Opinion
Reynolds: Past three years have been harder for fundraising than 2008-2009
“My reflection is that for the last three years, it's been the hardest time to raise capital in the 2005 years that I've been doing this, and that includes 2008 and 2009. It's actually been harder.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Reynolds: Institutional LPs will abandon mega venture funds for smaller managers
“You will see The institutional investors that have historically loved venture and participated in those big pools move down market, just like they did in buyout. All the ENFs left the mega funds between 2008 and 2012 for the most part. I think the same thing w…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Reynolds: Thousands of Zombie VC Funds Will Never Raise Again
“There's thousands of zombie funds. In the market that will never raise another fund because their track record does not justify it, and because people will realize that venture is not a get-rich-quick scheme, that not everyone and their mother deserves to have…”
Insight
Reynolds: LPs Avoid Direct Public Stock Picking but Co-Invest in Risky Privates
“Very few institutional investors organizations are actively managing public equity portfolios. They're not choosing stocks directly, but almost all of them are choosing in private companies directly and co-investing in companies where they have less informatio…”
Assertion Supported
Reynolds: TPG founders apologized globally and let LPs cut fund commitments
“We had to do what we called at the time a contrition tour, which was essentially David Bonderman and Jim Coulter traveling all around the world apologizing to our investors. We gave people an option to take their money out. We gave people an option to reduce t…”
Assertion Supported
Reynolds: Very Few Venture Funds Over $1B Have Ever Returned 3x+
“If you actually look at the historical data, there's been very few funds in history that have achieved three X plus that were over a billion dollars”
Assertion Supported
Reynolds: TPG's WaMu deal went to zero before capital calls finished
“TPG had raised a twenty billion dollar fund that it started to deploy very quickly into mega buyout deals right before Lehman fell and the financial crisis began. The first deal in that fund was Washington Mutual. Which went to zero before the capital was call…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Reynolds: Very few managers could raise growth funds in late 2022-2023
“Very few people able to raise growth in late 2022 and 20 23. The tailwinds just aren't in your favor. It doesn't matter how good you are.”
Insight
Reynolds: 2020–2021 venture boom mirrored 2005–2007 buyout bubble
“The boom that happened in venture during the period that capital was free in 2020 and 20 21 felt very similar to me as the boom of excessive leverage in oh five, oh six, oh seven, in that you had investors that were increasing allocations to an asset class.”
Insight
Reynolds: GPs should not assume LPs read annual reports
“One of my pieces of advice to GPs and people in my role is always don't assume your investors are reading the end of a report. They're most likely not.”
Insight
Reynolds: GPs must arm LPs with win data to impress their bosses
“Nothing feels better than looking good to your boss, and you want to arm your investors with the data points that make them look great to their boss.”
Assertion Partly supported
Reynolds: Institutional PE/VC allocations grew from under 1% to 5-10%
“The exposure to Private equity and venture capital for most institutional investors when I started there was probably less than one percent on average, and by the time I left it was probably five or 10, so you can imagine the growth and the transformation that…”
Assertion Supported
Reynolds: Altimeter's late 2021 fund was $1.6B, 3x previous size
“One of the first times I met Brad, he had just raised a 1.6 billion dollar fund, which was three times the size of any previous pool of capital he had raised.”
Assertion Contradicted
Reynolds: Venture funds contracted by 50% between 2005 and 2008
“And by the way, in 2005, six, seven, eight, funds contracted by 50% when they went to raise their next fund.”
