Assertion Supported AI assessment confidence: 95% certainty 4/5 debate potential 2/5

Callaghan: Venture capital industry loses money on over half of investments

Jon Callaghan · 20VC: Why Investors Have The Biggest Problem with Bias, Why Our Job Is To Maximise Risk & Why It Is Essential To Get Good at Losing with True Ventures Founder, Jon Callaghan · Sep 6, 2017 · at 12:25

Jon Callaghan is the co-founder of True Ventures. He discusses the reality of venture capital failure rates and loss aversion bias in early-stage investing.

0:00 / 0:06exact quote · 6.6s

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“The dirty little secret of venture capital is half the time we lose more than half the time, but half the time straight off the bat as an industry, we lose.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

The claim, plainly

The venture capital industry loses money on more than half of its investments.

a quote alone can be ambiguous, so this restates it with the references and context of the conversation around it resolved. AI-written; the tape below the player is the source.

Assessment

Data from major venture research firms including Correlation Ventures and PitchBook supports the claim. By deal/investment count, Correlation Ventures studies show that between 50% and 68% of venture financings/deals return less than 1x capital invested (e.g., 68% of realized deals in 2003–2012 and 65% of individual financing rounds in 2004–2013). PitchBook data similarly indicates that 58% of U.S. VC-backed exits between 2009 and 2014 returned less than 1x MOIC, and early-stage startup loss rates sit around 65%. This satisfies the resolution criteria.

Correlation Ventures 2013 study of 7,976 realized deals showed a 68% loss rate (<1x return) on a deal-by-deal basis.
Correlation Ventures 2014 study showed 65% of individual financing rounds failed to return 1x capital.
PitchBook data showed 58% of U.S. VC-backed exits between 2009 and 2014 had a MOIC below 1x.

Checked against

[1] sethlevine.com [2] lifescivc.com [3] medium.com [4] medium.com [5] industryventures.com [6] pitchbook.com [7] cambridgeassociates.com [8] cambridgeassociates.com

assessed as of 2026-07-23

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Callaghan: Venture capital industry loses money on over half of investments

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