The Kauffman Foundation, which has ties to the venture industry, has issued a damning study of the business that addresses long-running concerns about poor performance and concludes that the limited partners who invest in funds have no one but themselves to blame.
The report, “We Have Met The Enemy…And He Is Us,” draws on lessons from 20 years of investing in venture capital by the foundation, which currently has about $249 million of its $1.83 billion portfolio allocated to venture. The Kansas City, Mo.-based organization promotes entrepreneurship and education, and is known in the venture world for creating the Kauffman Fellowship to train venture capitalists, a program that it spun out in 2003.
Many of the foundation’s criticisms of venture capital will be familiar to people who have watched the industry for the last decade as it has generally failed to produce promised returns. Looking into its portfolio of nearly 100 VC funds, including what it says are some of the most notable and exclusive names (confidentiality agreements barred it from naming them), the foundation found that only 20 of them beat a public-market equivalent by more than 3% annually, and half of those started investing before 1995.
Insiders have long known that only a few funds really outperform while the rest deliver mediocre returns or lose
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