Venture Fund Portfolio Construction | Journal | Kauffman Fellows

Of course most funds hope that not all but one company they invest in has an exit, so the GPs must then make some assumptions around the percentage of companies that go to zero, return 1x capital, return a modest 3x capital, return a healthy 25x capital and return more than 100x capital. Making assumptions around graduation rates can help GPs bette... See more

Finally, another common approach is to back into the required fund value to guarantee a Net LP return multiple (i.e. net of fees and carry). For e.g. for a $100M fund to return 3x net to its LPs given the standard 2 and 20 model and $850K in total fund expenses, the total net return for the fund would have to be $370M after taking into account the ... See more

One of the most important things a General Partner (GP) needs to consider early on when starting a venture fund is their portfolio construction strategy. Portfolio construction will impact nearly every aspect of running a fund, including return performance. 

Fund Level Expenses: In addition to the management fees that are paid to the management company for running the fund, there are other expenses that are deducted directly from the fund assets. These fees include legal set-up costs, fundraising expenses and other administrative, legal and infrastructure costs. These costs can range from $250K on the

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Required Return Fund Capital to Targeted Net Return: Going off the example above, if a fund is targeting a 3x net return, meaning they wish to pay to their investors $3 for every $1 invested, the required fund return to hit 3x is actually higher than $300M given fees and carry. It is important to understand the total required return needed to hit

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Funds taking a more concentrated approach and investing in fewer companies most likely are assuming that one of their investments has an extremely large outcome while the rest either go to zero or whose exits are much more modest. This is called the power law dynamic and historically, this can be seen happening often in venture capital. Funds takin... See more