Seed investors are often told to ride their winners. But when the best companies remain private well beyond the original fund horizon, that creates a difficult question: when should a fund start turning paper gains into cash?
In this conversation from EUVC Summit 2026, Romain Lavault, General Partner at Partech, joins Joe Schorge, Founder and Managing Partner at Isomer Capital, to discuss how seed funds can manage liquidity without giving up too much of their strongest positions.
Romain explains how longer company lifecycles have changed the economics of seed investing, why secondaries have become a major route to liquidity and how Partech uses a framework to decide when to sell portions of high-performing companies.
They also explore LP expectations around DPI, why liquidity decisions should be planned rather than emotional and how early conversations with founders can make future secondary transactions easier.
Highlights
- Why seed funds face a growing liquidity challenge
- How longer company lifecycles affect fund returns
- Why secondaries have become more important
- When to sell part of a winner
- How to balance DPI with long-term upside
- Why founders need advance notice of liquidity plans
- Why funds need a liquidity model as well as a fund model
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