Opinion
Green: VCs holding stock in 2021 cost LPs hundreds of billions
“I think the amount of money that private equity Growth equity, venture firms cost their investors by not selling in mid to late 21 is in the tens, if not hundreds of billions of dollars.”
Insight
Green: In outbound VC sourcing, responsive companies are usually low-performing
“And we had a rule at Bessemer. If the company called you back, it really sucked. It was the CEO you call every two days for a month. That's the CEO you want to get on the phone.”
Insight
Green: Preferred stock in capital-efficient software creates strong downside protection
“If you build a business with 20 of revenue, you're growing 30. And you've only burned three million bucks. You're doing something right. And if we can get in there and own preferred stock at the top of the cap structure, and it's recurring and has 80% gross ma…”
Disclosure
Green: Lead Edge publicly shames analysts who fail to write thank-you notes
“I actually have a handwritten thank you note tracker that I get for every employee at the firm, and I assure you, if a twenty-two-year-old analyst wants to get called out in front of 85 people, I have no problem doing it.”
Opinion
Green: Sequoia, Kleiner, and Bessemer had little differentiation beyond check size
“And I didn't frankly think there was much difference between Bessemer and Sequoia and Kleiner at the time, and General Atlantic and TCV, other than some people wrote bigger checks and smaller checks.”
Disclosure
Green: Venture funds with 50 to 200 investments effectively become index funds
“So we want to run funds with about 20 investments. We think there's too many funds that become index funds, and they just have 50, a 102 hundred investments in them. We think that's crazy.”
Opinion
Green: Most investment funds provide awful information disclosure to limited partners
“I would rate most funds information disclosure as awful. Not bad. Awful.”
Assertion Supported
Green: Insight Partners replicated Summit and TA's 20-year-old cold-calling playbook
“And all Insight was doing was replicating what Summit and TA Associates had done for the 20 years prior in software and internet.”
Disclosure
Green: Lead Edge Fund I allocated 25% to Alibaba at $12B valuation
“And we said to people, listen, I'm going to raise a fifty million dollar vehicle. And I'm going to put 25% of the fund in Alibaba at twelve billion valuation, roughly.”
Insight
Green: The best outbound VC associates are often college athletes or entrepreneurs
“We find the best analysts and associates are oftentimes college athletes or entrepreneurs.”
Disclosure
Green: Lead Edge shifted away from Silicon Valley investments in 2019
“So it actually caused us, in 19, we shifted the portfolio away a lot from Silicon Valley towards more bootstrapped entrepreneurs in Ames, Iowa, or Sarasota, Florida, or Niswa, Minnesota.”
Disclosure
Green: Lead Edge allows employees to meet any LP after six months
“Every person who works at Lead Edge, once you've worked here six months, you can sit down with any LP.”
Disclosure
Green: Lead Edge runs a dedicated exit committee meeting multiple times monthly
“We have a disposition committee that meets a couple of times a month. Most firms have investment committees. Very few firms have disposition committees.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Green: Lead Edge has suffered complete losses on only two companies ever
“Our loss ratios are very strong. We've only lost all of our money on one of two companies ever.”
Insight
Green: Leverage, not underlying company failure, gets buyout funds into trouble
“What gets the buyout fund in a lot of trouble is just leverage. The companies still survive. They just over lever the business.”
Assertion Partly supported
Green: Eastern Advisors bought Goldman Sachs's Alibaba stake in 2004
“We were early investors in Alibaba. We bought out Goldman Steak in in 2004 when I launched the fund.”
Disclosure
Green: Lead Edge sifts 10,000 companies annually to close 5-7 deals
“Today we have 18 people that speak zero to two years out of college, We talked to 10,000 plus companies a year, and if you said I needed to meet all eight criteria, It'd be one percent or a hundred companies meet all eight criteria. So we say we need five or m…”
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Green: Lead Edge is the first institutional investor in 60% of investments
“Almost 60 plus percent of our companies were the first institutional investor in them. They've raised less than ten million dollars.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Green: Roughly a third of Lead Edge exits come from secondary sales
“So probably a third of our exits have actually come from secondary sales. We'll sell to another fund that's already an existing investor in the company.”
