Insight
Akkina: Every venture firm eventually declines due to botched generational transitions
“Every firm, no matter how great, has a half-life, right? No firm is going to be great forever. They'll eventually botch a generational transition or something, if they even try.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Akkina: Virtually Every Venture Firm Was Undisciplined in 2021
“We all know that, that we were all undisciplined for some period of time, right? It's not a secret, and you know, every, every, virtually everyone did it.”
Disclosure
Akkina: MITIMCo Passed on an Early Opportunity to Invest in OpenAI
“I mentioned we're investors in YC, and when Sam left YC, around then we also had an opportunity to invest in OpenAI, and we didn't do it. So that's definitely an error of omission that I think about a lot.”
Insight
Akkina: VC managers should not force LP evaluations too early
“It's good to build relationships, but you don't necessarily want to force people to evaluate you too early. Because I think particularly with larger institutions, it can be the case that, you know, once they evaluate you once, they may not be willing to look a…”
Disclosure
MITIMCo is significantly reducing its investment exposure in China
“We're definitely, I think like many others, we're doing a lot less there now. I mean, we're not gonna categorically not do it at all yet. But we are reducing it, and to the things that we keep doing, we're, you know, we're very careful about whether they're pe…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Akkina: MITIMCo will scale out of VC funds that become too large
“If a firm gets too big and we're no longer confident that we can make exceptional returns over time, we're going to have to scale out.”
Insight
Akkina: Unliked venture managers can succeed at seed, but rarely at Series A
“So I think in seed, that's probably more doable than in series A, for instance, right?”
Insight
Akkina: Sequoia's Dominance Came From Partners Appealing to Different Founder Profiles
“An interesting observation I heard about Sequoia once actually is that one of the things that made them so successful was there was this period where they had Mike Moritz and Jim Getz and Doug Leone all kind of in their prime all very impressive VCs in their o…”
Insight
Akkina: VC funds go sideways by growing too big too quickly
“Well, one thing is I think sometimes firms grow too big too quickly, right? And that forces them out of whatever their sweet spot was.”
Disclosure
Akkina: MITIMCo commits $50M–$150M across 6–8 core U.S. venture funds
“So today, at least in the U.S. Venture portfolio, we probably have Maybe six to eight core relationships we would refer to them as where we're writing checks of like 50 to a hundred fifty million per fund.”
Disclosure
Akkina: MITIMCo writes $1M checks to emerging managers without track records
“And then the, a third bucket we have now is things where basically we'll write a million dollar check because maybe it's extremely early and the person had no track record, not even an angel track record, let's say, or we're doing it to work with them to sourc…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
MITIMCo scaled annual private market commitments down from $3B to $1B
“You know, at peak we probably were putting three billion out the door in one year, and now we're probably down to about a third of that, so maybe a billion dollars.”
Insight
Akkina: LPs Avoid Criticizing Top VCs Due to Scarce Fund Capacity
“The tension there, right, is the top VCs have scarce capacity relative to, You know, their fund size relative to the universe of LPs who might like to invest there's a big mismatch there, right? And so I think LPs often feel reticent to criticize people too ha…”
Opinion
Akkina: VCs should not be criticized for deploying capital during bubbles
“In the public market, if a manager went all to cash in their portfolio, we wouldn't like that either. We would say they're trying to time the market, right? So similarly, I don't think you can criticize VCs for deploying money during a bubble period, right?”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Akkina: MIT Endowment Remains Liquidity-Constrained Until Major Unicorns Like Stripe Exit
“We're less liquidity constrained now than we were say at the beginning of last year, but the major issue still continues to be that there's all these big companies like Stripe, for instance from the last cycle that have not had liquidity events yet. And so unt…”
Insight
Akkina: Direct co-investments offer higher conviction than blind-pool fund commitments
“I personally find it easier in a lot of cases to write a big check to a co-invest than to a blind pool fund, right? Because no matter your conviction in someone, when you're writing them a blank check, you know, we don't know what's gonna happen, right? And as…”
Opinion
Akkina: Traditional Endowment Incentives Fail to Reward Risk-Taking
“The traditional endowment or foundation, I think part of the reason they're not good at this stuff is they don't have an incentive to be right, and people, when they don't have an incentive to take risks, they're not going to want to stick their necks out.”
Insight
Akkina: Family offices should require investment staff to co-invest personal capital
“I, you know, if I think, if I had a blank sheet of paper, if I were running a family office, let's say, I would probably do something where, one, people would be required to invest a lot of their own money in the investments the firm was making. You know, eith…”
Assertion Supported
MITIMCo approved a Rippling co-investment within hours on a Friday night
“Within a few hours, Friday night we made the decision to back that deal.”
Insight
Akkina: Generating consistent public market alpha is harder than venture
“I just find it much easier for me and my personality to I think generate alpha on the private side. I mean, the public side is always becoming more competitive. You think, if you think venture is competitive, try making alpha versus you know, the NASDAQ, right…”
Insight
Akkina: Delaying economic sharing causes venture firms to lose top talent
“They're thoughtful about how they share economics and, you know, they don't wait too long to do that. And I think one of the reasons a lot of firms sometimes lose some of their best people is because they don't do that quick enough.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Akkina: LP interest in late stage, solo VC, and crypto will return
“Two years ago everyone wanted to do lots of late stage and solo capitalists and crypto, and then, you know, a year later they all think it's dead and don't want to do that ever again. I think most of those things will come back.”
Insight
Akkina: Talking to other LPs undermines independent investment thinking
“We try to stay independently minded, right, and I think the more you talk to other LPs, the harder that is to do.”
Insight
Akkina: Fund managers become arrogant after success, leading to worse decisions
“Frankly, if people have a spell of success, sometimes they become arrogant, right? They start to make worse decisions and treat people worse. When things are going well, you're never as smart as you think.”
