Given that the goal of venture capital is to make blockbuster amounts of money, it seems problematic to have this discussion without numbers on what the return on investment is for these companies.
That, or the goal of "make blockbuster amounts of money" is a different goal than "make a successful tech company". There is certainly overlap in that Venn diagram, but they are not the same thing.
There are different scales though. It is very hard to turn a $50M investment into a $500M exit. That requires chasing unicorns. But you can find many more opportunities to turn a $1M investment into a $10M return. Same 10x factor, very different investment scale, and also very different portfolios.
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Given that the goal of venture capital is to make blockbuster amounts of money, it seems problematic to have this discussion without numbers on what the return on investment is for these companies.
That, or the goal of "make blockbuster amounts of money" is a different goal than "make a successful tech company". There is certainly overlap in that Venn diagram, but they are not the same thing.
There are different scales though. It is very hard to turn a $50M investment into a $500M exit. That requires chasing unicorns. But you can find many more opportunities to turn a $1M investment into a $10M return. Same 10x factor, very different investment scale, and also very different portfolios.
Should the second set of numbers be different, or is can $1M -> $5M be a 10x return in some way that I'm not aware of?
That was an error, thanks for pointing it out.