I cannot speak about the performance of Dixon Doll’s DCM venture fund thanks to the lack of marketplace transparency that prevents most of its participants (and entrepreneurs) in the industry from actually deciphering and assessing the merit of each investor or general partner. But the message Dixon Doll sent me about IBF’s upcoming Venture Capital Conference (that I have attended in the past) is deserving of his new title of the most delusional man in the Venture Capital business.
Now Dixon may be a prime performer in Venture Capital, and I won’t (and can’t) judge him on that. Still, in the e-mail pictured above, he does his best to sell another pipe dream to clueless limited partners who, in the slipstream of Facebook’s upcoming IPO, see a renewal of technology promises that without tangible socioeconomic value will erode the trust from and by the public even further.
The problem with Venture Capital is that its performance is actually mediocre (from -4.6% to 2.6% in nebulous trailing 10-year IRRs, its “growth” we attribute to sector attrition), performs below the consumer adoption rate of technology during the same period, has its excuses proven wrong by corporate innovation, and yields -30% post-IPO performance the public better not be betting their pensions on. And with about 20 VC firms (according to a renowned asset manager) out of 790 original VCs producing any (not even Venture style) consistent return to limited partners, Dixon’s boasting of the role of Venture Capital as a viable asset class in the pursuit of selecting groundbreaking innovation is a gross mischaracterization.
As I explain in The State of Venture Capital, the financial system of Venture Capital is economically incompatible with the needs of innovation. And the only thing that keeps Venture Capital ticking (albeit in attrition) are the handful of entrepreneurs that succeed despite the debilitating role of (overwhelmingly subprime) VC, not because of it. Historically, not even most companies that reached any socioeconomic value have been funded by venture capital as the first money in. Neither did Facebook. So, if venture capital wants to claim the creation of successful companies, it should do more than play the role of hangers-on to the real risk taken by those who align seed money to the production of socioeconomic upside.
Let’s dissect Dixon’s delusion piece-by-piece:
Venture capital is a unique force which fuels innovation and has historically enabled the US to be the global leader in creating, growing and building truly transformational companies.
Nonsense, the uniform and, therefore, subprime investment thesis deeply rooted in Sand Hill Road investor socialism is seldom the first money in, and many new investor mechanisms have been created (crowd-funding, micro-VC, Tech Stars, Startup America) to fill the void venture capitalists have left behind. The mere existence of these programs and the need for government to fund and support many of them indicate how venture capital has dropped the ball in the early detection of groundbreaking innovation. We calculate that the roughly 770 VCs who have failed produced about 14,000 false positives and around 14 million negatives, some false, that did not fit their trendy and uniform investment thesis. The entrepreneurial capacity of the United States is choked to death by a venture capital arbitrage that is incompatible with the innovation potential.
These companies have saved lives, improved life quality, created millions of jobs and produced significant financial returns for LP’s and GP’s who are the stewards of pension funds, university endowments, corporations, and other non-profits.
Nonsense, the socioeconomic value of the companies VCs have selected is mediocre, as witnessed by minus 30% post IPO values (according to Capital Mind). Evidence shows that the public does not assign much merit to companies the financial system pushes through the IPO funnel. Commercial success for VCs and even limited partners is robbery if the public as the most critical contributor to limited partner funds, a user or purchaser of early-stage products and services, and a purchaser of post-IPO stock does not yield the ultimate value in the end. And now limited partners are becoming more discretionary towards VC, as some 80% of all capital committed to VC in 2011 went to just seven large funds. Limited partners are starting to discredit venture capital as an asset class by eliminating their commitments and realize that the investor socialism on Sand Hill Road is not the proper arbitrage for the potential of the underlying asset (innovation).
But times are changing, both in the US and perhaps more importantly in the rest of the world. We must not be comfortable that continuation of past VC practices will continue to yield successful outcomes going forward. Our once collegial, domestically focused industry has become institutionalized, and concurrently globalized.
Really? Is that why despite more than 60 years of technology investing, venture capital has not been able to feed 6.4 billion people on the planet with high-speed internet combined with 1 billion people deprived of fresh water and in poor health, denies 92% of the global population of knowledge that can build a global meritocracy. Past VC practices have only one purpose: to perpetuate the promise of value and sell valuations to others before the public finds out its bleak socioeconomic value.
In this process, many of the historical norms and best practices need to be revisited and revised.
Yes, the economic principles under which venture capital operates are the same as the oil cartel — artificially restricted by flawed economic and geographic models of supply and demand and in blatant violation of free-market principles. Why else would you deploy ten levels of risk diversification in venture capital? Free-markets would not allow that. And you cannot build a free-market of innovation if you restrict it by an arbitrage that violates free-markets. Dixon’s propensity to drive change is as reliable as an alcoholic’s desire to stop drinking who does not admit he is one.
Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated
The reports of the death of unchanged venture capital are still valid, and the attrition of the asset class is evidence that support for it is narrowing. Only the unwavering entrepreneurial capacity lucky enough to prove venture capital wrong (hello, Facebook) is the lifeline that keeps limited partners re-upping and allows venture capitalists to sell more pipe dreams of Facebook wannabes to the uninformed public. We cannot wait until the current economic equivalent of Neanderthal Venture Capital dies, and outlier innovation can again blossom with support from outlier investors.
But there could only be one more delusional man in venture than Dixon Doll. That is the limited partner who keeps deploying more money to venture capital and – economically unchanged – expects a different result.
No amount of money will make up for the massive deployment of uniform risk in the asset class. And as long as venture capital arbitrage is uniform, the companies they select will remain by economic principle subprime.
