Opinion
Douvos: Opportunity funds are a sneaky workaround to LP fund-size limits
“Now we've just started calling them opportunity funds, which by the way is just a sneaky way around the issue of my LPs don't want me to get too big. So I'll leave my core fund the same size, but I'll raise this opportunity fund.”
Insight
Douvos: Long venture horizons make lucky investors think they are smart
“That's the thing that's crazy about venture. It's like, you have a whole community of people who've been lucky who think they're really smart and the evaluation horizons are so long. There's like no feedback.”
Opinion
AngelList's high-volume seed indexing strategy functions like buying lottery tickets
“Portfolio construction is an underappreciated yet important art, but a lot of the new entrants just want to buy lottery tickets, and then you, everybody bows at the altar of power law, and you've got AngelList putting out reports saying the secret is to invest…”
Opinion
Douvos Would Short Stanford University Due to Overhyped Entrepreneur Perceptions
“By the way, if I could short Stanford, I would. It's a fantastic place, but talk about perception, you know, kind of all those entrepreneurs coming out of there that are so have very full perceptions themselves.”
Insight
Large Venture Capital Funds Benefit Their Partners More Than Their Investors
“So, like I said, those funds will continue to do well, but some of the venture funds that we've seen grow quite large end up doing much better for their partners than they do for their investors.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Douvos: Core and opportunity fund conflicts will anger LPs during downturns
“What we saw in 2002 1001, 2002 is all of a sudden you find these companies that have like these distressed fundraisers and you actually find the same fund owning two different securities, which may be in conflict with each other. And maybe one fund has capital…”
Opinion
Douvos: Mega-funds must deploy dry powder to unlock raising next funds
“Like they have whole business models that are predicated on raising, you know, kind of spinning that black circle over and over and over. Other people's money, OPM, it's a hell of a drug. And so I think they've got to deploy that capital because it's a gating …”
Insight
Seed investors should price rounds rather than using small-discount SAFEs
“It used to be 20%. Now we're hearing about a lot of 15% discount saves, and it's like, holy smokes, you're putting the riskiest dollars that are ever going to go into that company in for a very modest return. Now you're on the cap table, and you can put more m…”
Opinion
Tiger Global's 48-hour checks stem from deep prepared-mind diligence, not recklessness
“As you kind of go into the later stage, it's interesting because one thing that we've seen with Tiger, for example, Tiger doesn't take board seats. They don't care about operations. They're just extremely good at diligence. They're extremely good at prepared m…”
Opinion
The belief that $400M+ funds cannot generate venture returns is disproven
“Put me in this like very rigid mindset that fund size really matters and that size is the enemy of performance and there was no way you could generate venture multiples with funds that were over 304 hundred million dollars and that has been completely disprove…”
Insight
Time Horizon Is the Only Durable Risk Premium Left in Investing
“He said that all of the risk premia have been arbitraged away, except for one. He said, horizon. People just need cash sooner. And by being a long-term liquidity provider, you know, if we can be, he, I think his phrase is BLT investor, if we can be a beyond th…”
Insight
Elite VC Mega-Funds Trigger Copycat Fund Bloat Across the Industry
“So Sequoia goes out and raises four billion dollars, and then, you know, Billy Bob Joe's venture firm thinks they can raise four billion dollars, and by the way, there's a lot of money coming to the asset class that, that they can. So, you know, this kind of v…”
Assertion Supported
Cambridge Associates Study: Over Half of Top Venture Funds Are Funds I-III
“Hambridge Associates did a study, and they looked at post-two thousand venture funds. The cohort of top 10 funds in each vintage year, typically more than half were funds with a Roman numeral lower than Roman numeral three.”
Opinion
Private Startups Are Valued Higher Than They Would Be in Public Markets
“End buyers, i.e. The acquirers or public markets, haven't, you know, been as forceful with enforcing price discipline, and so you have this inversion where, like, public, private companies are worth much more than they'd be worth in the public markets.”
Insight
Taking Venture Capital Makes the VC's Business Model Your Business Model
“Once you take venture capital, the venture capitalist business model is your business model. You've got to get liquid at a number that makes sense for them.”
Insight
Excessively High Valuations Limit Startup Exit Options and Cause Self-Inflicted Downfalls
“When you have a high valuation, it starts to limit your options. And I think we're starting to see companies that were highly valued, that had a moment where they could have been acquired or gone public if they were, you know, less richly valued, but that mome…”
Assertion Supported
30% Carried Interest Above a 3x Hurdle Has Become Standard in VC
“In fact, what you're seeing is a lot of people are now kind of going to higher carries after hurdles. So there'll be a 20 carry up to a two and a half or three X, and then it'll kick up to a 30 carry. And I fought that for a while, and it, you know, it's sort …”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Sequoia Rejected Princeton's Endowment Lawyers' Document Comments in 2003 Fund Raise
“When I was at Princeton, Sequoia raised a fund in 2003, and they sent, Docs around, and we were very diligent. We sent our docs out to our law firm, and they came back with, like, three pages of comments, and we sent them to Sequoia, and we got a call from the…”
Insight
Douvos: Venture risk premium may just be a horizon premium
“Maybe the risk premia all arises from the horizon premium, which is just like being able to take a longer term bet than the next guy.”
Insight
Douvos: Venture works best when capital is expensive and time is cheap
“Venture works really well when capital is expensive and time is cheap. When time gets dear and capital gets cheap, watch out.”
Opinion
Douvos: Casual seed-stage funds flooded venture and wrecked pricing
“And I think those guys had a really deleterious effect on the market because the marginal dollar sets the price. And so we had all these marginal dollars flooding the ecosystem and quite frankly wrecking it.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Douvos: Three LPs will replace every allocator exiting mediocre VC brands
“And I think for every person that steps away, there'll be three that raise their hand for anything with even a mediocre brand.”
Opinion
Expanding startup TAMs almost justify elevated seed round valuations
“The opportunity that startups are targeting, it pains me to say this, but almost does justify some of the valuations that we're seeing in that seed round.”
Opinion
The barriers to raising a venture capital fund are near zero
“The barriers to raising a fund have gone to zero.”
