O'Driscoll: VC Funds Must Choose Between Max Multiple or High Ownership
Rory O'Driscoll · Michael Burry Shorts NVIDIA and Palantir & Has Defensibility Died in a World of AI? · 20VC with Harry Stebbings · Nov 13, 2025 · at 1:14:52
Rory O'Driscoll (Scale Venture Partners) explains the tradeoff between preserving ownership and maximizing multiple on invested capital in venture funds.
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“Fundamentally, the way they've been able to produce eight and 10 X funds has been in part by, I mean, keeping it at 40, 60, a hundred million dollar funds. I mean, obviously, you know, if you want, it's hard to simultaneously keep your ownership and keep your multiple. You can decide which one you want to do. I mean, we talked last week is that, you know, if you have Hummingbird, they've kept their Multiple and gotten a 10, 20 X, whatever it is. If you talk about someone like Lightspeed, they've kept their ownership in the van and gotten a five X, but on two hundred and fifty million dollars. You know, both of them are great outcomes. They're just different ways to play the game.”
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