Evergreen fund

Principles

January 1, 2025

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Blake Robbins

There are seven themes we keep coming back to. They shape how we work, learn, and try to show up in the world.

Cautiously Optimistic

Yes, before no. It's way too easy to be default-pessimistic.

Endless Curiosity

“I want to stay as close on the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds... See more

Hidden’s future depends entirely on how a handful of extraordinary founders speak about us long after our initial check clears.

Venture capital is a service business. Relationships and trust don’t scale; reputation does.

The downturn rests on a set of reinforcing mechanisms:

• Higher rates and risk premiums since 2022 pulled down public valuations, which dragged private market marks lower.


• Exit scarcity throttled VC liquidity, limiting LP distributions and slowing fundraising.


• Absent crossover investors left late-stage startups cash-starved, forcing insider-led rounds,

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o to arrive at an exposure with 20 to 70 companies, a fund needs a starting portfolio of 60 to 210 startup investments. Very few funds meet this size.

Smaller funds or solo GPs investing primarily on the basis of their differentiated personal networks and relationships may migrate here as institutionalization pushes earlier and earlier

To be clear, there are prerequisites to most of these things happening. Right now, it’s difficult to actually convert any short-term pricing edge into an actual trade—deals take weeks to months to close, secondary sales take weeks to months to execute. And, companies themselves may continue to serve as a check even if greater liquidity... See more

“Instead of just writing a cold outbound email, I could send a cold inbound current term sheet. And I’d just say that we’re ready to price, and we’ll give you the liquidity instantaneously without having to spend a lot of time” he said. “I could envision a quantitative VC firm that front runs every process by offering term sheets with some pricing,... See more

Greater private markets liquidity would unlock these more quantitative strategies further. Right now, especially in venture, the decision to invest is tightly coupled with a prediction of ultimate company success. The intermediate off-ramps provided by a more liquid market would allow for strategies that hinge on accurately predicting shorter-term... See more