If you look at the distribution of outcomes in a venture fund, you will see that it is a classic power law curve, with the best investment in each fund towering over the rest, followed by a few other strong investments, followed by a few other decent ones, and then a long tail of investments that don’t move the needle for the VC fund.
But that long tail is comprised of entrepreneurs and their teams. People who have given years of their lives to a dream that was ultimately not realized.
And as I have written many times over the years on this blog, I spent the majority of my time on that long tail. This is irrational behavior if you think about fund economics, but I believe it is rational behavior if you think about firm reputation.
The best thing you can do for this long tail is find a good home for the portfolio company. That could be everything from a modest acquisition to an acqui-hire. If you have to do a shutdown, then I like to see it done on terms the entrepreneur can live with.
All of these actions require irrational economic behavior from the investor(s). The goal is to get an exit that everyone can feel good about. The goal is not to maximize the VC’s returns from a failed investment. Because it doesn’t matter to the fund economics one bit but it can matter a lot to the entrepreneur and his or her team.
