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Elite VC giants still investing San Jose Mercury News
Matt Marshall
May 31, 2001
Now that they’ve gone gorilla size, will the elite venture capital firms help stem the downturn in venture capital investing?
After the March 2000 market crash, elite VCs scrambled to triage their
portfolios. Only recently have they started to peer out of the
graveyard.
But they’ve undergone a profound change… |
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- Sunday, February 08, 2015 | STEVE N. LISSON | INSIDER, VC, INSIDERVC, INSIDERVC.COM
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Rumors of Benchmark’s Demise Greatly Exaggerated
For weeks, rumors have been circulating in the VC community that
Benchmark Capital’s third fund, Benchmark III, was in trouble, hit hard
by losses in e-commerce companies like 1-800-Flowers.com.
Benchmark denies the rumors, and its limited partners say they never
received the rumored letter that the fund was in trouble. An analysis of
Benchmark’s portfolio appears to back up the firm, which despite the
rumors, may not just be surviving, but thriving.
Benchmark declined to discuss details, but the firm’s holdings as of
June 30 were provided by Steve Lisson, the editor of InsiderVC.com, who
tracks the performance of leading venture firms for high-paying clients.
At first glance, Benchmark III had its share of overvalued B2C
e-commerce firms like 1-800-Flowers.com (Nasdaq:FLWS) and Living.com.
1-800-Flowers.com was the fund’s biggest investment, at $18.9 million,
and had been marked down to $8.1 million on June 30. The stock price has
declined about 30% since then. “There are many private scenarios just
like this public one, whereby even if the company can be kept afloat
long enough to enjoy some success and eventually make it to a liquidity
event, the venture investors will lose money,” Lisson said.
But a closer look at Benchmark III reveals a fund with several
potential winners, including Internet Data Exchange System company
CoreExpress, an intelligent optical networking play. That investment
alone could return limited partners’ money. Other potential winners
include Sigma Networks, Keen.com, Netigy and BridgeSpan.
And Benchmark’s newest fund, Benchmark IV, is already showing the
markings of a winner, thanks to investments in Loudcloud, Netscape
co-founder Marc Andreessen’s latest venture, and TellMe Networks, whose
valuation no doubt went up in its recent $125 million funding round.
Lisson said the Benchmark rumors reflect a misunderstanding of how
venture funds operate. “There’s a reason these are 10-year funds,” he
said. “It’s called risk and illiquidity. The one monster hit could
happen three, four or five years out. You can be wrong about 39 of 40
companies, and the market uncooperative, as long as one is an Inktomi.
That is the history of this industry: one monster hit returning the
entire fund. Singles and doubles won’t get you there.”
At two years of age, Benchmark III still has plenty of time to
deliver a big winner. In the meantime, the firm’s limited partners can
enjoy the returns from Benchmark II, a three-year-old fund that has
already distributed five times its partners capital, by Lisson’s
estimate. Benchmark II boasted big winners like Handspring
(Nasdaq:HAND), Critical Path (Nasdaq:CPTH), Red Hat (Nasdaq:RHAT), and
Scient (Nasdaq:SCNT). Yes, Scient. Benchmark had the foresight to
distribute shares of the Internet consultant to its limited partners at
200-300 times the firm’s cost.
Benchmark isn’t any different from other venture firms, most of whom
“drank the Kool-aid” of seemingly easy dot-com money, hoping the stock
market would hold up long enough to vindicate those investments. But
Lisson expects that some other firms won’t hold up as well. He expects a
shakeout in the industry similar to the one that hit the industry from
1987-1991, when venture firms formed during the 1980s averaged
single-digit returns, and roughly 20% of new entrants couldn’t return
their partners’ capital. VCs’ own fundraising declined from $4.2 billion
in 1987 to $1.3 billion in 1991. The $4 billion level of capital coming
into the industry wasn’t reached again until 1995.
“This is what’s supposed to happen in a downturn,” Lisson said.
“People who shouldn’t be in the business, who contributed to the
excesses and didn’t know what they were doing, will be forced out. It’s
not like this is the first time we’ve seen too many new entrants into
the industry, or too much money chasing too few deals.” And the ones
that survive will have a chance to prove themselves in tough times, the
ultimate mark of a winner.
Lisson said a few venture firms stand out among their peers. Matrix
Partners, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Sequoia can normally
be found at the top of the charts in each vintage year they raise a
fund, he said, proving that “something’s in the water” at those firms.
And he gives Oak high marks for consistency over a long period of time.
But even top firms have an occasional weak fund, Lisson said. “But by
the time you can make that judgment about a fund, you’ll have raised
another fund and shown some early progress,” he said. Meaning that even
if Benchmark III was a weak fund, Benchmark IV could keep the firm in
its limited partners’ good graces for some time to come.
“The moral is consistent performance over time relative to same
vintage-year peers,” Lisson said. “You’re never as good or as bad as
your current press clippings might indicate. The real test of
Benchmark’s mettle will come when we can fairly evaluate whether the
firm manages through and makes money, not just with small funds during
the best times in the industry’s history, but with larger funds in the
tough times ahead as well.”
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News Matt Marshall May 31, 2001 Now that they’ve gone gorilla size, will
the elite venture capital firms help stem the downturn in venture
capital investing? After the March 2000 market crash, elite VCs
scrambled to triage their portfolios. Only recently have they started to
peer out of the graveyard. But they’ve undergone a profound change in
nature: They’ve become monsters. This is good if you’re an entrepreneur
shooting for the moon. It’s fatal if not. In 1995, only one top-tier
fund, TA Associates, had raised a billion dollars. But since the crash,
15 top-tier firms have raised funds of that size or more. Many —
including Worldview Technology Partners, Greylock, Austin Ventures and
Oak Investment Partners — announced their new funds this year, well
after most of the market damage. Steve Lisson, of InsiderVC.com, says
the amount of funds raised since the crash goes against the “drought”
thesis. “The perception that there’s going to be less venture investing
is totally misplaced,” he says. “These VCs need to get into lucrative
investment opportunities, and they’re going to want larger stakes.
They’re going to have to step on the gas even more.” Similarly, he adds,
if an entrepreneur offers an opportunity for a “mega” investment, he’ll
be able to negotiate more favorable terms, because the big venture
capitalists will all want in. On the downside, entrepreneurs that don’t
show home-run promise will struggle. True, some VCs that raised large
funds say they have slowed their investment pace. Flip Gianos, partner
at InterWest Partners, said his firm hadn’t expected the magnitude of
the downturn when it raised its fund. If it takes waiting a year for
strong opportunities to come along, VCs will wait, he says. Others
counter that size has forced them to invest more in later-stage
start-ups because they soak up more money. Michael Darby, general
partner at Battery Ventures, says his firm still focuses on early stage
deals, but “in this environment, the fact that we want to deploy capital
means we’re looking at those later-stage deals.” There’s another reason
for hope after the crash, Lisson says. Many VC firms have been able to
negotiate stellar terms with their investors — even better than those
they negotiated just a couple of years ago. That’s also a sign that
investors still have faith in the VCs, he said. STEVE.LISSON, STEVE
LISSON, STEPHEN LISSON, STEPHAN N. LISSON, STEPHAN LISSON, LISSON
STEPHAN, AUSTIN, TX, TEXAS, STEPHEN N. LISSON, TRAVIS COUNTY, TEXAS,
LISSON STEPHEN N., STEVE N. LISSON, STEVE, LISSON, INSIDER, VC,
INSIDERVC, INSIDERVC.COM, (512), STEPHEN.LISSON, FACEBOOK, LINKEDIN,
LINKED IN, TWITTER,
- STEVE.LISSON,
STEVE LISSON, STEVE LISSON, AUSTIN, TX, TEXAS, STEPHEN N. LISSON,
TRAVIS COUNTY, TEXAS, LISSON STEPHEN N., STEVE N. LISSON, STEVE, LISSON,
INSIDER, VC, INSIDERVC, INSIDERVC.COM, (512), STEPHEN.LISSON, FACEBOOK,
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FROM THE INSIDERVC.COM NEWSLETTER ARCHIVE | Monday, February 02, 2015 | Steve Lisson | Austin, TX
InsiderVC.com Fall 2001 Newsletters: Beardstown Ventures (Part A)
Beardstown, err, Battery Ventures: The most overrated VC firm
Part A: The three runners-up
Previously, your first two installments:
I. Preface
II. Table of Contents to Parts A, B & C
III. Debunking Myths
IV. Beardstown Ladies
Below, your third installment:
V. Déjà Vu All Over Again
“Nice piece, Steve. You’ve unpacked the subtleties of this stuff very nicely, dealing out
both criticism and credit with an eye for fairness.”
V. DÉJÀ VU ALL OVER AGAIN
“The only thing new in the world is the history you do not know.” (Harry Truman). In
that spirit, I love regaling people with the following quote, by a very experienced GP
who, you will see, practices something else Pres. Truman recognized –“If you can’t
convince them, confuse them” –but in the course of a rare stretch of unadulterated
candor said:
“Again, some of these questions I can’t answer because it would take days to talk about
them, but there were inexperienced venture capitalists, there were inexperienced
entrepreneurs, there were too many companies venture-financed in the same industry
segment, there were unrealistic business plans and goals set. One of the biggest mistakes
the industry has made –and we have made it as well –is the ‘negative follow-on
financing’ where venture guys put up a couple of million dollars and by incrementalism,
even though the plan wasn’t being met and sales line ramp-up wasn’t happening or the
product doesn’t work, there’s always ‘manana, manana’ and companies that should have
been shut down with three or four million dollars in them were shut down with 15 million
in them. Today the venture industry is shutting down companies more quickly, which
may sound bad from the entrepreneurs’ perspective, but in fact it’s a very healthy thing.
That [negative follow-on financing] was the single biggest mistake the industry made.”
Sound like the current environment? A post-mortem on the last year? Could be, should be
–especially “shutting down companies more quickly”, rather than raising annex/bailout
money to postpone the paying the IRR piper and swallowing the bitter pill of today’s new
valuation realities –but, alas, no. He was talking to us about the period a decade ago. I’ve
taken the time to answer these questions during the seven intervening years since he told
.
us this, when the industry was righting itself following the last downturn, caused by the
same all too familiar by now excesses and excuses, and found that he is not the only one
repeating his same mistakes.
Nor is this simply a business cycle (like ex perjurer-in-chief Clinton, business cycles are
still around and not going anywhere) at work, or as simple as history repeating itself.
Going forward, it’s the experience factor and intellectual honesty in addressing mistakes
and learning from them, i.e., who seems to have learned from them, which is how we
sorted through who are the most overrated VCs versus the surprisingly close runners-up.
If only history was merely repeating itself, because that would be a good thing, and better
than what occurs presently at the most overrated firms.
As for this VC, who also agreed with us that one learns more from failures than from
successes, well, writhing in cognitive dissonance, he’s plunged into the most incredible
denial, and is trying to cover-up the fact we know through such ruses as the following
example, which is, right upfront, the opening to his recent General Partners’ Letters.
Shows where lay his priorities! Before even summarizing performance of the funds: “We
would like to take this opportunity to remind you that all information in this report is
confidential. Our portfolio companies work in highly competitive environments, and they
trust us to protect information concerning their financial and operating situations. We
appreciate your continued vigilance in this regard.”
Now you may suspect why we have received more, not less, unsolicited cooperation,
including additional copies since then, more than we know what to do with, from those
very recipients. Precisely because these are the folks most in need of paying us to point
out for them that this VC raided in part his Fund VI [6!] Affiliates’ to prop up a Fund IV
[4!] portfolio company, kept afloat via a dubious, last-ditch “bridge loan”, in one of the
most egregious examples of crossover investing.
The so-called “bridge loan” was structured so he could mark up –yea, up, not down! -by
the amount of the “bridge loan”, the value of a faltering investment in a company on
its last legs. He then goes out and raises a new fund, followed, of course, by immediately
writing off his entire equity investment, hoping only for partial payment on the Notes. By
the way, Internet Capital Group (finest non-sequitur since a leveraged-to-the-hilt hedge
fund had the gall to name itself Long Term Capital Management) had by this juncture
become the largest investor in the company.
“A bridge to what?” goes the unsophisticated, unoriginal, oft-asked question. If there’s
ever a Lemon Law or Deceptive Trade Practices Act for VCs, then make Exhibit A
valuing an equity stake, in a company bleeding red ink, at the price of a pre-IPO round
(but with the aging S-1 filing long since a no-go), convertible at the price of a nonexistent
next round of financing. It’s a “bridge” only if the company has a term sheet, a
known financing event. This was a bridge to stonewalling, to dancing upon the fine line
of deceit, dishonesty, deception, delusion and, if all fails, which it did, shooting the
messenger. Obfuscation. Cognitive Dissonance.
.
That Fund has by now distributed over seven times partners’ capital while, naturally,
experiencing Venture Economics’ “negative returns”. So what does this VC have to worry
about from us? His judgment, honesty, integrity and veracity, past, present and future,
plus the health of his much younger funds. He knows we neither have nor ever will
release confidential information about portfolio companies no matter how hard he tries to
thwart or frustrate us. At least no current plans to do so relative to him. Unless he
continues falsely accusing us. “I hear them whisper, you won’t believe it. I just ignore it,
but they keep saying. Let’s give them something to talk about. A little mystery to figure
out.” (Let’s give ’em something to talk about, by Bonnie Raitt).
His own lawyer could not have defended us and what we do any better than he did when
exposed (he responded “Touché!” when we told him no attorney of his stature uses a
Hotmail account for sensitive work) surreptitiously soliciting a personal subscription
from us: “I fully understand your being guarded about the information you possess. You
are pretty thorough in your analysis. This is good info from my perspective as our firm
represents at least half of the funds I’ve seen you analyze. The attorneys normally do not
get to see candid, objective reporting like this.”
The particular VC, like the most overrated firm, just wanted to stonewall, err, “bridge”
paying the IRR piper on two different vehicles comprising his track record until joining
the $1BB Club. Though “[s]unlight is the best disinfectant” (Justice Louis Brandeis),
we’re not singling out his deceptive use of a bridge loan to postpone –not a prudent
markdown, but a complete write-off –by identifying players’ names. That would be
salacious, sensational, and divert attention from the fact that his is one of the most
extreme yet typical we see, even amongst those by the most overrated firms.
His newest fund is one of our $29BB+ raised at a 25-30% carried interest post tech wreck
/ Nasdaq crash. The point is neither to humiliate the Financial Times’ Robert Clow (see,
e.g., “A few venture funds grew to more than $1bn in recent years -before the tech
bubble burst -but few have reached that level since”) nor at which of those 22+ firms this
very experienced general partner resides, or whether he can manage his new mega-fund.
It’s that history is repeating itself whereby the industry, rather than “shutting down
companies more quickly, which may sound bad from the entrepreneurs’ perspective, but
in fact it’s a very healthy thing”, instead raises annex/bailout capital exclusively for
“negative follow-on financings.” These were “the single biggest mistake the industry
made” during the last cycle. Now, led by three of the four most overrated firms, in many
cases the same VCs do it again.
“Well I guess I was wrong. I just don’t belong. But then, I’ve been there before.” (Friends
in Low Places, by Garth Brooks). Hopefully this VC, who has ceased touting his
purported upper-quartile returns, will reflect for a few moments on what you just read, his
repeating his same mistakes twice in a decade. Otherwise, he risks provoking us into
posting the full-texts of his reports on our site in .pdf format, along with those of anyone
else clumsily, hypocritically obstructing us.
.
He may then explain whether he encourages portfolio companies to ship non-existent
products from inventory to warehouses or raid phantom, fictitious, pyramid-like future
earnings for the current period. Identical behaviors, if you follow my analogy. Only
difference is the rest of us have to employ more honest accounting policies and
procedures. Hence, again, we distinguish between making an example of the practice vs.
the person, between making quite avoidable mistakes vs. being fundamentally unethical.
Personalizing won’t help.
I do hope people end up being held accountable for their practices. It’s painful seeing the
very people behind some of these practices continue getting funded. Bailout/annex
money serves to stonewall swallowing the bitter pill of new valuation realities, caused in
part by good but not great and vastly overrated firms, some of whom are coasting on their
brand. Good is nothing to be ashamed of, so they needn’t make themselves sound better
than they are actually. It’s not necessary and will backfire.
The reality today is a “crowding-out” effect whereby emerging or potential new groups
made up of the same types that founded Matrix, Mayfield, etc. –operational guys
passionate about building companies –confront or are outright deterred by a skeptical
investor base holding them accountable for the overrated firms’ avoidable and continuing
mistakes. The perceived collapse (a perception I vehemently dispute) of venture investing
has soured many institutional investors on new or young partnerships.
Yet we all know that a down economy is always the best time to start or buy something.
Fresh blood and competition, which may help cure the industry’s self-described malaise,
is held to a different and unfair standard. This translates into those groups doing more
later-rather than earlier-stage investments raising additional capital. In other words,
greater amounts of “negative follow-on financings”, into more companies that maybe
should already have been shutdown, versus innovation.
Building value nowadays requires a lot of the right kind of work. Obstetrics, not triage.
Some firms who merely “cleared the decks”, writing off large swaths of their portfolios,
have done so without much if any effort to re-set strategies, recruit better leadership,
restructure debt on balance sheets, and adapt to today’s new valuation realities.
Hopefully, they will work to assist ventures and teams they’ve backed. They need to
avoid both complacency and sloppiness brought on by out-sized management fees, and
over-dependence on their brand names.
The critical measure is where, and with whom, they are spending their time. With the
hype days generating grist to feed a cynical view of the industry long over, the
environment today requires uncompromising integrity. And, generally, becoming one’s
own harshest critic. Only getting these basics down will allow moving from possible
exposé pieces to an emphasis on the positive contributions of venture investing: more
jobs, tax revenue, productivity, wealth, and building the new tech/service economy
absorbing job losses from the old.
.
Speaking for myself, I know that’s where I want to take things from here. There’s just a
little more garbage to clean out first.
NEXT:
VI. Act Like You’ve Been There -New Enterprise Associates (NEA)
“I was not aware of VC firms puffing up their market position by announcing ‘closed
funds’ which are, in fact, not closed.”
Copyright (c) 2001. All Rights Reserved.
beardstown3@InsiderVC.com
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