4. My Journey Down the Rabbit Hole
LBO Analysis
2 Dot-Com
IPOs
Join the
Dark Side
IPO: $9B mkt cap
IPO: $8B mkt cap
M&A: Trilliant (smart grid)
M&A: Myriad (mobile)
2 mobile
startups
$4.5B
Incubator
$150M
3
5. How is it Working Out?
My fund pioneered “Post Seed” investing
$150M under management with high returns
Expected to exceed ‘top quartile’ 3x Fund Return multiple
So far, out of first 70 deals since 2007:
4 IPOs
6 Unicorns (>$1b)
15 Centaurs (>$100m)
4
11. Seed is the New A
Inception Product Market Fit Scalable Growth
Series A
Series B
Series C
2002-2007
2008-2013
Seed
Series A
Series B
Seed
Series A
2014-Present
Source: Nextview Ventures
10
12. But, Where are the IPOs??
PC Bubble
Dot-Com Bubble
VCs make most of their return in tech booms
We are in the third big one, driven by Unicorns not IPOs
??
11
20. VR is Over Hyped
19
Facebook buys
Oculus for $2B
21. “Silicon Valley” Now Mocks Oculus
Facebook has sunk $3B in … nada out
Keenan FeldsparPalmer Luckey, showing off Oculus
20
22. IoT is the Next Big Thing
21
IoT will put a computer in every machine
23. Blockchains will Automate Industry
• HTML provided the rails for the
Internet for People – the World Wide Web
• Blockchains will be the rails for the
Internet for Machines – automating via
Smart Contracts, paying via Smart Tokens
22
35. Maybe Ray Kurzweil Will Be Right
34
We won’t experience 100 years of
progress in the 21st century — it will
be more like 20,000 years of
progress (at today’s rate) ...
Leading to The Singularity —
technological change so rapid and
profound it represents a rupture in
the fabric of human history.
Editor's Notes
The Call to adventure: Start ups are a trial. – the idea is the easy part, it is the execution, the selling of the idea to others that is hard.
Even those companies that make it look easy, had a trial. Twitter, Instagram. Twitter’s first business model, couldn’t get funded in SV.
Meeting the Mentor: we all need an obi wan kenobi
The Ordeal: Die to be reborn: a start up is constantly in the state of fighting great battles to stay alive, at the edge of disaster, facing your greatest fear and you do it over and over again.
The Resurrection: Another ordeal. Over coming fear
Return with the Elixr: if you are the lucky 1 in 1000. This is what it is really like.
We have all heard of the Series A Crunch. Bullpen first prepared this analysis two years ago, and then tracked how well the prediction worked. The key to the chart is to shift the seed round one year out – when they seek VC funding. Then the gap is dramatic, as shown. Half the seedlings at risk …
Not all should get funding, and many get acqui-hired, but this is a larger drop-off (50% then, 25% today) than A to B or B to C.
The post seed round emerged by Bullpen and a few other pioneers to fill the need.