What the partnership at Trinity Ventures sees for the road ahead in 2020

Over the years, Trinity Ventures has racked up many exits for its limited partners.

Through deals in consumer brands like Starbucks and Zulily and enterprise companies like TubeMogul and New Relic, the Menlo Park-based fund has found repeated success, but as it retrenches with a pared-down investment team and a much smaller new fund, Trinity’s investors have some thoughts about what lies ahead for the venture capital community.

As the firm’s partners consider what’s in store for 2020, they emphasize that entrepreneurs will have to focus on public policy; blockchain will experience a renaissance; a recession is coming and the accessibility of data and an aging global population will continue to reshape healthcare markets.

The firm is currently in the process of closing what would be its smallest fund in years, a $250 million investment vehicle, first disclosed in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission in July. That fund, as first reported by Crunchbase News, is the firm’s most modest vehicle in nearly 20 years; the last time Trinity raised less than $300 million was in 1998.

Even as it invests from a smaller vehicle, the team is still putting capital to work in deals like the human resources-focused technology startup, Cultivate; the interbank payment company, Baton; Squire, a payment and booking management platform for barbershops and salons, and Valtix, an enterprise security company.

For Patricia Nakache, an investor in companies like Turo, Care.com, and ThredUp, understanding regulation and public policy will have to become part of the job for budding entrepreneurs and big companies alike.