Finding Genius: Venture Capital and the Future it is Betting on

Once an investment is made, the rough outcomes (averaged from several independent studies of angel returns) are: 50 percent eventually fail completely. 20 percent eventually return the original investment. 20 percent return a profit of 2 to 3 times the investment. 9 percent return a profit of 10 times the investment. 1 percent return a profit of mo

However, investing in a higher number of billion-dollar companies does not necessarily mean a greater success level for a VC firm, as measured by return of the fund. Some firms may have larger fund sizes and hence invest in more companies. Some don’t lead deals and are not ownership sensitive. Analyzing what percentage of a firm’s bets that became

The biggest secret in venture capital is that the best investment in a successful fund equals or outperforms the entire rest of the fund combined.