The term "business model" is used for startups all the time but let us see it the other way around. Here is a graphical representation of a typical business model for a VC. A minority of investments - the "high quality deals" - generate the most of the investor's total profit, about a third of investments generate a small profit, and about half of portfolio companies generate a partial or total loss.
Let us see now how the best investors make the difference. "First quartile VCs" generate significantly superior returns while the average performance of Venture Capital as an asset class still shows a "risk return profile" which is pushing away Limited Partners, making it very difficult for most of investors to raise funds. Of course and fortunately there are a few examples of good local VCs. One of the "best practices" that the first quartile investor category does is to have, if not at least a pan-Regional approach (Northzone Ventures for example), a pan European (Index Ventures for example) or even a trans-Atlantic or global/glocal approach (several US and European investors) to size the best opportunities wherever they are in a given field, in a good timing. The massive funds raised recently by Sequoia, Accel will be obviously invested not only through bigger amounts, but also on a truly multi-continental basis; United States first, Asia second (8b$ VC investments made in China alone during 2011's first semester...) and eventually significant amounts for Europe. 1 2 3 > "The best opportunities are not always local" |
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