Why do investors seem to care about 'billion dollar exits?' Historically, top venture funds have driven returns from their ownership in just a few companies in a given fund of many companies.
Many entrepreneurs, and the venture investors who back them, seek to build billion-dollar companies.
The insurance companies make about $15 billion a year. They have doubled their profit margin under Obamacare. And so now we're going to take a lot of this and call it a stabilization fund, but really it's a bailout of insurance companies. And I just think that's wrong. I just can't see why ordinary, average taxpayers would be giving money to very, very wealthy corporations. An analogous situation would be this: We all complain that new cars cost too much. Why don't we have a new car stabilization fund and give $130 billion to car companies?
Northleaf is delighted to have been chosen to manage the new fund. We look forward to implementing the fund's long-term strategy of constructing a portfolio of high-potential venture capital funds with the scale and resources to execute their plans, support successful high-growth companies and deliver world-class returns.
Big fund companies have many ways to increase the returns of young funds that they want to promote. And at least one of those games involves popular offerings.
Venture capitalists buy minority positions in young companies they think will grow quickly; buy-out investors buy most or all of companies they think can be turned around by fixing a few basic things.
Historically venture capital funds have only allowed elite investors in.
Plenty of funds have fine long-term returns despite being tax-inefficient and generally costly. But a dirty secret is this: Average, no-load fund investors do much worse than the funds - or the market.
Picking winners among the many young companies seeking money is a tough business, even for the most sophisticated investors. Indeed, most professionally run venture funds lose money. For individuals, it's pure folly. Buy a lottery ticket instead. Your chance of winning is likely to be higher.
While I'm a venture capitalist who invests in early-stage tech companies, I often feel like a professional emailer and conference call maker. I try to spend most of my time doing whatever the companies we are investors in need me to do.
Many financial and industrial companies have been bailed out with the public's money, but very few of those who had run those companies have been punished for their failures. Yes, the top managers of those companies have lost their jobs - but with a fat pension and mostly with a handsome severance payment.
The vast majority of companies don't go public and mint dozens of millionaires. And most companies don't go around doling out stock options; private companies tend to be very tight about ownership.
Value investors will not invest in businesses that they cannot readily understand or ones they find excessively risky. Hence few value investors will own the shares of technology companies. Many also shun commercial banks, which they consider to have unanalyzable assets, as well as property and casualty insurance companies, which have both unanalyzable assets and liabilities.
Invest in low-turnover, passively managed index funds... and stay away from profit-driven investment management organizations... The mutual fund industry is a colossal failure... resulting from its systematic exploitation of individual investors... as funds extract enormous sums from investors in exchange for providing a shocking disservice... Excessive management fees take their toll, and manager profits dominate fiduciary responsibility.
Over the long term, there will be many more billion-dollar technology companies than there are today.
Surprise! The returns reported by mutual funds aren't actually earned by mutual fund investors.
At 25, I made many companies. I was thinking more like a businessman or entrepreneur than a CEO. I created many companies, small companies, medium companies. I tried to be involved in many kinds of activities, in finance, in real estate, in mining.