Venture Returns by Sector
Readers of this blog know that I love sharing data from Correlation Ventures (they have a pretty extensive database of venture deals and venture outcomes and love to post share trends from time to time) – see two great examples using their data here and here from this blog. A few weeks ago they sent around the chart below which I thought was interesting to share. I’m not surprised at the non-pattern here – as an industry venture is very stochastic. Venture returns are all over the map, really underscoring the need to time diversify venture investing and venture exiting, to the extent to which the latter can be controlled (this graph doesn’t show the date of initial investment, which would be a great new cut at the data – I’ve asked Correlation if they could re-run the analysis that way and will post it if I can get it). Also interesting to note the blip of “Consumer” in 2013 as well as what appears to be a bit of a countercyclical trend in healthcare. Sometimes there are interesting tidbits to be taken from seemingly chaotic data. …
May 9, 2016· 1 min read
IPO or M&A? Here’s exactly how large companies exit
I wrote a post a few months ago based on some data from Correlation Ventures about the distribution of returns on venture deals (which revealed that outsized winners are, in fact, much more rare than most people think). Today I’m focusing on companies in those top return categories with some new data from Correlation that show the percentage of large exits (>$500M) that are generated through M&A vs. IPO (quick side note: I seriously love how much information Correlation collects and how free they are in letting me post about it – as a reminder, Correlation is a firm that co-invests based on an algorithm that predicts the success of the a company; we’re in a few deals together and I can tell you the process is quick and painless; end of advertisement, but seriously – these data are from their work and the fact that they’re so interesting shows why the model works for them). …
November 20, 2014· 3 min read