The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

20VC Roundtable: Are IPOs Back? Is Growth Dead? What Does it Take to Raise a Growth Round Today? How Do VCs Solve The Liquidity Challenge? Will We See a Massive Resetting of Valuations? AI Hype Growth Rounds?

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Oct 11, 2023

Deven Parekh, Managing Director at Insight Partners, Woody Marshall, General Partner at TCV, and Jason Lemkin, Founder of SaaStr, dive deep into the current venture capital landscape. They tackle whether growth is truly dead and discuss the challenges faced by companies with hefty cash reserves but limited revenue. The trio suggests a necessary shift in valuations, highlighting the intricacies between VCs and LPs. They explore the importance of strategic investments amid economic uncertainty and examine the evolving dynamics of IPOs, emphasizing the need for real business fundamentals.

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INSIGHT

Growth Not Dead, But Pace Changed

Underlying company growth is still strong, with many Insight portfolio companies experiencing significant growth in Q2 2023.
The current market pace is slower, but this allows for better relationship building and due diligence.

ADVICE

Reset Valuations

Companies should reset valuations to reflect current market conditions and incentivize employees.
Holding onto inflated valuations leads to suboptimal decisions.

ADVICE

Avoid Structured Deals

Avoid heavily structured deals to maintain alignment between founders and investors.
Structure often bridges valuation gaps, creating conflicting motivations.

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Deven Parekh is a Managing Director at Insight Partners, one of the leading investing franchises of the last 25 years. Deven has made more than 90 investments since joining in 2000 including in the likes of Twitter, Alibaba, JD.com, Chargebee and Automattic (WordPress) to name a few.

Woody Marshall is a General Partner @ TCV, one of the most successful growth funds of the last decade with a portfolio including the likes of Facebook, AirBnB, Spotify, LinkedIn and many more incredible companies.

Jason Lemkin is the Founder @ SaaStr one of the best-performing early-stage venture funds focused on SaaS. In the past, Jason has led investments in Algolia, Pipedrive, Salesloft, TalkDesk, and RevenueCat to name a few.

In Today's Episode We Discuss:

1. The Growth Landscape Overview:

Is growth dead? Are any growth deals getting done?
How has the price changed for growth deals that are getting done?
Which type of growth companies will vs will not be able to raise?
What happens to all of the growth companies with $300-$500M in cash but little revenue?

2. The Great Reset: Valuations Need to Change:

Why should companies be actively resetting their valuations? What are the benefits?
What will happen between VCs and LPs when there is no incentive for VCs to reset their portfolio valuations when they need to go out and raise from those same LPs?
Structure is often part of these valuation resets, is structure to rounds always bad? When is it good? What type of structure is acceptable vs unacceptable?

3. Are the Public Markets Creeping Open:

Should we take comfort from ARM, Instacart and Klaviyo and assume the public markets are going to open again? If not, what will cause them to open?
How should we analyze the performance of the IPOs above? Many have been negative, are they right to suggest this is not the response we wanted?
Why does Woody believe, like Instacart taking a 75% discount to their last round, we should have more and more companies go public at discounts to their last private round?

4. Late Stage Growth is Dead and Revenue Multiples:

Why is late-stage growth dead? How long do we think this will last?
How should we assess revenue multiples today? New normal? Same as always? How will revenue multiples look in 12 months from now?
How should we analyse the large late stage growth rounds for hyped AI companies? What happens there?