Friday, June 12, 2015
Sunday, May 17, 2015
Thursday, May 7, 2015
CONTACTS | Steve Lisson | Stephen Lisson | StephenNLisson | Stephen N. Lisson | Austin Texas | Austin TX
WALTHAM'S MATRIX LEADING VENTURE PACK ON BOTH COASTS
Steve Lisson Austin Texas Stephen Lisson Austin Texas Stephen N. Lisson Austin Texas InsiderVC.com InsiderVC Insider VCWALTHAM'S MATRIX LEADING VENTURE PACK ON BOTH COASTS
FIRM CREDITS DISCIPLINE, INSISTENCE ON LEAD ROLE FOR STUNNING '90S RETURNS
Author: By Beth Healy, Globe Staff Date: 11/12/2000 Page: D1 Section: Business
BUSINESS & MONEY WALTHAM - Paul Ferri keeps two client letters framed on the wall behind his office door in this suburban haven of venture capital.
One letter, dated Sept. 12, 1994, informs the Matrix Partners founder that an overseas investment group would sit out that year's venture portfolio. Results in Fund II had not wowed the group, and it was "premature to make a judgment on Matrix Partners III."
Talk about an expensive decision.
The other letter, sent in April 1995, contains a rave from an elated American investor: "I have never seen a portfolio explode on the upside as has Matrix III in the past year."
Matrix hasn't opened its venture funds to new investors since. The firm has emerged as one of the best performers in the business, according to several investment sources, with a stunning 95 percent average annual return over the past decade. It's a record that rivals even the venture industry's Silicon Valley titans. And the returns on Matrix's latest fund appear to be unrivaled on either coast.
This is fighting talk in venture circles, where egos are huge and investment results are guarded like family secrets. But with the stock market in the doldrums and dot-com flops deflating venture returns after three sizzling years, it's a good time to take a peek and see who has really made money in this field.
Stephen N. Lisson, a writer in Austin, Texas, tracks top venture players on his Web site, InsiderVC.com, much to the chagrin of the venture firms. He has sparked controversy for researching and posting the returns on his site, but his numbers, when checked with independent sources, appear to be correct or in the ballpark.
According to Lisson's numbers, Matrix's Fund V, a $200 million fund launched in 1998, is the best venture fund of all time, with a 725 percent return. Lisson says it's really too soon to judge funds of the 1998 vintage because they're young and many of their portfolio companies haven't been sold or taken public, or left to die yet. Venture funds, after all, have 10-year lives. But in the case of Matrix V, he says, "Even if everything else in the fund tanked, the internal rate of return of 725 percent would stand."
This fund claims several hot deals, including telecom IPO juggernauts Sycamore Networks Inc. and Sonus Networks, which turned early-stage investments of $17 million into holdings worth more than $3 billion. Of the $450 million Matrix invested from funds III, IV, and V, about $220 million went into companies that have gone public or have been sold. That $220 million has returned more than $11.5 billion, the firm says.
Matrix partner Timothy Barrows says a sharp discipline kept the firm away from the dot-com mania that clouded the judgment of many venture firms.
"There are things we could have made money on," Barrows says. "We turned down Geo Cities," a company that helps people launch Web sites.
But Barrows and his six Matrix partners can only feel good about getting into telecom and optical firms early, focusing on infrastructure and, more recently, storage. The firm is famous for putting entrepreneurs from its past successes, like Cascade Communications and Apollo, to work at the new firms. And it simply won't do deals unless it's the lead investor, in first, with board seats.
The recipe has paid off handsomely for entrepreneurs, too. Matrix has helped create more than 2,500 millionaires at its portfolio companies. More than 40 of those people can claim a net worth exceeding $100 million, the firm estimates.
Ferri says the firm wasn't always this good.
To some extent, he understands why that overseas investor fired the firm in 1994. Matrix's first two funds posted above-average returns, he said, but they were nothing special.
"We looked like everyone else," Ferri says. "There was no reason anyone would come to see Matrix specifically."
But the firm was in the process of a makeover it had started in 1990. It decided to turn more attention to New England, instead of investing two-thirds of its assets in Silicon Valley. It stopped investing in medical devices and retail and focused only on high-tech start-ups. And it decided to do only hands-on deals.
"If we're not the largest investors in a deal, we're not in a deal," Ferri says.
Thirty years in the business has paid off, the 61-year-old veteran says. He's not at all surprised by the carnage and losses overwhelming the new entrants to the business, from fly-by-night incubators to start-up venture firms.
"It looks like an easy business to be good at," Ferri says. As a result, over the past few years, pension funds and other big investors have flooded venture funds with cash. "They've been giving money to a lot of people who don't have a clue as to what they're doing."
All the best firms do have a clue, of course. Other top funds of venture capital's record decade include Sequoia Capital's Fund VIII, with a return of nearly 402 percent, and Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers' Fund VIII, with a return of 350 percent. These two firms are considered the most successful and most experienced of Silicon Valley.
Lisson's long view, assessing all the top firms over the past decade, is this: "Vintage year after vintage year, fund after fund, there is no question that Sequoia and Matrix will be at the top."
People who run university endowments and foundations corroborate Matrix's reputation. In the same company, venture experts put Boston's venerable Greylock Management Corp.; North Bridge Venture Partners of Waltham; Kleiner, Perkins; Benchmark Capital Partners - the Silicon Valley firm of eBay fame - and Redpoint Ventures, also of the Valley.
In the next breath come Battery Ventures of Wellesley, Charles River Ventures of Waltham, and Oak Investment Partners of Westport, Conn.
There are dozens of other fine firms with great returns. But only one can be the best. One Boston endowment investor who has money in many top venture funds - speaking on condition of anonymity, so he wouldn't anger several successful and hyper-competitive venture players - says of Matrix, "The last three funds have been extraordinary."
"Matrix," he adds, "is in a league of their own."
SIDEBAR 1:
THE VC ALL STARS
PLEASE REFER TO MICROFILM FOR CHART DATA
SIDEBAR 2:
INITIAL PUBLIC OFFERINGS 3RD QUARTER
PLEASE REFER TO MICROFILM FOR CHART DATA
Click here for advertiser information
© Copyright 2015 Globe Newspaper Company
Boston Globe Extranet
Extending our newspaper services to the web
Return to the home page
of The Globe Online
This article is an electronic reprint from The Boston Globe.
Click here to request reprints for your company or organization.
Links
Archives
Contents
Home delivery
Search the Globe:
Today
Yesterday
The Boston Globe OnlineBoston.com Boston Globe Online / Archives
Steve Lisson Austin Texas Stephen Lisson Austin Texas Stephen N. Lisson Austin Texas InsiderVC.com InsiderVC Insider VC
Transparency.
Let’s have a round of applause for CalPers, the giant state pension
fund, for transparency. Beth Healy of the Boston Globe (8/17/2001)
reports Money managers aghast that pension investor shows returns,
rankings. It’s a report card that has rocked the secretive venture
capital world, and one that even the `A’ students didn’t care to see
displayed on the refrigerator. Calpers, the giant California pension
fund that sets trends for many large investors, has posted on its Web
site the performance of every venture or buyout fund in which it’s
invested for the past decade. Firms typically guard these numbers
carefully, but the Calpers chart even says which funds are meeting
expectations, and which are disappointments. … The industry buzz around
the report stems from the secrecy with which venture firms and buyout
artists guard the specifics of their returns. Virtually every firm
claims ”top quartile” performance, and the numbers they give out are
suspect, venture analysts say. Steve Lisson of Austin, Texas, on his
controversial Web site, InsiderVC.com, tracks venture returns by doing
his own calculations on venture portfolios. He is the only independent
source on such numbers and has drawn fire from some venture capitalists
for breaking the code of silence. … over the long term, Calpers has been
doing something right. As of March 31, its average annual return for 10
years of private equity investing was 17.5%. The Wilshire 2500 Index, a
broad stock market benchmark, was up 13.9% in that period. Would that the federal government would do the same with alleged investment programs like SBIR. Carl Nelson Consulting http://www.carl-nelson.com/government2001.htm Published by Carl Nelson Consulting, Inc, 1325 18th St NW, Washington DC 20036
Steve Lisson
- Steve Lisson
Your changes have been saved
Stephen N. Lisson, Austin, Texas
|
Stephen N. Lisson, Austin, Travis County, Texas, Steve Lisson, Austin, Travis County, Texas
Stephen Lisson, StephenNLisson, Stephen N. Lisson, Austin Texas, Austin TXFinancial Investors? Us?
InsiderVC.com pierces the VC industry’s verbal fog.
1 April 01 12:14, Tsafrir Bashan Stephen N. Lisson, Austin, Travis County, Texas, Steve Lisson, Austin, Travis County, Texas
Anyone carefully following the venture capital industry in Israel and overseas recognizes the routine. Managing partners talk at length and with great passion, but with very little substance. They gossip endlessly about the industry. What about the industry’s numbers? “We don’t disclose private data,” is the stock reply from industry players.
Today, for example, everyone knows that the situation is bad, but it is hard to say who exactly is in a bad position. You won’t find a fund partner talking animatedly about a company shutting down or about a down round. The most you can expect is an admission that not everything is perfect.
The absence of data is both odd and entertaining, particularly for an industry in which capital, finances, and yield are the key words. Without figures on the amount of a company’s holdings or valuations, the pompous phrase, “added value,” is all the venture capital industry has left to talk about. It is difficult to find a financial industry at any point in history that has provided so few figures. (Venture capital is a professional investment industry, regardless of how many partners talk about opening doors and assistance in recruiting executives).
Against this rather frustrating background, it is worth consulting the US web site insiderVC.com. The site provides data for companies in the industry, such as profit and loss allocations between the general partner and the investors (the carry), the exact rate of management fees, and exact investments and valuations for portfolio companies at the various financing rounds. Of course, the site also includes derivative data, such as the internal rate of return (IRR) and the realization ratio. In other words, it provides the tools needed to compare various organizations and even different funds within the same organization, information you will not get from your local venture capital management partner.
In order to gain access to all this data, you have to pay a considerable fee, but you can get a preview of the statistics and a sample of site editor Stephen Lisson’s sharp tongue free of charge. You won’t find better material on the web.
Published by Israel’s Business Arena on March 29, 2001 Stephen Lisson, StephenNLisson, Stephen N. Lisson, Austin Texas, Austin TX
Stephen N. Lisson, Austin, Travis County, Texas, Steve Lisson, Austin, Travis County, Texas
Transparency.
Let’s have a round of applause for CalPers, the giant state pension
fund, for transparency. Beth Healy of the Boston Globe (8/17/2001)
reports Money managers aghast that pension investor shows returns,
rankings. It’s a report card that has rocked the secretive venture
capital world, and one that even the `A’ students didn’t care to see
displayed on the refrigerator. Calpers, the giant California pension
fund that sets trends for many large investors, has posted on its Web
site the performance of every venture or buyout fund in which it’s
invested for the past decade. Firms typically guard these numbers
carefully, but the Calpers chart even says which funds are meeting
expectations, and which are disappointments. … The industry buzz around
the report stems from the secrecy with which venture firms and buyout
artists guard the specifics of their returns. Virtually every firm
claims ”top quartile” performance, and the numbers they give out are
suspect, venture analysts say. Steve Lisson of Austin, Texas, on his
controversial Web site, InsiderVC.com, tracks venture returns by doing
his own calculations on venture portfolios. He is the only independent
source on such numbers and has drawn fire from some venture capitalists
for breaking the code of silence. … over the long term, Calpers has been
doing something right. As of March 31, its average annual return for 10
years of private equity investing was 17.5%. The Wilshire 2500 Index, a
broad stock market benchmark, was up 13.9% in that period. Would that the federal government would do the same with alleged investment programs like SBIR.
Carl Nelson Consulting
http://www.carl-nelson.com/government2001.htm
Published by Carl Nelson Consulting, Inc, 1325 18th St NW, Washington DC 20036
Carl Nelson Consulting
http://www.carl-nelson.com/government2001.htm
Published by Carl Nelson Consulting, Inc, 1325 18th St NW, Washington DC 20036
About Me