Venture capital funds in 2023—at least in their limited partners’ estimation—flashed that they might be able to get back to making money. Or at least stop losing it.
VC funds recorded an aggregate return of 0.4% in the fourth quarter of 2023, according to PitchBook data. But over a longer time horizon, select managers have shown an ability to book far better results.
Case in point: New York-based Union Square Ventures has maintained the firm’s strong performance. Two of the tech-focused Union Square’s fund families—the eponymous Union Square Ventures and the Union Square Ventures Opportunity Fund—were both top 10 venture performers, according to PitchBook’s latest Global Manager Performance Score League Tables.
The firm’s opportunistic vehicle keys in on later-stage stakes in growing software and TMT companies, and its flagship fund has a related, but broader, mandate. USV is targeting $275 million for its latest flagship fund.
Revel Partners swiped the No. 1 spot with the investment manager’s Revel Venture Partners fund family. Under its 2021 vintage, Revel Venture Partners has deployed its capital almost exclusively to tech startups.
Revel Venture’s cash-cow exits include The Trade Desk, which the firm first backed in a $1.5 million Series A in 2012. The Trade Desk, a programmatic ad platform, is now publicly traded on the Nasdaq, with a market cap of about $51 billion.
Other exits, via private acquisition, include Lockstep, a B2B platform for accounting departments, and shipping logistics-focused SupplyAI.
PitchBook’s 2023 manager performance scoring system ranked 365 VC fund families relative to their peers. Manager performance scores are limited by the available data and should not be considered comprehensive or an indicator of future performance.
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