them: Screendoor-backed managers leading firms like Sunflower Capital and Divergent Capital have raised second funds in 2025 and 2024 respectively. Screendoor’s strategy involves being among the first LPs to commit and taking an ecosystem approach, providing these emerging managers with mentorship, network, and co-investing connections in order to succeed. “I have this database of every LP that I’m aware of and, to be honest, I don’t know a single LP out there that’s like Screendoor, “said Liu Jiang, founder of Sunflower and previously of Sequoia. “There are so many funds-of-funds, right? And so many LPs in general, but none of them provide the same value. Most of the time, I’m the one pinging Screendoor with a question, which is really rare. I don’t tend to ping LPs with questions.”Screendoor may have started as ad-hoc, but it has become increasingly institutionalized since Lisa Cawley, formerly from the family office world, joined in 2023. This year, Screendoor has backed a number of buzzy debut funds that Term Sheet has broken the news on, including Rex Woodbury’s Daybreak and Ashley Smith’s Vermilion Cliffs Ventures. Both are relatively unconventional—Woodbury was previously at Index Ventures but is best known for his Substack Digital Native, while Smith has a background as an operator at companies like Twilio and GitHub. “If you’re trying to remove all of the perceived risk in a venture investment, you’re just removing the alpha from it,” said Cawley. “The other thing from the LP side is that the real risk in emerging managers isn’t actually participating in it—it’s waiting too long for someone to emerge, for them to no longer be an emerging manager. LPs can sit and wait for performance, but by waiting, you’re not actually participating. You’re making a different bet.”Finding true alpha in VC, Walk says, is in part a right-sizing game: “Venture, for me, is: Does the firm’s fund size match their talent and strategy? I’d say that for most funds that have grown large, the AUM has grown faster than the quality of the average partner, and the ability to deploy successfully.” For Walk, this all comes back to a core principle: That emerging managers aren’t emerging for long. “We’re trying to back competitors,” he said. “We’re funding our competition. We’re not funding minor leagues. We’re not funding scouts. We’re funding people who, head-to-head, have a reasonable chance of beating a Homebrew, beating a Forerunner at some point. That’s the bar.”That’s the bar—but it’s also a door, one clear enough to walk through.See you tomorrow,Allie GarfinkleX: @agarfinksEmail: alexandra.garfinkle@fortune.comSubmit a deal for the Term Sheet newsletter here.Joey Abrams curated the deals section of today’s newsletter. Subscribe here.This story was originally featured on Fortune.com