Posts from VC & Technology

I saw a statistic from one of our larger portfolio companies yesterday. They have had their offices around the world open for some time now with office usage optional. They are seeing office utilization rates of around “20-30%.” They are also seeing “flexibility” as the number one issue in recruiting new talent.

That was interesting to me because we are seeing a much higher office utilization at USV. We kept our offices open for much of the last 18 months and encouraged a return to the office once we were all vaccinated in early April. On most days, we see about half of our team coming into the office. I think that number was higher in the spring and will be higher in the fall. We also see friends in the VC business and startup world working at our office from time to time and that has been fantastic.

We have also seen that office utilization is much higher for our team members that live in NYC vs the suburbs, which is not surprising. This chart says it all:

We surveyed our portfolio companies last month on the topic of their work environment plans. We got 56 responses which is a tad under 50% of our active portfolio so this data could be off a bit. But it is interesting. Pre-pandemic, 75% of these respondents were fully “in office” with most of the rest using some sort of hybrid model. Very few were fully remote. Now the distribution looks like this:

That is a dramatic change from the pre-pandemic norm. I am sure that there will be some movement back to the office when we get to a new normal, whatever and whenever that is, but no matter what, tech companies have moved away from the “fully in-person” model and that will mean very different office utilization models.

We also asked our portfolio companies about “seat to employee” ratios and got these responses:

For those companies that will continue to have an office, it looks like the average seat to employee ratio nets out around 65%. And that is for the 75% of the respondents that plan to have some sort of office.

At USV, we are taking a contrarian approach to the office. We plan to build a new office that can seat 100% of our employees and we want to be able to host board meetings and other events frequently. We are also looking at other ways to invite the broader “community” to work and be at USV regularly.

But that does not mean we will expect our employees to be at the office every day. We understand that those with long commutes and children or parents at home need more flexibility and we have seen that providing that flexibility builds loyalty and commitment. So we will continue to support that way of working.

Startups and high-growth companies seem to have embraced fully or partially remote models for the most part in an attempt to attract and retain talent and leverage the increased productivity that comes from eliminating long and painful commute times.

But that doesn’t mean an office isn’t a good thing from time to time. It may be that organizations that support startups and high-growth companies, like USV, can step into the mix and be part of that answer. That is an interesting idea to me and one that USV is looking at right now.

I realized a long time ago that the VC’s customer is the founder/CEO/portfolio company and that our investors (called LPs in VC speak) are our “shareholders”. That was a very defining moment for me and has clarified what matters the most in a VC firm.

That said, we take investor relations very seriously at USV and always have.

This is our model:

1/ We are loyal to our LPs and offer them the opportunity to invest with us fund after fund after fund unless something has materially altered the relationship. That is very rare but has happened.

2/ We regularly provide our LPs with a lot of information on our portfolio. We send financial reports including detailed schedules of investments quarterly and we provide detailed one-page writeups on each and every portfolio company twice a year.

3/ We do two “quarterly calls” a year, one in the spring to review Q4 and Q1 and one in the summer to review Q2. These are now Zoom meetings. We are approaching our summer call which is what prompted me to write about this today.

4/ We do one annual meeting in the fall after Q3 results are out. These used to be in-person meetings in our office featuring several (3-5) presentations from a representative mix of portfolio CEOs. We like to have a wide variety of companies present (by stage, performance, etc) and absolutely do not do a “greatest hits” experience at these meetings. We did our annual meeting over Zoom last year and may continue to do that going forward as it makes it much easier for the portfolio CEOs to present and easier for our LPs to attend. If we do that, I will miss the in-person interaction we have at our annual meeting but also believe making things easier for everyone is very important.

5/ We don’t do splashy meetings at fancy places with our LPs. We believe in substance over form when it comes to investor relations and we believe that our LPs do as well.

The Gotham Gal and I are investors in dozens of VC funds/firms and there are many ways that VCs do this. Some provide little to no information and let the returns speak for themselves. That can work too. But I believe frequency, regularity, and transparency are the key factors to focus on with investors. It has worked well for us.

I recall when my partner Brad and I were raising our first USV fund, back in 2003, and potential investors wondered about my blogging habit. They asked if I was making a mistake telegraphing our investment thesis for everyone to see, including our “competitors.”

We strongly defended the practice and explained that the benefits of telling the world what we were looking to invest in, and why, strongly outweighed any costs. We explained that telegraphing would bring entrepreneurs to us.

And that turned out to be the case. So many of our top-performing investments over the years came to us because of our telegraphing strategy. It is hard to know who is working on a problem you are interested in. But if you put the word out far and wide, they will find you.

I was reminded of those conversations almost twenty years ago now when I read this post on USV.com by Hanel outlining our interest in measuring carbon. She explains that we have made one investment in that area already and are looking to make more. And she explains why.

I am sure that Hanel has already heard from a bunch of founders working on measuring carbon and will hear from more in the coming weeks and months. That’s excellent and how it should work in our view.

The two most used measures of a venture fund’s performance are the “cash on cash” return and the “internal rate of return” (IRR). One measures how much an investor got back divided by how much they put in (cash/cash). The other measures what the effective rate of return is on the investor’s money.

You might think these measures go hand in hand, but that is not the case.

I was reminded of that last week when I was reviewing USV’s second-quarter reports that we will send to our investors soon. Three of our most mature funds showcase how these numbers can behave differently.

Our 2008 vintage early-stage fund has generated about 5x cash on cash but only generated a 22.5% IRR.

Our first Opportunity Fund, raised two years later in 2010, has generated only 3.9x cash on cash but generated a 58.6% IRR.

And our second Opportunity Fund, raised in 2014, has generated 7.3x cash on cash but only 46.7% IRR.

Our Opportunity Funds invest in the later stage rounds of our top-performing portfolio companies plus a few later-stage investments in companies that are new to USV. The average holding period of these investments is materially shorter than our early-stage funds and so they typically produce higher IRRs for a given cash on cash performance. That explains why our 2010 Opportunity Fund has a lower cash on cash return but a much higher IRR than our 2008 early-stage fund.

But even for the same strategy, you can get materially different numbers. Our 2014 Opportunity Fund has a higher cash on cash return but a lower IRR than our 2010 Opportunity Fund. That is because our 2010 Opportunity Fund had a few very fast material exits and our 2014 Opportunity Fund had a more typical holding period for its material exits.

Venture capital funds do not take down the entire capital commitment upfront. They take it down over time, often over four or five years. And the money comes back over time as well. So the timing of the cash in and cash out has a very big impact on IRR, but zero impact on cash on cash.

So if these two measures behave differently, what is the more important number? For me, it is cash on cash. I care less about how quickly the money goes in and comes out of a fund and more about the total return of the fund. Our early-stage funds can often take 15-20 years to be fully liquidated but they can also produce much higher total returns.

I have found that patience is often rewarded in early-stage investing. If you want to make 5-10x on your money, you need to be prepared for long holding periods. That reduces the IRR but generates high cash on cash returns.

Over the last 18 months, the early-stage financing market has seen dramatic changes characterized by these three things:

• A shift from in-person fundraising to virtual fundraising
• A reduction in financing process timelines from months to weeks
• A continued increase in the amount of capital available for early stage companies

I believe that for the most part, these changes will be permanent.

And I believe that for the most part, these changes are good for early-stage company formation and innovation.

However, there will be some negative side effects from these changes and one that I worry about is the “bad marriage problem.” Unlike public markets, private market investments are held for many years, often a decade or more. If an investor and an entrepreneur find each other difficult to work with, there is no easy solution. There is no divorce court for startups. And so the result is likely to be entrepreneurs and investors getting stuck in bad marriages.

There are a few opportunities to address this issue. There is a vibrant secondary market for private investments and while it is mostly limited today to well-known later-stage companies, it could develop into a broader market as the capital seeking to get invested in early-stage innovation continues to grow unabated. It is unlikely that founders will be able to force investors out of their cap tables via the secondary markets, but a voluntary separation via the secondary market seems more likely to me.

I also think startup boards need to evolve. There should be many more independent directors and many fewer investor directors on startup boards. Investors should be more open to observer seats and founders should have more say in which investors sit on their boards. I am not arguing that founders should control their boards, but I am arguing that investors should not control the boards. I think independent control is the most sustainable solution.

We know that bad marriages are hurtful to everyone, not just the spouses. Companies that have dysfunctional founder/investor relationships suffer from them. And the shotgun marriage environment we are operating in right now (and for the foreseeable future) will likely create more of them. So we should be thinking about solutions to end these bad marriages and let everyone move on to better ones.

I’ve written a bunch about the globalization of the startup economy. You can start and build a tech company almost anywhere these days. That has been true for at least the last decade. But until very recently, raising capital for your startup was significantly easier if it was located in the major startup hubs, most notably Silicon Valley.

I believe the pandemic changed that equation dramatically and USV’s “deal log” is a great example of that. When I look at all of the opportunities we are currently considering plus all of the investments we have made this year to date, what stands out most to me is the location of the founders and teams. It seems to me that about half of our “new deal activity” right now is happening outside of the US. And very little of it is in western Europe where most of our non-US investing has been for the last decade.

This is a big change from where it was just last year and the year before. The emergence of raising money and supporting investments on Zoom has made it possible to have a much broader reach than was possible a few years ago.

What makes it easier for USV is our thesis-driven model of investing. We know exactly what we are looking for in new opportunities in wellness, education, financial services, climate, and crypto and so we can react to opportunities that fit into our thesis pretty much anywhere in the world. And we are doing exactly that.

It takes a long time, at least five years and more likely a decade, to know how changes in the startup economy and venture capital will play out. We won’t know how this move to invest globally will impact returns and founder success. I am optimistic that it will be a positive change for both but only time will tell.

There has been this narrative about investing in VC funds that you have to get into the top quartile (25%) or possibly the top decile (10%) in order to generate good returns. I have heard that for as long as I have been in VC and probably have written it here a few times.

Well, it turns out that is not right. Half of all venture funds outperform the stock market which is the benchmark most institutions measure VC funds against.

My friend Dan Malven wrote about this on his blog yesterday:

A working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) in November 2020 contradicts that notion, showing that half of all VC fund managers outperform the public markets, and are therefore worthy of institutional investment.

This study was based on a large sample of VC fund level returns from 2009 to 2017 and does not include the last few years which have been particularly strong for the VC sector.

Manager selection remains an important part of VC investing because the lower half of VC funds do not outperform the stock market. An interesting data point from this study is the VC “fund of funds” mostly outperform the stock market so a portfolio of VC funds will generally give you enough diversification that you can meet your performance objectives.

The best way to know what managers to pick is to be in the startup business in some way. All you need to do is watch how people behave to know who is good and who is not. The Gotham Gal and I have been investing in the VC funds of managers we know well and have worked with closely on boards of startups for about fifteen years now.

These are the gross return multiples of all of the funds that are “mature” meaning the returns are pretty clear now:

Multiple	Year Of Initial Investment
8.66	2006
3.65	2007
5.29	2007
3.31	2010
10.38	2010
7.63	2010
4.71	2010
2.01	2010
2.29	2012
8.58	2012
3.97	2012

I am not going to do the work of calculating performance against the stock market for these funds, but I suspect all buy maybe two of those eleven funds have outperformed the public markets.

As you can see, investing in VC funds can be very profitable. And I suspect it is getting more profitable, not less, as the capital markets and M&A markets are providing robust liquidity options for managers.

Sadly the VC market remains largely out of reach of many “main street” investors as the SEC limits these fund investments to qualified and accredited investors. That has never made sense to me and is yet another example of the “well meaning” rules resulting in the wealthy getting wealthier and everyone else missing out.

Last June, I wrote about board diversity and suggested some things we are doing and that you can do to diversity your board.

In the ten months that have passed since I wrote that I am pleased to say that we have seen a noticeable increase in board diversity in our portfolio. I have personally stepped off a few boards to make room for diverse board members and I am prepared to do more of that. A number of my partners have done the same. It is that important to me and USV.

But I can also tell you that the state of diversity in startup/growth company boards and our portfolio is still awful.

Our portfolio company Bolster connects fractional executives and board candidates to startup and growth companies. They have done some of the board searches for diverse candidates in our portfolio and they are going to do a lot more.

They have been surveying the startup and growth sector over the last few months to determine the state of diversity on boards. They published the results today. The numbers are embarrassing.

We can do better and we must do better.

Here is how:

1/ Make room on your board for independent directors at the very start and fill those seats with diverse candidates.

2/ Ask your investor directors to become observers to make room for independent diverse candidates.

3/ Prioritize this.

4/ Use Bolster or other service providers to surface great diverse board candidates.

There are so many qualified diverse candidates out there for you to bring onto your board. I have participated in many of the board searches in our portfolio in the last year and I am blown away by the diverse talent that is out there waiting to help you grow your company. You just need to make room for them and ask them to join your board.

Just do it.

It is a little known part of my career, but for a brief period from 1997 to 2001, I was part of a small group of investors who helped to create a startup ecosystem in Latin America.

It all started with a company called StarMedia which created a Yahoo-like “portal” for Latin America. My partner Jerry Colonna and I met StarMedia in early 1997 and we brought it to our partners at Chase Capital Partners because we wanted to lead a Series A investment in it. In that Chase Capital Partners meeting was a woman named Susan Segal who ran Chase’s Latin American private equity investing. She pulled me over after the meeting and asked me if there were other startup companies like StarMedia in Latin America. I told her that there must be but I wouldn’t know how to find them. She said, “I can help with that.”

So began a five year investment partnership between Flatiron Partners (our VC firm) and Susan’s Latin American private equity business. Susan and her team worked their Latin American connections and they brought the deals to us and we vetted them for team, technology, market need, etc. We did something like a dozen investments together including MercadoLibre (one of the greatest Internet companies ever in any region), and Patagon.com (where I met the founders Wences Casares and Micky Malka).

But it was StarMedia where I learned the most. I made and lost more money personally (at that time in my career) on Starmedia. I have a StarMedia stock certificate in my office that I look right at that was made out to one of our family entities. It was once worth tens of millions of dollars and is now worthless and has been for decades. It takes messing up on that massive of a scale to learn some things.

StarMedia is also where I met my good friend Jerry who would have been 70 today. Jerry grew up in Mexico and moved in and out of Latin America and Silicon Valley with ease. He understood both places and helped to bring them together. I miss Jerry so much. He was a mentor, advisor, and coach to many of the earliest Latin American Internet entrpreneurs.

I was reminded of all of that history yesterday as our firm listened to a pitch by a Latin American team that is building a very exciting company. It reminded me that we seeded something twenty-five years ago that has gone on to become a vibrant startup ecosystem. Jerry, Susan, and I made a great team and we did something really important together.