Thoughts on Tiger Global VC Raise
So Tiger closed 2.2B on a 6B hard cap for its VC fund, down from 12.7B previous fund...
Fascinating to me that such a storied firm would struggle that much, despite its mistakes. Thoughts on what this means for the venture space?
Honestly not that bad, Tiger was by far the least disciplined big name growth/vc investor in ‘21. Pretty much people giving the PIP team another shot at putting together a reasonable growth fund, before closing up shop, I wouldn’t be shocked if there’s a lot of checks into existing good port cos + more of an emphasis toward ai and/or profitability from day 1. Might be a good indicator for other zirp era growth/vc funds, who are currently struggling, but anyone who’s been disciplined since ‘21 should have an opportunity to sell themselves differently than tiger in their next raise. Series A+ has still been down a ton since ‘21 so this fund size is much more appropriately sized given the current market. Tbh I wouldn’t read into it even from the perspective of LP appetite towards VC as a whole.
Sounds small but frankly how many growth deals you see around? And the few funny ones we see are tiny in size. That $2.2Bn will go far.
The majority of it is surely internal capital. There was more internal capital in the last fund than the entire size of this fund.
cant imagine many institutional LPs want to take career risk of investing in TG after the amount of press on terrible DD/discipline and personal issues with the partners
There's been a ton of turnover in Tiger's leadership (Lee Fixel, Scott Schliefer, John Curtius) so I don't know that older track record (the "storied firm" notion) has any bearing on future performance in the slightest. The most recent fund was a poster child for VC irresponsibility during the ZIRP period and it would not have been surprising if they stopped managing outside money entirely, similar to what Softbank did.
I expect it's heavily insider capital + a few people who used the fact that it's a flier to extract major fee concessions. Think of it as using a 10th-round pick in your Fantasy draft on a formerly-good player who everybody thinks is washed now. Maybe they turn it around, maybe they don't.
I don't think there are any meaningful takeaways from this re LP appetite for the VC industry. LPs follow returns, and Tiger will have some of the worst for the last vintage. Better-performing funds may be down based on broader macro + liquidity issues, but almost certainly not this heavily.
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