Are the top 10% of VC funds excellent or merely pretty good?
Let's put some data on this question. Graphic below shows:
Data from 2,308 US venture funds, all with $1m-$100m to invest
Split by vintage year (2017-2024)
Metric is the top 10% benchmark for net TVPI
Obviously fund performance is going to be very sensitive to the amount of time a fund has been in existence. Younger funds have not had as much time to see their TVPI mature as older ones.
But we can compare across vintages by using a "time since" graphic.
𝗙𝗶𝗻𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀
The top 10% mark for vintage year 2021 remains well behind the top 10% mark for earlier vintages after 15 quarters.
The most recent vintages have started off slightly better than that, though the marks are quite immature.
The top 10% for vintage years 2017 and 2018 are eclipsing the 3x level, though the 2017 funds once had hit above a 5x and have settled a bit since then.
𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗱𝗼𝗲𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝘁𝗲𝗹𝗹 𝘂𝘀?
1. Making real money in venture is HARD. Some folks assume that the top 25% of VC funds will get over that 3x mark, but it's really more like top 10-15% depending on the vintage year.
2. Venture takes FOREVER. 2017 funds are actually ~8 years in and they still have awhile to go before distributions cross into the "permanent" category. This whole asset class is not for the faint of heart!
Respect to these smaller VCs deploying capital into the earliest founders. Full report digs into way more data, shout in the comments for a direct link.
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