Venture Capital Newsletter
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Venture Capital Newsletter Newsletter Vol. 1 25/05/2018 Cass M&A and PE Society I NSIDE VENTURE Getting Started CAPITAL By Albert Steffes 1. Introduction to VC The Cass M&A and PE Society of Cass Business School is delighted to present the very first Venture Capital Newsletter. 2. Exclusive Interview: Stasher Since 2017, the society has expanded its field expertise and established a separate Venture Capital (VC) department with a 3. Crazy Softbank Funding Head of VC. The prerogative being that it is quite different to other types of Private Equity and therefore requires a different 4. Promising Tech Start-Ups: approach and focus. Wrisk, Coinfirm & ProSapient We would like to give keen students the chance to dig deeper into this field and explore it as a career path, and introducing it as a financing option for upcoming Entrepreneurs among the Cass community. This newsletter will provide students with interesting articles “The biggest secret in on VC topics, exclusive interviews with Venture Capitalists and venture capital is that the Entrepreneurs, and ultimately the hottest news and trends in best investment in a the industry. successful fund equals or We hope the reader will find this newsletter informative and outperforms the entire rest enjoyable to read while arousing curiosity. of the fund combined.” For further information or enquiries, please reach out to the -Peter Thiel- contact persons at the end of this newsletter. The Cass M&A and PE Society hope you enjoy the reading and that it provides you with new insight. Let us get started – take a deep breath and let us immerse ourselves in the world of Venture Capital… Venture Capital - Newsletter Page 2 Introduction to Venture Capital By Albert Steffes Venture Capital – a word itself that triggers excitement from readers, “Venture capital is respect from fellow investors, and a hopeful awe from on-going about 0.02% of the U.S. Entrepreneurs. This article will look to clear the smoke screen often held economy invested, and between Venture Capitalists and those on the outside. We want to reveal it accounts for 11% of the nature of Venture Capital, its characteristics, the key players, and total U.S. jobs and 21% eventually finish with current trends and examples. U.S. economic output. And the reason why is A dictionary definition “Venture capital (VC) is a type of private equity, a because these form of financing that is provided by firms or funds to small, early-stage, companies can get emerging firms that are deemed to have high growth potential, or which very big, very quickly.” have demonstrated high growth”. -Juan Enriquez- As part of Private Equity, Venture Capital invests in private companies in exchange for equity. However, Venture Capital is quite different compared to the common term of Private Equity, with later-stage funds (i.e. buyout funds) being the largest group. More specifically, VC firms are investing in early-stage companies (i.e. start-ups) that are very restricted regarding funding due to the high risk of failing and a limited track record or profits. VC firms are financial intermediaries who are collecting money from investors (LPS – Limited Partners) and investing it into private companies on behalf of the investors. The biggest group of such investors are pension funds, university endowments, foundations, insurance companies or very wealthy investors. As the second word within Venture Capital already assumes, the main objective of VC firms is to maximize the return on the invested capital. In order to understand the structure of a VC fund, it is San Francisco – the melting pot of VC. important to be aware of all the key players and their incentives. Venture Capital - Newsletter Page 3 VC Structure The main investment vehicle, the VC fund, is structured as a Limited Liability Corporation (LLC) governed by partnership agreement covenants of finite life - usually with a 7-10 year harvest period. This means that after a defined number of years, the fund is required to return the proceeds from investments to investors. The investors, as mentioned above, are Limited Partners (LPs). Hence, they are only liable with their invested capital. On average, it takes 3-4 years until the committed capital is fully invested. The Venture Capital partners are the core of VC funds and in industry jargon called General Partners (GPs). Their responsibilities include raising and managing these venture funds, making investment decisions, helping their portfolio companies to exit and as the most time-consuming part, acting as advisors to the portfolio companies. They usually sit on several boards of various portfolio companies/start-ups at the same time. These portfolio companies receive financing, strategic advice and help in various ways to grow in exchange for shares of preferred equity in their companies. From a generalized point of view, there are 3 types of VCs: 1. The domain (industry) expert who possesses of a deep knowledge of the industry. 2. The operator who holds a long track record of growing and scaling companies. 3. The networker who is well connected and can introduce start-ups to important contacts. And of course, some excellent VCs will provide all of the above! Given the variety in background, it is difficult to generalize VCs to a certain stereotype. However, three career paths are quite common in order to break into VC: The first group consists of former Entrepreneurs who have successfully proofed how to run and scale a business, or even failed but got the whole operational experience and start-up exposure. These people would mostly cover the operational side or provide domain expertise. The second group consists of former consultants and investment bankers with management/corporate finance background. Since the word Venture Capital still contains the word “capital”, finance professionals are crucial to make those VC deals. Venture Capital - Newsletter Page 4 The third group is formed by previous professionals working in operations or a certain product group (i.e. Ads & Search product manager at Google). This is also a reason why VC attracts broadly MBA students that have prior experience in those roles. In most of those previous corporate roles, the positions and hierarchy are determined meticulously and the timing is predictable – for instance in investment banking, you will be commonly promoted from an analyst to an associate in 2-3 years’ time. How does it work in Venture Capital? Since VC firms are small organizations, the hierarchy is quite flat and positions vary from fund to firm to region to the team. In general, the The notorious open office work places. junior positions at a VC fund are analyst and associates. They will do most of the due diligence, attending conferences and screen potential investment opportunities. The next positions are then VP, Principal and eventually Partner. The more senior members are spending most of their time on the boards of the portfolio companies, providing them with support (see 3 types of VCs) and making the final investment decisions for the fund. “One of the cautionary However, this structure differs among VCs. lessons of VC is, if you What are the chances of landing a job in VC? don’t invest on the basis of serious flaws, you It is notoriously hard to break into VC – even harder than IB for the bigger don’t invest in most of VC funds since there are fewer positions, the employee attrition rate is the big winners.” lower and open job positions are rarely advertised, but rather circulated within the network. Hence, VC job seekers have to continuously screen the -Marc Andreessen- industry for such opportunities since the application windows are short. Investments Outside of VC the myth is that VCs are watching out primarily for exceptional founders with great ideas. Although this is a key ingredient, the key to success lies often in the industry. Given that over 70% of start-ups fail or die, investments in fast growing industries are more important in most cases in order to mitigate this risk. Moreover, VC investments in high- growth segments are likely to have more exit opportunities because investment bankers are continually looking for new high-growth companies to bring to market. Therefore, the idea is to invest in a company’s expected EBIT multiplied by their expected value in 5-7 years’ time. This is no easy task, particular when bearing in mind that over 70% of start-ups end up failing! However, when looking at one of the investments that does materialise, an ‘exit’ culminates when a company reaches sufficient size that it can be sold to a corporation (trade sale) or be brought to the public market providing liquidity (IPO). So, VC operates in a niche market where “What are your 3-Years financial projections?” traditional, low-cost financing is unavailable. Remember: Banks mostly finance new businesses only when there are hard assets against which to secure the debt. Venture Capital - Newsletter Page 5 So what stage has a start-up to reach until VCs are willing to provide funds? VCs focus primarily on the middle part of the classic industry S-curve. They avoid both the very early stages, when technologies and market demand are uncertain, and the later stages, with competitive shakeouts, consolidations, mature businesses and decreasing growth rates. By Kmuehmel: Startup_financing_cycle.JPG VCs invest to fund internal growth of companies having demonstrated early sales and a minimum rather through external. According to a study, viable product. Series A marks the first institutional approximately 80% of the money invested by VCs round. Following investment rounds are called Series goes into building the infrastructure required to B, Series C and so on. This is where most companies grow the business - manufacturing, marketing, grow rapidly and require a significant amount of sales, fixed assets and working capital.