At TTCP we are seeing more venture firms both in the U.S. and abroad focus on team succession. There are several probable catalysts for increased succession planning: (1) VCs are finally seeing carry which allows individuals to make way for the next generation of partners; (2) the epicenter of startups has moved from the suburbs…
It has been nearly five weeks since the conclusion of the 2016 Rio Olympic and Paralympic Games, a period of time showcasing 15,000+ athletes from 200+ nations competing in a combined 800+ events across 30+ sports held at 30+ athletic venues. Along with over 3.5 billion people worldwide, we at Top Tier cheered with excitement…
In recent years the rise in prominence of smaller, typically seed stage focused venture funds has transformed the landscape of early stage investing. This rise is driven by many factors, most notably the dramatic decrease in the financial, human, and resource capital required to start and grow companies. At the same time, mobile innovation has…
Upon June’s Brexit decision, TTCP analyzed our UK holdings, comparing the returns and multiples of the country to our other holdings. We shared our findings last month here on the Top Tier blog. As we dug further into the data, we discovered some other interesting geographic trends. We looked at all realized exits in our…
Recently there has been a lot of discussion in the venture capital industry about valuations. Are they too high? Are venture returns still attractive? We’ve all seen the charts showing that pre-money valuations are on the rise year-over-year. We find it difficult to draw comparisons over time because a shift in the nomenclature of funding…
What is Brexit? On June 23rd, Britain voted to exit the European Union, creating the now popular term Brexit. This is akin to Texas voting to leave the United States. Few thought it possible that the Exit camp would win, and many were shocked when they received 52% of the votes. Those in the Remain…
There have been some recent posts and tweets from Fred Wilson, Bill Gurley and others about the first, second and third tier cities for start-ups. While we agree that Silicon Valley is clearly the first tier market, over the past several years we have purposefully invested in what we believe are some of the best…
This is a follow-up on the post we made earlier this week that discusses the difficulty in analyzing past performance of VC funds because of team changes. In that post we said, “[Evaluating] Performance is tricky, however, because you have to carefully focus on the … team that delivered those returns.” As a Limited Partner,…
We were just in the middle of (yet another) healthcare study internally when the news of AbbVie’s $10.2B offer for Stemcentrx came out. This post was already in the works and was going to talk about why we still put about 20% of our investment dollars into the healthcare space (the rest goes to technology…
Top Tier Capital Partners recently sent a venture market survey to a number of our General Partners seeking first-hand insights regarding both their investments and feelings regarding the overall market. The Respondents Of the 75 General Partners that responded, most invest in early stage technology companies with a healthy mix of healthcare mixed into a…