Venture is about two things: power law and time.
Power law defines the asset class as only a tiny percentage of startups will become world-beaters—and they'll need upwards of a decade to do it, in most cases.
So it was unsurprising that when we released our first VC Fund Performance report, much of the discussion centered around time. Is it just too early to judge performance for these recent vintage years?
Quite possibly. Some funds that are lagging today will end up being ultimate winners and the same swap may apply to some leading performers now.
But even in these early years, the power law skew remains. The gap between the 50th and 75th percentiles is generally smaller than the gap between 75th (already good) and the 90th percentiles (top class).
We only released 25th / 50th / 75th percentile data in our public report, but all customers of Carta Fund Admin received this decile breakout awhile back. Thought that you wonderful Data Minute subscribers deserved it as well!
Subscribe here if you're new to the Data Minute. Forwarding encouraged!
Peter Walker
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