here's a rough summary of my track record (personal / professional)

1) my angel investments ($300K portfolio, 2004-2008 vintage): 3 exits (Mint, Mashery, SlideShare) @ $100M+ out of 13 -- roughly 3.5X cash on cash in ~8 years

2) my investments at Founders Fund (~$3M portfolio, 2008-2010): 3 unicorns (Credit Karma, Lyft/ZimRide, Twilio) + 3 large wins (Wildfire, SendGrid, Life360) out of ~40 investments via FF Angel + fbFund -- roughly $50-60M appreciation in value over 7-8 years, >100% Gross IRR

3) 500 Startups main funds: $30M Fund I / 265 companies / 19% Net IRR / 2010-11 vintage, $45M Fund II / 325 companies / 23% Net IRR / 2012-13 vintage -- so far, 2 unicorns (Twilio, Credit Karma), 2 half-unicorns (Ipsy, Udemy), 30+ "centaurs" (>$100M+ value). Fund III is $85M / vintage 2014-15 / 650+ companies -- still pretty early but so far Net IRR trending ~20%

our LPs have been happy with our results so far. my/our track record is likely upper quartile, and at least for my years at Founders Fund top decile. Peter and I may differ in approach & stage, but likely more in agreement than not about the #s, altho he would likely consider or strategy more brute force and inelegant than his. that said, I think made enough money for him at FF & found him 3 unicorns, so hopefully he doesn't think I'm an idiot ;)

Wow, great stuff, and thanks for answering this personally !

we believe we are performing far above average, actually... both in IRR, exits, black swans, and other areas. that said, we are less than 5 years old and most VC funds don't have much measurable results until 4-8 years in.

our first fund is performing at 18% Net IRR (which includes fees; I think the WSJ #s were actually Gross IRR, which would be higher for our fund as well, and likely considerably above mean).

regardless, our second fund is performing at 27% Net IRR, which is performing considerably higher than median 6% IRR as reported by WSJ / Cambridge.

our third fund is still very early (just over 1 year old), however it seems we are performing over 30-40% IRR (44% currently).

so overall: - our funds are performing substantially above median - our performance appears to be increasing over the past 3 funds - I doubt that most LPs have turned us down because occasionally I use some 4-letter words...

thanks,

DMC

Dave, thanks for the clarification and insights. Your comment provides a much better insight into the fund. Thanks

i will defer to PG & YC in terms of their data on valuation/caps post-demo day, however our experience is that they probably reached a local max sometime last year, and they are certainly softer this year.

in general, most companies with similar progress are being valued less highly than last year.

which isn't to say they are either cheap, or a bargain -- just not as high as last year.

completely agree with PG -- acqui-hires aren't a big source of capital returns at all, especially anything below $10M.

... and similarly, it's in YC's best interest for valuations (of YC co's) at Series A to go up ;)

as noted above, 500 has invested in ~50 YC companies over the past 3 years. we are likely the 2nd-most active investor in YC after the Start Fund / SV Angel / A16Z / NEA group... however, we pick selectively rather than indexing (altho indexing YC is likely a pretty solid strategy too).

500 is also an active investor in companies that graduate from TechStars, AngelPad, SeedCamp, Startmate, and several other programs globally.

Thomas Korte has done a terrific job with AngelPad, and I'd rank it as highly as 500 or TechStars, perhaps even higher.

but it's true we are all chasing YC's tail currently.

quotable: "We try harder!" - Avis (and, 500 ;)

500 has invested in ~50 YC companies to date. I believe there are about 30 or so in our first fund.

YC has invested in 2 companies that went thru 500 accelerator first (9GAG and Vayable), and also a few others where we invested at around the same time as YC (Scoutzie, Virool, Microryza, Referly).

also, we are investors in ~20 TechStars companies (including Sendgrid), and also ~10 companies each from AngelPad in SF, and SeedCamp in Europe, and StartMate in Australia.

altho we run our own accelerator program at 500, we are frequent investors in other accelerator programs, including several around the world in East Asia, South Asia, Latin America, Western & Eastern Europe, and the Middle East.

actually, the founders of IconFinder made it possible... we were quite fortunate to be investors rather recently.

I thought about how poorly that sounded after I wrote it, I've been using IconFinder for years and am thankful and happy for the founders.