Dan Kimerling
11.9K posts
Dan Kimerling
@dkimerling
Founder + Managing Partner @Deciens; Lead Investor, @chippercashapp @GlacierGrid @Funding_U @treasuryprime & many other fintechs. 💍 to @jojonojojo
Albuquerque, NM Katılım Ocak 2008
987 Takip Edilen6.4K Takipçiler
I disagree.
Some founders repeatedly build exceptional companies, and certain investors consistently show up around them early. That pattern isn’t random.
Dan Kimerling@dkimerling
@iPaulLee i just think the idea that there are "best founders" is a bit off base.
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@iPaulLee i just think the idea that there are "best founders" is a bit off base.
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As I wrote to our LPs last year:
"A fast-growing company that never receives another round of VC funding after our investment (because it doesn’t need it) and is never in the press (because it chooses not to be) is a great outcome from where we sit. It is a win for LPs, shareholders, and other stakeholders."
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Rare breed in this market
Incentives are structured around mark-ups, not returns - that works for asset managers (more excuses to deploy $) and VCs hopping between firms, but really bad for emerging managers (where you live/die on carry)
To break away from that, you need to be more courageous than ever, but the alternative is putting a huge chunk of your net worth to waste
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Saying the quiet part out load...respect
Morgan Livermore@MorgLiv
The top 10 private companies capture 76% of all secondary demand. That's not a market. That's a crowded trade with a nice name. At a dinner the other week, @PeterJ_Walker shared Cartа's data, which makes the bifurcation impossible to ignore: parabolic valuations at the top, hollowing of the middle. Some of the best companies aren't invisible because they're bad. They're invisible because the funds got too big to see them or lack the courage to be different. More thoughts on this in the comments.
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If you are an investor and want to spend 100% of your time working with founders, you should not start your own firm. It is not even remotely close to how you spend all of your time, even if you want to.
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@andrewparker Twilio would be another big win for USV.
Altos would be another example of a firm that is a counter case.
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@dkimerling Absolutely. I'd guess it's like Coinbase (Fred), Twitter (Fred), and Zynga (Fred)? Could also be Mongo (Albert) or Etsy (Albert&Fred)
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Name a VC firm's top 3 deals, and then see if the GP who led them is still there full-time.
I doubt a single major firm would go 3-for-3 (without significant revisionist history on who "led" a deal, like the politics on who led FB at Accel).
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Optimal venture firm tech stack (after trying a lot of providers):
-Bank: Stifel (fund)/ @rhobusiness (portcos)
-Fund Admin: Standish (hated AngelList for this)
-Management Co Accounting: Standish
-Legal: @Orrick
-Taxes: Moss Adams now Baker Tilly (funds)/ personal (@fifteenth_tax)
-CRM: Streak (Hated Affinity and Attio)
-SPVs: @AngelList
-Platform for Portcos: @NotionHQ
-Sourcing: @clay mostly for some outbound
-Brand/logo: @elanmiller
-Website design/pitch decks: @alexbanaga/ EatCaviar dot co (raised three funds with him)
-Payroll: @joinwarp
-401k: Still hate every option but @humaninteresthq sucks the least
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Half the VCs I know are changing their focus areas / investment thesis right now. Feels like a moment of deep reflection - or panic.
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@Bfaviero It’s also irrelevant if you no longer need investors
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ARR is irrelevant if investors just don’t believe in you
Peter Walker@PeterJ_Walker
Fresh data from Silicon Valley Bank on ARR at time of fundraise. Chart is mine but follows their original work which you should read. Google SVB state of markets H1 2026. Seed - Median: $0.22M - 75th pct: $0.77M - 90th pct: $3.6M Massively wide ranges across early stage
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VCs earn more with a $1B fund that returns 2x (poor) than a $200m fund that does a 5x (exceptional).
That is the root of everything that is wrong with VC today.
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@gerstenzang @tmrohan I blame the incentives, up and down the value chain.
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One of the biggest disconnects between founders and VCs today is how much weight VCs place on relative growth instead of absolute growth, and how much the relative benchmarks have increased.
"I'm growing 3x YoY. Why can't I get funded?"
Because multiple competitors are growing 10x.
If all the runners in a race are now Olympian level, a 4 minute mile looks pedestrian, not elite.
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@dkimerling @edsuh The topic of revenue quality seems to have vanished in the exuberance for AI growth.
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I spoke with a VC recently who told me they've done 2x their fund size in SPVs with the same LP base. $90M worth of SPVs, but $45M fund size.
It's a wild concept to me that you can tap your LPs again to double down in your winners.
Sometimes the direct investments outside of the fund exceed the capital LPs put into the fund itself.
Here's how it works:
- GP identifies a breakout winner in the portfolio
- Spins up an SPV to increase ownership
- Invites the existing LP base to participate
- GPs / LPs get to double dip into the best companies
The SPV has a similar structure to the fund (2/20 model) but the management fee is usually waived.
GPs still get the 20% carry upside, while LPs get to increase their odds of seeing a breakout return.
This only works with certain LP bases usually (family offices and HNWI usually).
Are there other GPs who are doing this? If so, what tool are you using for these SPVs?
Genuinely curious to learn more!
Help me amplify so I can reach GPs 🙌
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One of my goals for the new year is to meet as many young, up and coming investors as possible.
Feels like a have a lot to share with, and learn from, this rising generation of managers.
Bryce Roberts@bryce
@ItzSuds I have been doing this for 25yrs. There are windows, like this year, where you can liquidate some of your weaker companies, but those aren’t the ones that will make you rich. The truly great companies will continue to compound in any environment.
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@honam This is a bit of what @reedhastings is working on at his new development.
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The Driver argues he is just doing his job to feed his own starving family. If the farmer shoots him, the bank will just hire another driver.
The Farmer asks who gave the driver orders so he can shoot The Boss.
The Driver explains the boss has orders from The Bank.
The Farmer says he will go to the bank, but the driver explains the bank manager is just an employee following orders from "The East" (orders to make a profit or close down).
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Seeing the issue with Vail Mountain, Epic and Sedgwick, my son said it reminded him of the Grapes of Wrath - people having to deal with the nameless, faceless corporate entity which optimizes for profit - with the human element or soul sucked out of existence. Someone should write a book on what’s happening to the ski industry. This is the scene in Chapter 5 of Steinbeck’s classic...
Ho Nam@honam
It seems @vailmtn punishes customers for making a refund request (for one day due to an injury). The entire 6 day pass is put on hold and the only way to get it active again is to cancel the refund request. Given that we only 2 days left on our vacation we were given no choice but to cancel the refund request to be able to use the pass. We were shunted back and forth between Vail Mountain, Epic and Sedgwick. Corporate take over of skiing at its best.
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one of the best articles on VC is venture lotto by @honam
"Every VC should consider which is more important - building companies or picking deals? If the answer is not obvious, we'd recommend the hedge fund business which is much more lucrative (and scalable) for traders and deal pickers"
venturelotto.com
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QME
Alfred Lin on Sequoia’s best fund (Venture 12: Airbnb, Unity, Dropbox):
- 3 companies returned $1B+ each
- 10 companies returned $100M+
- ~50% written off to zero
VC isn’t about being right most of the time. It’s about owning enough of a few true outliers to make the whole fund. Power law does the rest. h/t: @jaltma
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