Mark Boslet
Here is more evidence of the before and after in venture. Toward the latter years of the past decade, venture fund performance began to take off. Before then, performance is less robust. This pattern plays out in the Los Angeles City Employees’ Retirement System’s venture portfolio. The pension manager holds 15 venture and venture-related funds […]
The University of California has seen a big mark up in the value of its Sequoia Capital holdings over the past couple years, as well as a large jump in distributions in the past 12 months or so. This is according to data the university released to VCJ under a public records act request. In the […]
The results are in. And the winners are a veritable cornucopia of venture’s top names: Union Square Ventures, Spark Capital, Emergence Capital, Foundry Group, BlueRun Ventures. The losers include some big name funds, too. All are among 300 venture funds from the past decade that VCJ gathered from public pension and other LP portfolios. They comprise […]
Funds from True Ventures and Pappas Venture made big gains last year as a rising tide lifted many mid-life venture investments. Funds from the firms are among 17 vintage 2008 to 2010 funds held by the Indiana Public Retirement System. Overall, 2014 was a positive year for the portfolio. Ten of the funds advanced, sometimes […]
Last year was an upbeat one for mid-life venture funds, and the Indiana Public Retirement System’s portfolio is one beneficiary. Better than two out of three of the money manager’s 16 venture and venture-related funds with vintages of 2006 and 2007 advanced last year. More than half achieved double digit IRRs by the end of […]
Venture’s recent boom has been well documented and appreciated, but for many early-decade funds, it is still a distant goal. This is true for the Indiana Public Retirement System’s portfolio, which includes a dozen venture and venture-related funds from 2001 to 2005. Most are vintage 2004 and 2005, just a year or two before fund […]
Want more evidence of venture’s current golden period? Look no further than the recent vintage funds of the Oregon Public Employees Retirement Fund portfolio. There you will find three young funds off to spectacular starts, signs of the mark ups and opportunities within the grasp of today’s venture investors. The funds come from Sofinnova Ventures, […]
The New York City Fire Department’s venture strategy has been built on early and balanced-stage funds over the past decade with mixed results. Several funds have brought big returns, including ones from FirstMark Capital and Scale Venture Partners. But nearly half the portfolio has IRRs below 10 percent and another handful of funds besting that […]
Diversity is usually a cardinal rule for success in investing, but a mixture of multi-stage, stage-targeted, fund of funds and secondary investments has failed to pay off for the New York City Employees’ Retirement System. One holdback may be the mid-decade vintage of the venture portfolio. Many mid-decade funds seem to have benefited less from […]
Growth-equity returns are typically expected to outpace those of venture capital, but that isn’t the case at the Hawaii Employees’ Retirement System. Venture performance over the past decade remains several steps ahead of that of growth equity. The Hawaiian pension manager has a growth-equity portfolio of 19 funds with vintages of 2004 and 2014. It […]