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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

#71

Post by kerblang »

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?

I swear it was a thing

But I find this terribly funny, so, thanks

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

#72

Post by bryceacc »

programjames wrote: post #36
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…

Bracing for tariffs starting two years ago?

what tariffs started two years ago? And how might those compare to the current tariffs being threatened/pulled/enabled in the past few months?

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

#73

Post by dadrian »

pringularity wrote: post #68
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

Oh nice! That's probably reasonable, although I am pro keeping the accredited investor requirement.

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

#74

Post by piker »

Havoc wrote: post #17

I'm in an adjacent space so quite interesting to me. Couple of concerns: 1) This Fund+Roman Numeral notation is universal among funds. Meaning this data isn't VC. It's use of fund structures. Real estate, PE, private credit maybe bit of hedge funds etc...and yes also VC. 2) Filling trends are affected by jurisdiction fashions so to speak. One of the big fund jurisdiction makes a small rule tweak and everything pivots…

1) Form D provides a classification response that indicates if the vehicle is a VC fund. Seems like a good fix here.

2) jurisdiction won’t matter if it’s offered into the U.S. it needs to file a Form D (or rely on other exemptions).

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

#75

Post by yowlingcat »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #59
Havoc wrote: post #17

I'm in an adjacent space so quite interesting to me. Couple of concerns: 1) This Fund+Roman Numeral notation is universal among funds. Meaning this data isn't VC. It's use of fund structures. Real estate, PE, private credit maybe bit of hedge funds etc...and yes also VC. 2) Filling trends are affected by jurisdiction fashions so to speak. One of the big fund jurisdiction makes a small rule tweak and everything pivots…

I am in this space. Most funds don’t have “fund” in the name. (And VCs have, anecdotally, tended to use Arabic over Roman numerals, the latter being the domain of PE and RE.) Also, there is multiple counting with this method because you will have collections of GPs, funds, SPVs, co-invests, feeders, et cetera , all with the same fund + [Roman numeral] format. What you may be measuring is the formation of naïve funds.…

Agree with your broader point but have the stupidest point to persecute (arabic vs roman numerals) -- anecdotally seeing a lot of our investor base raise their next funds (all VCs) they have all been roman numeral named for some reason. Is this an east coast vs west coast thing or is it just a luck of the draw thing

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

#76

Post by rocketslide09 »

Interesting to see how Form D filings track shifts in fundraising activity. From our experience, founders are also adapting their pitch deck narratives depending on whether capital is flowing or tight. It’s fascinating how much presentation strategy mirrors these macro trends.

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

#77

Post by editorializing »

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.)

> Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize.

You seem to be editorializing because of your bias and financial interest in YC. "No one is talking about" is an idiom you allow onto the front page relatively frequently (check Algolia), and you allow speculation pointing up for industry trends.

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

#78

Post by programjames »

bryceacc wrote: post #72
programjames wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bracing for tariffs starting two years ago?

what tariffs started two years ago? And how might those compare to the current tariffs being threatened/pulled/enabled in the past few months?

You misinterpreted my comment.

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

#79

Post by dang »

editorializing wrote: post #77
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.)

> Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize. You seem to be editorializing because of your bias and financial interest in YC. "No one is talking about" is an idiom you allow onto the front page relatively frequently (check Algolia), and you allow speculation pointing up for industry trends.

The key word in your post is "seem". Not possible to argue against that! But we can look at data here, at least:

> "No one is talking about" is an idiom you allow onto the front page relatively frequently

I just went through all cases of this since April 2014, when we started logging these things. During that time, only two such titles spent more than an hour on HN's front page.

In one of those two cases, we edited the title to make it less baity: A tech antitrust problem no one is talking about: US broadband providers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24967472 - Nov 2020. (Submitted title was "The tech antitrust problem no one is talking about".)

You have to go back to June 2015 to find a "no one is talking about" which spent more than an hour on HN's frontpage without getting mod-edited: How for-profit prisons have become the biggest lobby no one is talking about - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9749393 - June 2015. (Still not sure how I would edit that one.)

In all other cases, mods either edited out "no one is talking about", or users flagged it off the front page so quickly that mods probably never saw it. That happened 3 times, btw; here they are if anyone is curious:

The Internet's Time Is Flawed–Why No One Is Talking About It - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43054616 - Feb 2025 (23 minutes on the frontpage)

Browser Permissions on Android: What No One Is Talking About - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23556055 - June 2020 (38 minutes on the frontpage)

The Crisis No One Is Talking About - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17175969 - May 2018 (14 minutes on the frontpage)

Over this time period (i.e. since April 2014), users submitted 4.3M articles to HN. Of those, 392k appeared on the front page. Everyone can decide for themselves what counts as "relatively frequent", but to my mind, 1 or 2 cases (or 5 if you really want to stretch it) out of 392k titles over 11 years doesn't clear that bar.

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