Every venture firm reports the “value” of each of its underlying investments. Typically, this is updated quarterly and sent to each of the fund’s investors. The idea is that investors will then have a definitive view of the value of the firm’s investments. Simple, right? But what is the “value” of a private company? Turns out the answer to that question is not so easy to determine, and, as a result, valuation reporting in venture is a mess. Prior to 2007, most firms held company v...| VC Adventure
Just before the end of the year, Erin Griffith of The New York Times published an article titled “What Is Venture Capital Now Anyway?” It’s a provocative look at the state of venture capital and, as these sorts of things are want to do, very quickly started making the round in venture circles as VCs tried to map how they fit into the landscape that Erin describes – a split in how VC firms are operating: some firms are keeping to a smaller, boutique style while a handful are becoming b...| VC Adventure
I’m observing that IRR is a metric that is becoming an increasing focus in venture, replacing fund return multiple as the key metric of success. I understand the draw of IRR, and – as a fund draws to a close – there’s no question it’s an important metric. LPs have plenty of options for where to put their money and IRR is an easy way for them to compare how their money grows across various investment options and a convenient way to determine whether they believe they’ve been adequa...| VC Adventure
Some of the most popular posts I’ve written over the past couple of years were the two that focused on just how rare outsized returns for an individual deal are in venture capital. You can see the original posts here and here. In those posts I was analyzing data from Correlation Ventures that showed just how skewed venture returns are, specifically that 65% of investment rounds fail to return 1x capital and only 4% return greater than 10x capital. Ian Hathaway, who recently co-authored the ...| VC Adventure
TBH, I haven’t been thinking much about new investments at the moment. I’ve been asked many times how I think the Covid-19 crisis will change investor behavior and fundraising for startups. I generally give the kind of answer I think most VCs give and say something about how we all know that down markets are great markets for companies to grow (lots of great companies have been started in downturns), that there’s a lot of capital sitting on the sidelines at the moment and that capital w...| VC Adventure
A few years back I blogged about the hard data behind venture outcomes and the challenge of creating a venture portfolio that produces strong returns. That blog post – which turned into one of my most read posts ever – grew out of a study done by Correlation Ventures showing the distribution of outcomes across over 21,000 financings during the years 2004-2013 as well as some of my own observations. The Correlation study produced a lot of interesting data and showed that the typical “1/3...| VC Adventure
A few years ago I wrote two posts – Venture Outcomes are Even More Skewed Than You Think, and Some More Data On Venture Outcomes – that challenged the mythology that only 1/3 of venture-backed deals failed and showed just how rare large (10x and greater) venture returns really are. I think the sharpness of the curve surprised a lot of people and contributed to a bunch of discussion at the time around just how rare “venture outcomes” really were. Not surprisingly, I was looking at the ...| VC Adventure
Last year I wrote a few posts (here and here) that talked about how skewed venture returns were. The key take-away graphic from that post is below – outsized returns on venture investments are rare. Much rarer than most people realize. A key question my post didn’t consider was what the ideal venture portfolio might look like in the face of these data. Steve Crossan took a stab at modeling the answer to that question using the data from my Outcomes post. It’s an interesting read – ...| VC Adventure
Want to visualize how the venture funding market is changing? Look no further than these 3 slides (from a presentation put together by our friends at Greenspring). I don’t think much commentary is needed here. Average round size at Series A is increasing dramatically. Venture is being increasingly driven by large rounds (especially at the later stages – this is significantly skewing the overall funding numbers that are being reported). IPOs are the new Unicorns (they’re becoming more sc...| VC Adventure