The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 41 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 1 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Allebest forced exiting investors to pool tens of millions for staff
“When our PokerStars investor, you know, the Sheinberg family, when they exited to GA, I said, I am going to block this transaction as hard as I can, unless We set aside a huge percentage comparatively of the sale. Everybody is going to pay. I think it was seve…”
Claure: General Atlantic's Best Investment Returns Come From Latin America
“If you look at the returns of GA, people often don't know, but if you truly study GA, the great returns have come from Latin America.”
General Atlantic priced investments 20-30% lower than competitors during market boom
“We looked like tough negotiators because we were pricing things, 20, 30% below the tourists.”
Escobari: Many Startups Raised in Abundant Liquidity Will Cease to Exist
“The hangover of a period of excessive abundant capital globally, not just in Latin America, is that you have a large percentage of the companies Who got lost in this abundance of liquidity and today don't have viable business models and will unfortunately ceas…”
Escobari: General Atlantic passed on Nubank's Series A, B, and C rounds
“I should have backed David Vélez at Nubank. David had worked at GA. I had tried to, and he left for Sequoia, and I tried to bring him back when I got hired into GA. He called us in our Series A, Series B, Series C, then he stopped calling because he kept sayin…”
Escobari: Market Followers Often Beat Early Leaders Who Spend Recklessly
“And in most situations, it is often the follower that does even better because they learn from the mistakes of the leader who spent all that money recklessly without listening to the signals. And you're listening to the signals and you're being wise. These guy…”
Levy: Higher potential upside justifies paying higher startup valuations
“Just rationally, you should say, if the expected positive outcomes are higher, I should be willing to pay higher prices across the board.”
Levy predicts the current golden age of tech innovation could last decades
“I actually think we're in the golden age area of innovation right now, and I think that golden age could be decades plus.”
Levy predicts cross-stage firms will scale companies from Series A to take-private
“In 10 years from now, it may be sooner than that, that you're going to have a handful of investment firms that are cross-stage, and you're going to show up at the Series A investor meeting, and you're going to say to the entrepreneur, I'm going to scale with y…”
Levy: Follow-on checks generate higher IRRs at lower risk than initial investments
“The returns on the follow on checks. End up being so much higher return and higher IRR for lower risk.”
Escobari: Deals are underwritten to a minimum 25% five-year return
“The fair price is the price that allows me to get at least a 25% return in five years based on a P multiple exit by the time I exit.”
Allebest: Chess.com's General Atlantic deal was 100% secondary equity
“That's when we met GA, but again, it was to buy out existing equity. It was not to raise money. There was no primary money put in whatsoever. It was all just buying founders' equity and equal ownership.”
Escobari: General Atlantic suffers capital losses on only 3% of invested capital
“We have 42 years of data at General Atlanta, and we've done over 400 transactions. We know we've very experienced, and across the entire world in six sectors. Over the 40 years, 10% of the transactions lead to 50% of the gains. And that's been consistent throu…”
Escobari almost spent $500M on an Argentine acquisition before pulling out
“I almost spent five hundred million dollars on buying a company in Argentina, and then the day bids were due, I woke up and said, what the hell am I doing? And I'm glad we didn't buy it because the country went where it went.”
Escobari: General Atlantic Lost Great Deals to Fast, High-Paying Tourist Capital
“And we lost to them. You know, I, you know, here's a sort of wise, seasoned manager that adds lots of value, but requires three months of due diligence and pays 40% less than a guy that gives you a check in three days. Hard to compete. So it was humbling and w…”
Escobari: General Atlantic targets a 25% annual return over five years
“It's the price that allows me to get at least a 25% return in five years based on a P multiple exit by the time I exit. And I backtrack into what I can afford to pay today on a base case.”
Escobari: General Atlantic passed on Uber's $2B round over market size limits
“So, one of my mistakes as an investor is Anton, my friend Anton Levy, co-president of the farm, invited me to look at Uber, the two billion dollar round, because of the international opportunity, and we went, and we met Travis, The entire black market industry…”
Escobari: General Atlantic partners are paid on global, not deal, results
“We all get paid out of the same pot. So no one gets paid of their individual performance. We get paid out of global performance”
General Atlantic cut its minimum check size from $75M to $15M
“If you look at General Atlantic a decade ago, we used to have a minimum seventy five million dollar check. We've now, we're now probably, you know, I don't know the exact numbers, but call it four X the size in terms of capital deployment. And we've taken our …”
General Atlantic scales top winning investments up to $500 million checks
“Somewhere in the middle, we make a hundred investments for a vintage, somewhere between the 10 and 300, but it's still going to be only 10 to 15 or 20 that matter at the end of the day, because we're going to press those. So if we do a bunch of 25, 50, and sev…”
Levy had a handshake deal to invest in Facebook at $5B valuation
“I had a full shot on goal, ready to go, handshake deal to invest in Facebook early on, which doesn't sound that early, but at a five billion dollar value.”
General Atlantic maintains an investment loss ratio under three percent
“Our loss ratio is sub three percent.”
Levy: Winning venture deals is easy if you pay the highest price
“Doing deals is easy. It's easy to give capital to someone. It's easy to lead around. You just pay the highest price.”
General Atlantic is moving earlier stage to build relationships with winning founders
“We're moving earlier stage to get to know and build relationships with entrepreneurs so we can continue to press our winners.”
George: Shorter VC diligence cycles are more efficient and benefit the market
“It used to, I remember when I started at GA, it would be like, okay, a company's raising money and you know, let's take two months and you turn over every single piece of minutia for a company. Like that's, it's probably more efficient and better overall for t…”
Escobari: General Atlantic requires 3 of 4 votes on investment committee
“We have a four person investment committee. You need three, three people to vote yes out of the four. And it's the co-president, the co-president and the CEO.”
Martin Escobari: GA Portfolio Raised $20B Primary Capital in 2021
“So in twenty-twenty-one, our portfolio raised twenty billion dollars of primary capital, 19 of which from other parties.”
Martin Escobari: 97% of General Atlantic's 200 Portfolio Companies Are Fully Funded
“Today, we have 200 companies, 97% of them, fully funded plants.”
General Atlantic meets 10,000 companies annually and invests in 50
“At GA, we meet 10,000 companies a year. We invest in 50.”
Escobari: General Atlantic made little money on 2013-2015 traditional PE deals
“There was a period of time where I drifted away from technology led disruption. And tried my hand at traditional private equity. I discovered it's not my cup of tea, and we didn't make a lot of money in those two transactions, and I went back to my roots.”
Levy: General Atlantic will never invest in broken unit economics businesses
“I don't think we'll go all the way to investing in the upside down unit economics business. I don't think we'll ever do that. That's not how we invest, and I don't think we will.”
General Atlantic invested $75M in Alibaba but missed a chance for $300M
“We ended up investing seventy-five million into the business at that time, and, you know, I probably had pushed it, could have put three hundred million into it, but I was like, seventy-five million, we don't really know this”
Levy: The five largest global companies are tech firms under 35
“Basically, the five largest companies in the world, these are all technology companies that didn't exist 35 years ago.”
General Atlantic is deploying over $8 billion to $9 billion annually
“Well, now we're trending, you know, probably 8,000,000,009 billion plus of capital deployment.”
General Atlantic takes board or observer seats in all portfolio companies
“We sit on the boards of every company or board observers in all the companies we invest in.”
George: Passing on Qualtrics over price was my most painful miss
“The most painful one is probably Qualtrics. Which, I mean, look, it's killer founders, and yeah, I remain friends with the guys. We turned it down based on price when I was at GA.”
Lonsdale: General Atlantic targets an IRR closer to 20 percent
“Their IRR targets are closer to 20%.”
Escobari: Over half of General Atlantic's assets and staff are outside US
“More than half of our people and more than half of our assets are outside the United States”
Escobari: Latin America accounts for 15% of General Atlantic's investments
“Latin America is now about 15% of what we do.”