The Ledger
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Anton Levy: Passive venture capital commoditizes quickly, competing solely on price
“I think that the passive capital commoditizes really fast. If you're looking for passive capital and you're saying, give me money at the highest price and leave me alone. Just give me the capital. At that point, what really matters to you? What really matters …”
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: Speed and high pricing are easier to copy than value-add
“I think those things are easier to copy if people can move fast enough and raise the capital and get the flywheel going. I think it's harder to copy. Hey, I'm really going to change outcomes for you.”
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.”
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.”
Levy: Access to founders, not capital, is the scarce resource in investing
“The valuable asset is not capital. There's lots of capital, particularly in this low interest rate environment that you and I are living in. It's access. The scarce resource is access.”
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.”
Levy: Passive venture capital commoditizes extremely fast
“I think that the passive capital commoditizes really fast.”
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…”
General Atlantic maintains an investment loss ratio under three percent
“Our loss ratio is sub three percent.”
Levy predicts unprincipled venture capitalists will be ejected from the ecosystem
“So I think that's also the future of our business. I think a lot of the jerks get ejected from the system because you're going to call around and people are going to say that guy, Anton, you don't want to work with him.”
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.”
Levy: Venture capital is not a winner-take-all market
“It's not a winner-take-all market. There's going to be, I think, at least a handful of winners and probably many, many more than that.”
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.”
Levy predicts technology and innovation will remain strong investments for 50 years
“So I would be long tech. I'd be long innovation for the next 50 years.”
Levy predicts the current tech market cycle will end with a recession
“But I will tell you the thing that will ultimately cause this cycle to move into the next will be a recession.”
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.”
Levy: Most Series A investments today have existing revenue and customer data
“Most Series A investments today, there is revenue. There is ARR. There is a product. There are customers to talk to, and so that means you have data”
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.”
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.”
Levy: The biggest venture misses are under-investing in winning portfolio companies
“I think in some ways, the biggest misses are not doing more of your winners.”