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University of Texas Roundtable on Recent Trends in U.S. Venture Capital
Author(s) -
Gibbins Brooks,
Shamapant Venu,
Schiffman Glenn,
Saper Jake,
Wiles Ken
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
journal of applied corporate finance
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1745-6622
pISSN - 1078-1196
DOI - 10.1111/jacf.12191
Subject(s) - initial public offering , private equity , venture capital , silicon valley , portfolio , value (mathematics) , corporate governance , business , entrepreneurship , equity (law) , capital (architecture) , private equity firm , investment banking , finance , political science , law , geography , archaeology , machine learning , computer science
At a recent private equity conference hosted by the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas in Austin, four venture capitalists representing the East and West Coasts provided testimony to the spread of the VC industry far beyond Silicon Valley to places like New York, London, and Berlin—as well as Austin itself. The result, in the words of one panelist, has been “a shift from Silicon Valley as the epicenter of so much innovation and growth to something more like a globally distributed network of capital, talent, and opportunity.” Along with this geographic expansion of the industry, perhaps the most notable change is the tendency of today's VCs to delay the IPOs of their portfolio companies and, by keeping them private longer, capture more of their growth in value. Whereas 20 years ago 90% or more of the value appreciation came after the IPO of a highly successful company (think about Micro‐Soft or Amazon.com ), a much larger share of the overall value creation now appears to be taking place before the IPO, thanks to the growing use of a funding vehicle known as private initial public offerings, or PIPOs. The use of PIPOs has enabled VC‐backed companies to attract large amounts of capital from large institutional investors like Fidelity—which in the past would not have invested in the company until the IPO—while retaining what the panelists view as significant advantages of private ownership and governance.