November 4, 2019 Lighter Capital : How Revenue-Based Financing and Venture Capital Funding Work Together

As alternative financing solutions attract more attention from entrepreneurs, some VC investors are noticing more startups are turning to these options for their growth and working capital needs, many times mixing and matching RBF with a term loan, line of credit with a forward commitment, or both. These flexible, non-dilutive financing solutions scale with a business’ growth, enabling entrepreneurs to focus on their business without giving up equity, personal guarantees, or board seats; it’s understandable why entrepreneurs are increasingly seeking such solutions to reach their next growth milestone. (read more…)

CATEGORY: alternative financing, debt, growth, VC

October 1, 2019 Jimena Guijarro : Venture Capital and Design

The key to building strong teams and culture is giving everyone a common cause to fight for. With design at the center of culture, every decision is aligned with the user needs. When this is true individual egos disappear. There are no bad ideas, just ideas that either do or do not align with user needs. The latter can make or break the team, especially in the early stages and through periods of fast growth. Building a user-centric system creates accountability and provides clarity amid startup ambiguity. The result is a functional team, a system that captures value from talent, and top customer experience. According to the Design in Tech Report, 89% of companies in 2018 said the customer experience is their competitive advantage. (read more…)

CATEGORY: leadership, product-market fit

September 19, 2019 Chip Hazard, Flybridge : Venture Investor’s Playbook – Part 2: The Power-Law of Venture Returns

We asked Cambridge for what the top 10% looks like, and that’s where the data gets interesting. The 69 US early-stage investments that comprise Cambridge’s top 10% from 2009 (measured by total value as compared to invested capital, otherwise known as TVPI in the industry’s jargon) had a:

• Minimum TVPI: 5.6x (the cut off for the top 10% in the table above)
• Maximum TVPI: 254.9x
• Mean TVPI: 18.6x
• Median TVPI: 8.5x
• Weighted Average (by invested capital): 15.4x

So, in fact, it is not that the vast majority of industry returns come from the top 10%, as I said above, but really from the top 5% and from within that top 5%, there are likely less than 10 companies that returned more than 30x. In other words, the top 10% of the companies generated 57% of all returns for the investments made in 2009, and the top 25% of investments generated 85% of total returns. Another observation from the 2009 Cambridge data is that more than half the investments lost money. Losing half the time sounds terrible, and a lot of investors and fund managers spend an inordinate amount of time understanding their losses. However, as long as your losses are not outsized in dollar terms relative to the winners in your overall portfolio, they don’t matter as much as you’d think. As the old venture saying goes, you can only lose 1x your money. (read more…)

CATEGORY: VC, winner take all

September 16, 2019 Bigfoot Capital : The Pros and Cons of Not Selling Equity

If you’re selling equity, it better be a really good opportunity where folks just want in and can live with ceding control. If you’re not, retaining control and operating flexibility is much easier. And you’ll likely spend a lot less time explaining why you’re doing what you’re doing. (read more…)

CATEGORY: alternative financing, debt, leadership

August 8, 2019 Tom Tunguz : Which Categories of Seed Startups are Thriving? Which Aren’t?

Overall, the data is consistent with our observations on the ground. Many sectors have fallen out of favor, and others have risen suddenly. A contrarian might found a company in a deflating category; a counter-argument might be to ride the next big wave and start there. Whichever your perspective, the main conclusion is that there’s an incredible amount of opportunity. (read more…)

CATEGORY: capital, growth, VC

July 30, 2019 Version One Fund : Seven years into Fund I: charting the return multiples

1. Start-ups are incredibly tough. This is pretty obvious from the outcomes on the right side of the chart. Almost half of the portfolio companies sold for way less than what was invested and many couldn’t generate any pay-back. And as you can imagine, most of those losses happened relatively early in the life of the fund.
2. Venture capital clearly follows a power law in which outliers drive most of the returns. This is particularly true with seed-stage investing. In our case, we think that up to four companies in our Fund I portfolio could be fund makers (companies that can at least pay back the whole fund). Combined, they will probably drive more than 75% of the fund’s returns. Thanks to these outliers, our fund is tracking incredibly well and we are confident that the fund will end up producing at least a 4x return on invested capital (and possibly much more).
3. BUT…most of those returns are currently unrealized and the next three to four years will be about working with our entrepreneurs to turn paper returns into “real” returns.

(read more…)

CATEGORY: VC, winner take all

June 20, 2019 Alex Graham via Toptal : State of the Venture Capital Industry in 2019

1. There are fewer companies being funded.
2. Startups are raising larger rounds and staying private longer.
3. More growth and value upside is remaining inside private markets.
4. Rising numbers of “mega funds” are being raised to maintain private stakes.
5. Earned reputation allows the best funds to raise more and more access mature deals.

A quality > quantity, winner-take-all mentality has bid up valuations across all rounds. (read more…)

CATEGORY: growth, VC, winner take all

June 11, 2019 SaaS Capital : Private SaaS Company Valuations: 2019

To determine what your private SaaS company is worth: Find the current revenue multiple of public SaaS companies growing at a similar rate; Subtract 2 to get the discounted private SaaS company multiple; Multiply your company’s trailing twelve month revenue by the discounted private SaaS company multiple. Is that overly simplistic? Of course. What about Total Addressable Market (TAM), retention, gross margins, and “synergies,” you ask? All are important, and all those inputs help explain why all the dots in the chart are not on the straight lines. The world is full of variability and nuance. However, if you step back and look, the formula will certainly give you “most of the answer” and provide a good place to start an informed valuation discussion. (read more…)

CATEGORY: SaaS, valuation

February 14, 2019 Paul Arnold via Forbes : There Are Only Three Venture Capital Strategies

The power law of returns dominates startup investing. Much has been said on the topic (like here, here, here, here, here, here, or here). What matters for a venture strategy is that nothing is more determinative of a fund's success. Power-law distribution is the architecture of the whole game. I measure any investing approach against its impact on the power-law distribution. This is the acid test of what is actually effective. And while it is true that adding value, sourcing better, and investing better are all good strategies other investing situations, the effects, especially of 2 and 3, are especially significant in venture where the power curve has a large exponent. (read more…)

CATEGORY: growth, risk, VC, winner take all

February 12, 2019 Mark Suster : Why Has Seed Investing Declined? And What Does this Mean for the Future?

With seed up massively between 2006–2014 and A and B rounds relatively flat what you see is a widening of the funnel going into traditional venture. This is why many VCs are waiting and letting deals mature a bit before leaning into rounds. Traditional VCs have raised larger funds that allow them to pay slightly higher prices and still hit preferred ownership sizes. (read more…)

CATEGORY: risk, VC, winner take all