Nicholas Chirls clarifies his critique of venture capital value-add specifically regarding platform support teams offered by multi-stage funds.
Prediction Open · timeframe Sep 2029
Chirls: 75% of 2020-2021 vintage VC funds won't return principal
“If you think about the twenty-twenty-one vintage, I think a one X fund will be top quartile. I think returning your money is, I think returning your LP's money on almost any timeframe will be top quartile. So in that sense, probably 70, I would guess 75% of th…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Chirls: Junior partners at big VCs are compensated on deployment speed
“Your junior partner at these big firms, sort of like a VP at Goldman, they are compensated and promoted based on money velocity, not money returns.”
Opinion
Chirls: Large VC firms operate like transactional Wall Street banks
“Basically all the same people from Lehman showed up. Highly transactional, all about the money. There was no real art or creativity to it. It was very private equity, like finding the company, dressing it up a little bit, handing it off to the next guy. And I …”
Assertion Partly supported
Chirls: VC is a Ponzi scheme guaranteeing 20% fees regardless of performance
“The venture Ponzi is you raise a fund, you take two percent management fees for 10 years guaranteed, it does not matter how well that fund does, and you've taken 20% of that fund and put it in your pocket.”
Insight
Chirls: Common and preferred shares yield identical returns in outlier startup wins
“There's a few in every fund that really matter, at least matter from a financial performance perspective. And when they really matter, the common is, is exactly the same as the preferred, is exactly the same as the preferred two, the series A, they're all wort…”
Insight
Chirls: Legal agreements cannot prevent VCs and founders from screwing each other
“My experience over the last 10 years, there's the legal agreements don't matter. There are always ways for an investor to quote unquote screw over a founder or for a founder to screw over an investor. It goes both ways. And the legal, the illegal agreements do…”