Announcing our investment in Gadze Finance

Building a successful investment franchise over the past few decades required finding a distribution advantage as products have been mostly undifferentiated. The largest and most successful US franchises — Blackrock (founded 1988), Vanguard (founded 1975), and Fidelity (founded 1946) — are now managing close to $20 trillion in assets.  While traditional finance offers few options […]

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 […]