In my dealflow I are often see great features, great products, and great companies. But I can only invest in great deals. Passing on your deal is not a judgement on your product, nor on your company, nor on your character. This isn't personal. Great Features. 10x Speed at 1/10th of current cost. Because when … Continue reading Great Product – Wrong Deal.
Angel, seed, and early-stage venture capital investments are getting more and more expensive over the last 10 years. Investors write larger checks but don't get more ownership at the same rate. Last Monday, Pitchbook released their 1H 2019 Valuation Report (data as of 06/30/2019). The report has interesting charts, such as: Two charts from PitchBook's … Continue reading Early-stage Ownership is Getting More Expensive for Angels, VCs
The number of new early-stage VC funds with a focus on US-based pre-seed, seed, and early-stage startups grew from 163 (vintage 2014) to 490 (vintage 2019) [1]. As I wrote two weeks ago in "Rapid Decline of New U.S.-based IT Startups", the number of newly founded US startups in information technology declined from 5,856 (2014) … Continue reading US: More Early-Stage VC Funds are Targeting Fewer Startups
I was using Preqin to understand office locations of firms (institutional, family offices, and corporates) that are doing direct venture capital investments and are still seeking actively for new investments (collectively called "VC firms" below). Tobias Lam from the Preqin NYC office was kind enough to pull some back-end data on office locations for firms … Continue reading VC Funds: $100 billion of dry powder in the Bay Area.
This is the last post on this topic, but there were some more questions. It takes about 6 Months to Reach First Close This chart is showing the median per vintage year, together with the 1st and 3rd quartile boundaries and a green average line (with a horrible R-Squared of 0.0087). In a first close, … Continue reading VC Funds: Six months to first close on 40-60% of final close size.
I got a few questions on last week's post about the number of months VC funds are in the market before a close. Raising VC Funds in the US vs. Rest of World I was asked to look at different geographies: Months in Market to Final Close for each Year of Vintage broken down by … Continue reading VC Funds: First-Time Funds take a Median of 12+ Months to Raise.
I get this question a lot: How long does it take to close a VC fund? We all know the anecdotes of marquee firms closing their funds within weeks. But don't forget that it often took 20 years to become a marquee firm and to build a robust platform and track record. So they closed … Continue reading VC Funds: A Median of 17 Months in Market to Final Close.
