VC | E331 | Sion Evans, VenCap on big vs. small funds, manager selection, performance & portfolio concentration

In this episode of the EUVC podcast, Andreas discusses with Sion Evans, Senior Investment Manager at VenCap, currently investing out of a $340M fund with $2.0bn in total AUM.

VenCap was founded in 1987 and is one of the longest-established FoFs around. They are headquartered in the UK and are backing the leading Tier 1 firms from globally — with just 12 core relationships! They count 47 underlying unicorns with notable mentions being the likes of Google, Facebook, Airbnb, Coinbase, ByteDance, and Stripe.

In today’s discussion, we're talking about manager selection and big versus small funds, a topic we're constantly debating on LinkedIn, as well as how Sion and Andreas thinks about fund sizing in Europe.

Sion emphasizes that good funds outperform, regardless of their size, and whatever the strategy, manager selection is the most important factor in venture.

Go to eu.vc for our core learnings and the full video interview 👀

Chapters

00:11 Overview of VenCap's Investment Strategy
03:13 Debating Big vs. Small Funds
04:50 The Importance of Manager Selection
05:42 Analyzing Fund Performance Data
09:39 Fund Sizing in Europe
14:46 VenCap's Global Investment Approach
26:40 Fund Size and Investment Strategy
27:58 Fund Sizes and Portfolio Construction
28:35 Early Stage vs. Growth Stage Strategies
29:02 Global Investment Approach
30:08 Performance Consistency Across Strategies
31:21 Risk and Return in Venture Capital
32:31 Building and Maintaining Relationships
35:14 Performance Dispersion in Venture Capital
44:11 Secondary Investments and Strategy
49:17 Reflections and Personal Insights