David Clark
Chief Investment Officer, VenCap International. On 2 shows, 3 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
investorexecutive@Daveclark85 ↗LinkedIn ↗vencap.com ↗
Clark leads the investment team at fund of funds manager VenCap, overseeing fund identification, strategy, and selection across global venture capital managers. He is widely recognized for his analyses on power-law returns, manager persistence, and exit dynamics drawn from decades of fund performance data.
2shows
3appearances
51statements
6resolved
6supported
0contradicted
100%fully supported
3said about them ↓ Everything David Clark said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Clark: Top 1% VC exit threshold could pass $100B by September
“And then if you then think about OpenAI and Anthropic coming in you know, potentially we could be north of a hundred billion dollars by September.”
Clark: Chinese LLMs lag US by six months but are 10x cheaper
“The leading LLMs in, in China are probably six months behind where we are in the U.S. In terms of the capability of their models, but they're 10 X cheaper.”
Clark: 45 Venture Investments Have Returned $1B+ to a Single Fund
“So we had a look at our data and we found 45 investments that have returned a billion dollars to the single fund that invested and were also fund returners.”
PitchBook data: Only 2.6% of VC funds reach 5x DPI
“More than 50% hadn't returned one X capital. And so these are funds that are more than, that are 10 years old now, at least 10 years old now, hadn't returned one X capital. There was just 6.6% that had generated three X net DPI. And just 2.6% that had generate…”
Clark: Tech venture exit sizes will increase over next 10-15 years
“Ultimately the markets that they're playing in, and the share of the economic pie that technology is going to capture, in our view, is only going to increase. And so that gives us confidence that whatever the multiples are at the time of exit, the directionall…”
Clark: M&A regulatory chill will concentrate VC returns in fewer companies
“I think the impact that will have is that the concentration of returns in venture is going to be even smaller as they're going to be fewer companies that ultimately account for that, that performance.”
Clark: VenCap last added a net-new fund manager in 2018
“Our last one was probably 2018. And it was a fund 18.”
Clark: LPs prioritize capital deployment over 15-year fund performance
“Most LPs probably aren't going to be in the same job when that feedback comes. So they're more worried about deploying than they are about what happens 15 years down the line when, you know, when the performance data is, is actually in.”
Clark: A Venture Manager's First Hit Is Random, But Repeatable
“So, again, going back to some of the academic data that's out there, it does suggest that that first success is actually random, but once you've had that first success, There's a high likely or higher likelihood that you can then leverage it and start that vir…”
Clark: The Sequoia Fund structure was right despite bad market timing
“And I think it's interesting that the criticism that Sakaya had for the Sakaya Fund It's absolutely the right idea. It just happened that they implemented it at a time in the market where you saw a significant correction once it was put in place.”
David Clark has never seen a 3% fee and 30% carry VC fund
“Two and a half. I'd have to double check that, but I'm pretty sure there's nothing that I've seen that's a three and 30.”
VenCap's early, growth, and non-US funds yield nearly identical aggregate TVPI
“We looked at what's the performance of the early stage US funds from our core managers from 2005 onwards. What's the performance of the growth funds from our core managers from 2005 onwards? What's the performance of the non-US funds from 2005 onwards from our…”
Clark: Newer VC managers maintain last-round marks while established managers write down
“From newer managers, one of the things we look at are where are they holding their marks, and generally we've seen the new managers holding last round value marks, and not writing anything down, where it's the more established managers that are perhaps earlier…”
Clark: Early-stage loss ratios will return to 60%, causing widespread startup failures
“My sense is that it's going to go back to the average. It's going to go back to that sort of 60%. So I think there's a lot of pain still to be had. So that's not just companies who are going to get see their values reduced. I think there's a lot that ultimatel…”
David Clark: Late-Stage VC Returns Will Decline as Valuations Become Efficient
“If you're talking about, you know, the people that are raising multiple billions of dollars to do you know, to do the crossover deals, the late stage private rounds, Then I think that is more of a capital allocation exercise than it is a kind of craft business…”
David Clark: Top 1% VC exit threshold reached $32 billion
“Between 2020 and 2024, top one percent exit started at ten billion dollars. We updated those numbers in February this year, twenty billion dollars. We just updated them yesterday. It's now at thirty two billion dollars. So we've tenxed over the space of kind o…”
Clark: 30 companies yearly drive over half of global VC exit value
“Venture is a power law industry, and it's one percent of the exits that ultimately generate the bulk of the returns created by the entire industry globally. So we're looking at around 30 companies a year that generate more than half of the total exit value for…”
VenCap core fund managers deliver ~3.5x aggregate net multiple
“So we have a group of a dozen core managers and, you know, like, 90% of all the capital we've invested over the last decade plus has gone to those managers. And when we look at the performance of their mature funds, so let's take away the ones that were raised…”
Under 3% of VenCap venture fund investments lose capital over 30 years
“What we found is less than three percent of those funds haven't, are showing a TVPI of less than one X. And this is going back Some of those funds are going back 30 years. So that's through the dot-com boom and bust. It's through the financial crisis.”
David Clark: VenCap managers backed 85% of top VC exits over 6-7 years
“And so when I look back at the best VC exits over the last six or seven years, The managers that we've backed have been in 85% of the top 20 or 30 exits there.”
Clark: VenCap typically enters VC manager relationships at Fund III
“The earliest we would intercept a manager would probably be fund three. And that's where we've had the most success historically. So if I look at our 12 managers, probably half of them we ended up doing it from three.”
Clark: VenCap Has Never Invested in a Manager Who Pitched Them Directly
“We have, I want to say we've never invested in a manager that has come into us directly.”
Clark: Poor Succession Planning Is a Leading Cause of VC Firm Failure
“One of the reasons why we see great firms fail is because they don't handle succession well, and some of them will handle succession badly, but get there eventually.”
Clark: LPs will wait 18-24 months for liquidity after IPOs resume
“So even if we start to see IPOs in the second half of this year, it's going to be six months before those shares become freely tradable and again, it will probably be another 12 to 18 months before those positions ultimately get fully distributed.”
The other half of the tape: David Clark's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 3 times in 2 episodes across the shows. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 3
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tap a year for its mentions
20VC 3
2025 3 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens David's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20VCLEDGER | Chief Investment Officer, VenCap International | 1 | 45 | 100% 5/5 | full record on 20VC → |
 a16zLEDGER | Chief Investment Officer, VenCap International | 2 | 6 | 100% 1/1 | full record on the a16z Podcast → |