Resetting venture capital return expectations: is 10x the new 3x?

When I started Version One Ventures in 2012, every experienced VC shared the same rule of thumb: we had to return 3x net consistently to stay in business (i.e. 3x the invested capital net of fees over a period of about ten years for a net IRR in the low twenties). Ten years (almost) and […]

Announcing Fund IV and Opportunities Fund II

We’re thrilled to announce the closing of two new funds: Fund IV ($70M USD) and Opportunities Fund II ($30M USD).  While these funds may be new, our values and goals remain the same. We still look for pre-seed and seed stage opportunities, as we believe these are the stages where we can add the most […]

Announcing our seed investment into Defined, a programable data platform for DeFi

We are very happy to announce our seed investment into Defined, a programmable data platform for decentralized finance (DeFi). We led the $2.5m round with participation from Mark Cuban, Balaji Srinivasan, Tiny Capital, Compound, Inflection, Portico Ventures, Capital 6, Rasool Rayani, and Kamunting Street Capital. We have been active investors in DeFi for almost three […]

The Version One Anti-Portfolio – the opportunities we missed…

Bessemer started the idea of the “anti-portfolio” – the companies that you passed on, but ended up doing very, very well.  Here is the Version One anti-portfolio that we have built over the past decade: Carta We were introduced to Henry Ward from eShares through our friend Manu Kumar from K9 Ventures in 2013. We […]