INDEX

Venture History [Perennial Post]

By Alex Mackenzie at

WIP / Evolving doc.

Best returns I've come across in venture - will model at some point.

  • TVI's $1M into Microsoft for 5%. Owned 5% at IPO.
  • Sequoia invested a total of $11.5M into YouTube (Series A-B) and their stake was eventually worth $504M. 44x return.
  • Benchmark's $3M into Ebay.
  • Kleiner Perkins' $XK into Genentech.
  • Fred Wilson when at Flat Iron invested in Geocities at a 20M pre-money, exited at $3.5B.
  • Hummingbird's first three funds were each 10x net. link
  • Peak produced $600 million in revenue from just 100 employees at its apogee. link
  • From an investment of just $5 million, they had scored a return of $276 million – a gross multiple of 54.4x. Peak alone returned Hummingbird’s first fund 9.1x. link
  • Meanwhile, Ecevit and Karamanci led Gram to a winning outcome. In 2018, Zynga acquired the startup at a valuation of $394 million. At the time of the acquisition, Hummingbird owned nearly 30% of the business, which it acquired for just $2 million. Ileri had delivered a 49.5x gross return on his first-ever investment. link
  • From a $6 million investment, Hummingbird amassed a peak stake of 16.2%. It would sell more than half its shares in 2021 at a weighted valuation north of $5 billion. To this day, Kraken is Hummingbird’s best investment on a gross multiple basis, returning approximately 112x. link
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