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Charting Form Ds to roughly see the state of venture capital “fund” raising

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Re: Charting Form Ds to roughly see the state of venture capital “fund” raising

#61

Post by lemonlym »

pringularity wrote: post #56

(I don't think this would change the overall message of the analysis), but one reason why the "Fund I" bump might be so pronounced compared to other reports is because of the "SPV as a service" data that was hinted at in the takeaways. It's very common for these single-asset SPVs to be titled, "[Abbreviation] Fund I" -- but these aren't really the same type of "Fund I" as a multi-security venture fund run by a profes…

One hack to find a lot of these SPV as a service filings is to search "a series of". They do have a formulaic filing process, but from looking into it, adding "fund I" is not part of that. It usually does indicate that its the first syndicate of the parent promoter, but they don't do it for every filing. Here is a search query where you can kind of see the variance: https://www.sec.gov/edgar/search/#/q=a%2520series%2520of&cat...

Re: Charting Form Ds to roughly see the state of venture capital “fund” raising

#62

Post by lemonlym »

dang wrote: post #57

Oof that title. Particularly when the site design is so substantive! I've edited it to use what I think is representative language from the article itself. (This is to allow it to spend more time on HN's frontpage, because the article itself deserves it.)

Hey, thanks for this! Prompted me to take a look at the HN guidelines :).

Re: Charting Form Ds to roughly see the state of venture capital “fund” raising

#63

Post by ewoodrich »

throwaway31131 wrote: post #58
indoordin0saur wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wanted to know what an "XML startup" was so I googled the term and the first result that seems relevant was actually this exact comment lol. I guess this is a phrase of your own invention?

That seemed amazing to me because it would’ve meant Google found the comment, integrated it into thier index, and then made that index available, all within three hours. I know Google is good but are they that good? I googled “xml startup business example” their AI summarized an “xml startup” as “a business using XML as a core technology” and gave the business below as an example startup. https://databridgesolutions.…

I routinely see Google indexed HN comments within one or two hours of posting so not at all surprised by this.

EDIT: In fact I see your comment as the 5th result or so searching "XML Startup" in quotes haha.

Re: Charting Form Ds to roughly see the state of venture capital “fund” raising

#64

Post by novok »

indoordin0saur wrote: post #55
kerblang wrote: post #20

Bubbles are largely a function of finance, not tech; if there is a lot of easy money available, it wants somewhere to go, and any tech will do (recall XML startups...). Interest rates are one of the biggest factors, because of how they create indirect pressure on cash availability (which is the whole point of raising interest rates). Everyone is bracing for tariff recession as well, which may cause a lot of investmen…

I wanted to know what an "XML startup" was so I googled the term and the first result that seems relevant was actually this exact comment lol. I guess this is a phrase of your own invention?

It was definitely a thing during the dot com bubble. It was just so stupid that most probably don't talk about it much nowadays to be indexed. You'd need to somehow restrict your search history to pre 2002

Re: Charting Form Ds to roughly see the state of venture capital “fund” raising

#65

Post by dadrian »

vonneumannstan wrote: post #54
dadrian wrote: post #16

Most Fund I’s are going to be smaller funds, often $9.99MM to allow for a larger number of smaller LPs due to the $10MM threshold from the SEC. Whereas Fund II-IV are going to be considerably bigger, often hundreds of millions of dollars. So a large number of smaller funds falling off won’t make that big of a dent in the total dollars available, but may make it harder to get the smaller initial checks.

What could a fund like this even write checks for? Even the most basic SaaS companies are getting multiple of the entire fund as seed or pre-seed...

The most basic SaaS companies are not raising $10MM at pre-seed, they’re raising $1-3MM at $10-30MM post.

Re: Charting Form Ds to roughly see the state of venture capital “fund” raising

#66

Post by throwaway31131 »

ewoodrich wrote: post #63
throwaway31131 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seemed amazing to me because it would’ve meant Google found the comment, integrated it into thier index, and then made that index available, all within three hours. I know Google is good but are they that good? I googled “xml startup business example” their AI summarized an “xml startup” as “a business using XML as a core technology” and gave the business below as an example startup. https://databridgesolutions.…

I routinely see Google indexed HN comments within one or two hours of posting so not at all surprised by this. EDIT: In fact I see your comment as the 5th result or so searching "XML Startup" in quotes haha.

How interesting. I also tried “XML Startup” with and without personalization and got nothing from hacker news on the first three pages of links. I had no idea there was so much variance on returned results.

Re: Charting Form Ds to roughly see the state of venture capital “fund” raising

#67

Post by pringularity »

lemonlym wrote: post #61
pringularity wrote: post #56

(I don't think this would change the overall message of the analysis), but one reason why the "Fund I" bump might be so pronounced compared to other reports is because of the "SPV as a service" data that was hinted at in the takeaways. It's very common for these single-asset SPVs to be titled, "[Abbreviation] Fund I" -- but these aren't really the same type of "Fund I" as a multi-security venture fund run by a profes…

One hack to find a lot of these SPV as a service filings is to search "a series of". They do have a formulaic filing process, but from looking into it, adding "fund I" is not part of that. It usually does indicate that its the first syndicate of the parent promoter, but they don't do it for every filing. Here is a search query where you can kind of see the variance: https://www.sec.gov/edgar/search/#/q=a%2520series%2…

Yeah I think basically all the ones here with letter/number combos are SPVs. (A lot of the time, they're actually the first two letters of the portfolio company -- would be cool to attempt analysis there!)

https://www.sec.gov/edgar/search/#/q=Fund%2520I%252C%2520a%2...

Re: Charting Form Ds to roughly see the state of venture capital “fund” raising

#68

Post by pringularity »

dadrian wrote: post #16

Most Fund I’s are going to be smaller funds, often $9.99MM to allow for a larger number of smaller LPs due to the $10MM threshold from the SEC. Whereas Fund II-IV are going to be considerably bigger, often hundreds of millions of dollars. So a large number of smaller funds falling off won’t make that big of a dent in the total dollars available, but may make it harder to get the smaller initial checks.

The threshold is actually $12M now! There are some proposals floating around to actually change it to $50M with a 500 LP cap

https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/4431

Re: Charting Form Ds to roughly see the state of venture capital “fund” raising

#70

Post by romanhn »

throwaway31131 wrote: post #58
indoordin0saur wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wanted to know what an "XML startup" was so I googled the term and the first result that seems relevant was actually this exact comment lol. I guess this is a phrase of your own invention?

That seemed amazing to me because it would’ve meant Google found the comment, integrated it into thier index, and then made that index available, all within three hours. I know Google is good but are they that good? I googled “xml startup business example” their AI summarized an “xml startup” as “a business using XML as a core technology” and gave the business below as an example startup. https://databridgesolutions.…

Google is usually pretty on top of fast-changing sources like HN. My mind was blown more when I saw that ChatGPT seemed to ingest and regurgitate an HN comment of mine as an answer within 10-15 minutes of my posting (see the thread in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42649774). Sadly this is no longer verifiable as the answer does not match my comment, but at least it correctly answers the original request, which it did not prior to my response.
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