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We have a lot to be thankful for.
Looking great. 2019 and 2020 portfolios are *both* already valued at 2.6-2.8x capital invested.$29.8 M invested to date has grown into $63.5 M of assets under management.AngelList reports our aggregate gross syndicate IRR over the entire life of UV at 76.9%.
Looking Back: what did we say that came to fruition?Team Building and DiversityLooking Ahead: metrics that matter Question: are there too many syndicates?
Links to noteworthy posts over the last year.
OUR PORTFOLIO FOUNDERS. Thank you to all of our incredible portfolio Founders and CEOs who allowed us to invest in their companies, and have worked like crazy to build their dreams into realities. Particularly in the current market, where capital is abundant, Founders have endless choices of investors to take money from. Thank you to our 111 portfolio companies for choosing us, and for allowing us to ride along as a small part of their journeys.
OUR LPS. Thank you to all of our 2417 syndicate LPs and 94 LPs who have entrusted us with your capital. There are endless places to invest your money: dozens of asset classes, thousands of VC firms, and hundreds of syndicates and funds just on AngelList to choose from. Thank you for choosing us.
OUR SCOUTS AND GUEST LEADS. As you know, we with our LPs, Portfolio Founders, and friends - for their assistance and expertise in identifying, assessing, and negotiating one or more of our investments. Thank you to our extended family of contributors who have helped us do more than we would have been able to on our own:
OUR TEAM. Since our last annual update, we’ve had 5 new team members join us: Thibault Reichelt, Chris Murphy, Declan Kelly, Alex Correia, and Sergii Zhuk - all of whom have been extraordinary and helped us expand our investing activity while keeping the quality high. Thank you to all of our team members for helping to build UV into something bigger, better, and more impactful than Peter would be able to on his own.
THE ANGELLIST TEAM, who makes the magic happen behind the scenes. Special thanks in particular to Rajeev Jotwani, our manager within AngelList, who is absolutely *AMAZING.* He really works wonders for us, and is instrumental to our operations at UV.
THE MARKET. We’d like to think we’ve made some good picks, but let’s be honest: the recent bull market has lifted everyone. Loved this meme: ()
This leans positive. This report is going out to a lot of people (>2400 LPs), and it’s not appropriate to share negative information about our companies so publicly (but the company-specific updates do share mixed news). Furthermore, VC is a game where only the extreme positive outcomes have a meaningful impact on portfolio performance - so let’s focus on those.
There may be errors here. All of the portfolio tracking is done by Peter and checked by the team with a spreadsheet. It’s very possible we got something wrong. If you notice an error, please let us know. We strive to make this as accurate as possible.
Startup valuation is tricky and complex. Different people do it in different ways. We explain our methodology in the appendix. You may disagree with it. You are welcome to run your own analysis and arrive at your own conclusions, using the raw data.
The only thing that actually matters is cash on cash returns. But in startup investing, those take a long time to materialize. The intent of this analysis is to estimate how we are doing in the short term, to evaluate if we are on the right track. You can’t take any of these numbers to the bank.
Highlight a few investments that are doing particularly well.Statistics about how our companies are performing.
We re-formatted this table from past reports for simplicity. If you’d like to see granular deal by deal portfolio movement - see the .We split TVPI by deals, dollars, and fund because we raise a different amount of money for each investment. “Dollars” means relative to cash invested. “Deals” means that if you invested exactly the same amount in every deal, this is your effective TVPI. “Fund” is how our rolling fund is tracking. We self calculate our TVPI, and you can find our methodology for calculating it in the appendix.
Unpopular Ventures: Annual Report 2021
Unpopular Ventures: Annual Report 2021
August 2021
Unpopular LPs,
Welcome to the third annual update for Unpopular Ventures. Here’s what you will find:
1. GRATITUDE
2. PORTFOLIO PERFORMANCE
3. STRATEGY UPDATE
4. PAST CONTENT
Thank you for all your support, and for the trust you have placed in us. Looking forward to many more exciting investments together, for many years to come.
Sincerely,
Reminder: you can back our for broad access to our portfolio, which co-invests in every new company we invest in. Rolling Fund LPs also receive preferential access to limited-allocation deals.
1. GRATITUDE
—————————————————————————————————————————
We have a lot to be thankful for, so we’d like to start this update with a bit of gratitude. Thank you to:
Aaron Samuels, Alex Kwon, Ali Jamal, Aline Lerner, Anish Acharya, Anthony Bertrand, Anton Borzov, Arjun Bhagat, Ashley Flucas, Bill Lynch, Brad Flora, Brian Nichols, Chad Byers, Chris Bergerud, Mo Amdani, Cyril Berdugo, Daniel Gould, David Adams, Derya Baris, Dileep Thazhmon, Dilraj Ghumman, Ed Roman, Evan Moore, Gilbert Gong, Gyan Kapur, Hiro Tien, Ivan Montoya, James Graham, Jared Fliesler, Jimmy Lee, Jon Hallet, Jonathan Wasserstrum, Kevin Moore, Kim Diocampo, Krishan Allen, Leonard Lynch, Marcus Stack, Matthew Dellavedova, Nathan Lustig, Neil Arora, Omar Haroun, Richard Lin, Roger Cawdette, Rohit Taneja, Ryan Li, Sajid Rahman, Sri Pangulur, Steven Coulis, The >Capital Team, Tommy Leep, Vaibhav Domkundwar, Will Babler, Zach Kruth, and Zak Holdsworth.
We would be 1/10th the size we are, if we didn’t have all of your support.
Our mark-to-market returns over the past 2.5 years have been better than expected, and extremely high for historical VC industry norms. But it’s not unique to us; most managers have seen exceptional recent returns. Time will tell if this continues, but we should at least be grateful for what we’ve had.
2. PORTFOLIO PERFORMANCE
—————————————————————————————————————————-
For the first time, it’s not that early anymore. Our mark-to-market returns are excellent.
TVPI on dollars invested for 2019, 2020, and 2021 are 2.6x, 2.8x, and 1.1x. We have invested $29.8 M of principal, which has grown into $63.5 M of assets under management.
—————————————————————————————————————————-
Before discussing our returns further, we have a few DISCLAIMERS:
If you are a major LP of Unpopular Ventures, have invested at least $250k to date, and are willing to sign an NDA, we will share the complete portfolio data with you. Please submit a request via this form:
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With that out of the way, we’ll break this into 2 sections:
Note that in past years, we talked about follow on investors too. You likely know by now that a LOT of our companies have been followed by Tier 1 VCs. We have at least 4 where we co-invested with or were followed by Sequoia, 3 with A16Z, and a ton more with Founders Fund, Initialized, First Round, Craft, Floodgate, General Catalyst, Tiger, Hedosophia, Index, CRV, Tribe, etc. - among many more that are widely considered Tier 1 as well. In the interest of brevity, we will stop there.
A. PORTFOLIO HIGHLIGHTS
Here, we’ll highlight a few of our companies that we think are making particularly good progress. Some remain confidential - so we have redacted identifying info.
[Confidential]: we have one company that we invested in in 2020, that recently signed a term sheet for a $50 M Series B at 50x the valuation we originally invested on, and a ~30x markup net of dilution. The individual VC Partner leading the round is a very famous Midas-list VC. Our investment here is now already worth >1x all the money we invested in 2020. [update in September: the and the company is Jeeves]
[Confidential]: we have another company that we invested in in 2020 that just raised additional capital at a 22x higher valuation, and a ~17x markup net of dilution. Thanks to our Partner Thibault Reichelt for leading this investment.
is a GitHub-like platform for business knowledge and documents. We were one of the biggest checks ($350k) into their first round, and they just closed a huge Series A on a 14x higher post money valuation from a major Tier 1 VC. Thanks to Kevin Moore for sourcing this investment, and to Brad Flora for co-leading the syndicate.
is an Open Banking API for Latin America. We originally invested in early 2020, were followed by Founders Fund on a higher valuation, and the company recently closed a $43 M Series B from a very famous Tier 1 VC on a 14x higher post money valuation. Thanks to our Partner Thibault Reichelt for sourcing and leading this investment.
is a rental car delivery service that makes it as easy to rent a car as it is to order an Uber. We invested in them 5 times on progressively higher valuations, and they are now closing a huge Series A on a 19x higher post money valuation than our original investment. Thanks to Gilbert Gong for sourcing this investment. is building “DoorDash/Instacart for Pakistan.” We originally invested in their Series A in 2019, and they just raised $85 M on a 6x higher post money valuation []. Thanks to Evan Moore for sourcing this investment.
makes innovative outdoor furniture, delivered DTC, and is growing insanely fast. We invested in their Series A in 2020, and they just closed a huge Series B on an >8x higher valuation.
is building “FedEx for LatAm.” We originally invested in their seed round, and were recently followed by Kaszek and Prosus (fka. Naspers) in their Series B [] on a much higher valuation. Thanks to Anish Acharya for the original tip to check out this company (uncompensated) and to Ed Roman for co-leading the syndicate.
is a GPT-3-powered copywriting tool. Peter invested personally in their first round on $6 M post (before we had a rolling fund), we as UV invested further in their seed round, we were followed by Craft Ventures and Sequoia on a higher valuation [], and they recently closed a Series A from a tier 1 VC on a 4.6x higher valuation than our UV investment.
makes an expense management platform for global startups. We were their first investor after YC, were the largest investor in their first 2 rounds, and they recently raised a from A16Z plus an additional $100 M of debt - at a dramatically higher valuation.
is a “Super App'' for Francophone Africa’s 430 M population across 29 countries. We were one of the biggest checks into their seed round in mid 2019, were the first check into them during YC, and they recently signed a term sheet from a Tier 1 VC for a large Series A on a much higher valuation than our original investment. Thanks to our Partner Thibault Reichelt for co-leading this investment.
(formerly known as Cardea) makes infrastructure for modern hiring. We were one of the biggest investors in their pre seed, and they recently closed a seed round led by Backend capital on a much higher valuation. Thanks to our Partner Thibault for leading this investment.
is a digital thrift store for Gen Z. We invested in their seed and seed+ rounds, and they then closed an at a much higher valuation. Thanks to Aaron Michel for sourcing this investment (uncompensated to avoid conflicts).
(prev. KiranaKart) is building “Instacart for India.” We were able to get a small $25k check from our rolling fund into their seed round right after YC (couldn’t syndicate it because the round was too competitive) in Feb 2021. They already raised a Series A at a higher price, and are now in the midst of closing a huge Series B on a 17x higher post money valuation than our investment. Thanks to our Partner Thibault for leading this investment.
is building “cloud kitchens in LatAm.” We invested $400k in their seed round in 2020, and they just signed a term sheet with a top 3 VC for their Series A on a much higher valuation. Thanks to Ashley Flucas for inviting us to co-lead this syndicate with her.
We have A LOT more companies that are doing GREAT, but we are keeping this short in the interest of brevity. The above mentioned ones are just some of the more dramatic markups we’ve had so far. Also, a lot of our new team members’ investments are doing extraordinarily well, but not enough time has passed to see the markups yet (most companies take 1-2 years or longer to reach the next round). We expect to be able to share a lot more about our new team members’ successful investments in future updates.
B. STATISTICS
We’ll lead with the numbers, with commentary further below:
Column 1
2019
2020
2021 (partial)
Total to Date
Principal Invested (after fees)
$4.9 M
$12.1 M
$12.8 M
$29.8 M
Current Value (AUM)
$13.1 M
$35.7 M
$14.8 M
$63.5 M
# of Investments
24
50
74
148
# of New Co’s
22
34
55
111
# of follow ons in existing co’s
2
16
19
37
# that were fund-only or exclusive to fund LPs (fka “UV Preferred”)
0
7
26
33
TVPI (total value to paid in capital) - self reported (see appendix for methodology)
TVPI on Deals
2.29x
3.07x
1.27x
2.05x
TVPI on Dollars
2.59x
2.86x
1.13x
2.08x
TVPI on Fund
-
-
1.27x
1.27x
IRR (internal rate of return) - reported by AngelList (lags)
Gross IRR
76.9%
Net of Carry
63.8%
There are no rows in this table
More color on this data:
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