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3 lies VCs tell ourselves about startup valuations

by Annie Siebert

Scott Lenet Contributor
Scott Lenet is president of Touchdown Ventures.
More posts by this contributor

I’m frequently asked by journalists whether I think venture capital valuations are too high in the current environment.

Because the average venture capital fund returns only 1.3x committed capital over the course of a decade, according to the last reported data from Cambridge Associates, and 1.5x, according to PitchBook, I believe the answer is a resounding “yes.”

So when entrepreneurs use unicorn aspirations to pump private company valuations, how can investors plan for a decent return?

At the growth stage, we can easily apply traditional financial metrics to venture capital valuations. By definition, everything is fairly predictable, so price-to-revenue and industry multiples make for easy math.

For starters, venture capitalists need to stop engaging in self-delusion about why a valuation that is too high might be OK.

But at the seed and early stages, when forecasting is nearly impossible, what tools can investors apply to make pricing objective, disciplined and fair for both sides?

For starters, venture capitalists need to stop engaging in self-delusion about why a valuation that is too high might be OK. Here are three common lies we tell ourselves as investors to rationalize a potentially undisciplined valuation decision.

Lie 1 : The devil made me do it

If a big-name VC thinks the price is OK, it must be a (Read more...)

How to prepare for M&A, your most likely exit avenue

by Ram Iyer

Ben Boissevain Contributor
Ben Boissevain has 30 years of corporate finance experience at firms including White & Case and Barclays Bank, and 20 years of experience in the tech sector.

Despite the plentiful headlines about mega billion-dollar M&A transactions, record IPOs and the rapid growth of SPACs, small deals will continue to be the most likely exit for the vast majority of tech startups. In the over 30 years I’ve worked on M&A at White & Case, Barclays and my current firm Ascento Capital, I have seen too many startups that are not prepared for an exit via a merger or sale. This article will provide specific recommendations on how to prepare your startup for M&A.

While it is good to strive for a billion-dollar-plus sale, a successful IPO or a SPAC deal, it is practical to prepare your startup for a smaller transaction.

Global M&A hit record highs in the second quarter with a total deal value of $1.5 trillion, but smaller transactions vastly outnumber mega billion-dollar deals. The U.S. saw a total of 16,672 deals in the year ended June 31, but only 583, or 3% of that number, were valued at more than a billion dollars (FactSet). The IPO market is healthy again, but M&A still represents 88% of exits: So far this year, there were 503 IPOs and 5,203 deals, according to the CB Insights Q2 2021 State of Venture Report. After the SEC announced in early April that (Read more...)

How VCs can get the most out of co-investing alongside LPs

by Ram Iyer

William Kilmer Contributor
William Kilmer is managing partner with C5 Capital, a venture capital fund investing in the secure data ecosystem. He was formerly an operating partner at Mercato Growth Partners and served as CEO and chairman of PublicEngines (acquired by Motorola), and Avinti (merged with M86 Security) and served as chief marketing officer/chief strategy officer of M86 Security (acquired by Trustwave).

It has rarely been easier for people looking to invest. Nontraditional investors, which include anyone outside of traditional VC firms investing in venture capital deals, are increasingly making their presence felt in the investing community.

McKinsey found that the value of co-investment deals has more than doubled to $104 billion from 2012 to 2018. And by some counts, there are as many as 1,600 “nontraditional” investors helping to fund venture capital deals in 2021.

The primary motivator for nontraditional investors is seeking better returns, and investing alongside VC funds is a great way to achieve that. A recent Preqin study shows co-investing funds significantly outperform traditional funds.

Research shows that 80% of investors found their co-investments outperforming private equity fund investments, with 46% outperforming by a margin of more than 5%. Investors also benefit from a generally less expensive fee structure compared to traditional private equity or VC funds.

When evaluating deals, keep in mind that most companies are not going to be the next tech unicorn, so set realistic views on exits.

Co-investors can also profit by sharing the investment risk, which (Read more...)

Beyond the fanfare and SEC warnings, SPACs are here to stay

by Ram Iyer

Matt Johnson Contributor
Matt Johnson is CEO and co-founder of QC Ware, a quantum computing software company. Matt was a managing director in private equity at Apollo Management and prior to that was a managing director in principal investing at Credit Suisse.

The number of SPACs in the deep tech sector was skyrocketing, but a combination of increased SEC scrutiny and market forces over the past few weeks has slowed the pace of new SPAC transactions. The correction is an inevitable step on the path to mainstreaming SPACs as an alternative to IPOs, but it won’t cause them to go away. Instead, blank-check vehicles will evolve and will occupy a small and specialized — but important — part of the startup financing landscape.

I believe that SPAC financings can solve a major problem for all capital-intensive technology startups: the need for faster — and potentially cheaper — access to large amounts of capital to fund product development over multiple years.

The tsunami of SPAC financings sparked commentary from all corners of the capital markets community, from equity analysts and securities lawyers to VCs and fund managers — and even central bankers. That’s understandable, as more than $60 billion of SPAC deals have been announced since the beginning of 2020, plus $55 billion in PIPE capital, according to investment bank PJT Partners.

The views debated by finance experts often relate to the reasonableness of SPAC pricing and transaction structures, the alignment of incentives for stakeholders, and post-merger (Read more...)

Two investors weigh in: is your SPAC just a PIPE dream?

by Ram Iyer

Hope Cochran Contributor
Hope Cochran is an investor at Madrona Venture Group, where she invests in early stage Fintech and ML/AI Applications for the business environment.
Ishani Ummat Contributor
Ishani Ummat is an investor at Madrona Venture Group who focuses on sourcing and evaluating new investment opportunities, as well as supporting the growth and strategy of current portfolio companies.

This past year has brought many new developments to a historically traditional process: taking a company public. Many of the standard levers in an initial public offering (IPO) are being redefined as we write.

The emergence of direct listings is just one example. Even in more traditional IPOs, we have seen unique lock-up provisions, different auction approaches, virtual and rapid roadshows become the norm, and company-centric approaches to investor allocations.

But clearly the most disruptive trend of the past 12 months has been the predominance of the Special Purpose Acquisition Company, commonly known as SPAC. A SPAC is a company with no commercial operations that is formed strictly to raise capital through an IPO for the purpose of acquiring an existing, private company.

Also known as “blank check companies,” these entities typically have 24 months to find a company to buy or merge with.

That process essentially makes the acquired company a publicly traded one. SPACs can, and generally do, raise additional capital in the form of a PIPE (Private Investment in Public Equity) in order to reaffirm the SPAC valuation and raise additional capital with the identified (Read more...)

To sell or not to sell: Lessons from a bootstrapped CEO

by Ram Iyer

Glen Rabie Contributor
Glen Rabie is co-founder and CEO of Yellowfin, a global analytics and BI software vendor.

The clock begins ticking on a startup the day the doors open. Regardless of a young company’s struggles or success, sooner or later the question of when, how or whether to sell the enterprise presents itself. It’s possibly the biggest question an entrepreneur will face.

For founders who self-funded (bootstrapped) their startup, a boardroom full of additional factors come into play. Some are the same as for investor-funded firms, but many are unique.

Put happiness at the center of the decision, and let your intuition — the instincts that made you the person you are today — be your guide.

After 18 years of bootstrapping a BI software firm into a business that now serves 28,000 companies and three million users in 75 countries, here’s what I’ve learned about myself, my company, about entrepreneurship and about when to grab for that brass ring.

Profitable or bust

Starting a software company 7,900 miles southwest of Silicon Valley requires some forethought and not a small amount of crazy. When we opened, it didn’t occur to us that one could have an idea and then go knock on someone’s door and ask for money.

Bootstrapping forced us to be a bit more creative about how we would go about building our company. In the early days, it was a distraction to growth, because we were doing other revenue-generating activities like consulting, (Read more...)

Five takeaways from Coinbase’s S-1

by Alex Wilhelm

The Coinbase S-1 is out! And hot damn, did the company have a good fourth quarter.

TechCrunch has a first look at the company’s headline numbers. But in case you’ve been busy, the key things to understand are that Coinbase was an impressive company in 2019 with more than a half-billion in revenue and a modest net loss. In 2020, the company grew sharply to more than $1.2 billion in revenue, providing it with lots of net income.

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The company’s Q4 2020 was about as big as its entire 2019 in revenue terms, albeit much more profitable because the sum was concentrated in a single quarter instead of spread out over four.

However, beyond the top-level numbers are a host of details to explore. I want to dig more deeply into Coinbase’s user numbers, its asset mix, its growing subscription incomes, its competitive landscape and who owns what in the company. At the end, we’ll riff on a chart that discusses the correlation between crypto assets and the stock market, just for fun.

Sound good? You can read along in the S-1 here if you want, and I will provide page numbers as we go.

Inside Coinbase’s direct listing

To make things simpler, we’ll frame our digging in the form of questions, starting with: How many users did Coinbase need to generate its huge 2020 revenue gains?

(Read more...)