The venture capital market is facing an unprecedented distribution drought. Distribution rates have plummeted to single-digit percentages of Net Asset Value for eight consecutive quarters, far below the decade average of 16.8%. This crisis stems from a severe lack of exits, with Q3 2024 seeing only 14 IPOs and $10.4 billion in total exit value.
Investor activity has dropped to 45.5% of 2021 levels, with only 23.1% of dry powder deployed last year, while $2.5 trillion in unicorn valuations stagnate in portfolios.
The distribution drought has led to two consecutive years of significantly reduced fundraising, highlighting the critical importance of strong DPI performance in this challenging environment.
Average US VC fund distributions, from funds age five to 10 years old, as a share of beginning net asset value
Source: Pitchbook, “VC distributions sink to 14-year low”, February 9, 2024
Q1 2024 data sourced from Pitchbook-NVCA’s Venture Monitor Q3 2024 edition
Distributions to Paid-In-Capital represents the actual amount of capital that has been returned to investors relative to the amount of capital they have contributed. This is an important tool leveraged by investors when evaluating a venture capital fund's ability to return capital efficiently to its Limited Partners.
Equitybee vs. Industry Benchmarks on DPI (as of Q2 2024)
The table and chart below showcase Equitybee’s ability to consistently return capital to investors in spite of the recent unprecedented distribution drought across the venture capital landscape.
Specifically, Equitybee’s net distributions to investors (as measured by DPI) have outperformed those of top-decile venture capital funds in all but one vintage year between 2018-2023.
These results highlight the effectiveness of Equitybee’s platform in providing access to pre-IPO opportunities at earlier valuations, allowing investors to achieve substantial early liquidity by supporting employees in exercising their stock options.
All data shown is Distributions to Paid-In Capital. Top Decile, Top Quartile and Median VC data sourced from Pitchbook.
*Past performance is not indicative of future results. Equitybee s DPI is defined as Total Net Investor Distributions divided by Total Invested
Capital (including fees) aggregated by vintage year. This performance data does not represent any investor s portfolio or any model portfolio.
Startup employees often receive stock options as part of their compensation. To convert these options into shares, employees must exercise their right to purchase these stock options, which involves significant upfront capital. Many employees cannot afford to do this, missing out on participating in the potential future success of the companies. Equitybee’s investors can provide the needed capital, allowing employees to exercise their options. In return, investors receive their initial investment, annual interest, and a percentage of the equity's value upon a successful liquidity event, such as an IPO or acquisition. This creates a mutually beneficial opportunity in a largely untapped market worth over $150 billion*.
Despite the aforementioned distribution drought from traditional US venture capital funds (mainly stemming from the lack of IPOs), Equitybee investments have continued to generate liquidity from a myriad of liquidity event types. This well-balanced mix means that Equitybee investors don’t need to rely on a hot IPO market to receive distributions. Additionally, tender offers (Equitybee’s historically highest performing liquidity event type) are a mostly unique exit route tied to the funding of employee stock options, which typically traditional VCs don’t have access to. Specifically, tender offers & secondaries liquidity events through Equitybee investments have delivered a 2.81x net multiple on invested capital in just under 2 years on average.
(January 2020 - July 2024, US offers only)
*TAM is calculated based on the estimated number of startup employees (1.1M) in the companies that qualify to receive funding through the Equitybee platform.
This number is derived from Pitchbook, multiplied by the average employee offer size sourced from Equitybee s proprietary data.
** Weighted average for MoIC, sourced from Equitybee s proprietary data
*** Indicates average time from investment date to distribution date, sourced from Equitybee s proprietary data
Past performance is not indicative of future results. Private placements are speculative, illiquid, contain substantial risk and may result in the complete loss of
capital to the investor. Consult your tax accountant as there may be tax considerations on profit amounts. Results may vary with each use and over time. Investor
proceeds may be settled in cash or shares.
Equitybee executes private financing contracts (PFCs), private placements which fund employee stock options. PFCs do not grant or transfer ownership of startup company stock, are speculative, illiquid, and are subject to risk including the complete loss of capital to the investor. Risks may be greater during extreme market conditions. Please read the private placement memorandum before investing. Securities offered through EquityBee Securities, LLC, member FINRA.
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Past performance is not indicative of future results. 37% net IRR represents all fully realized investments across the Equitybee platform, including US and Israel markets. Investors should be aware that these returns were primarily achieved during favorable market conditions. Results based on offers from June 2018 through July 2024. Net IRR is shown net of all applicable fees for the respective market. This performance data does not represent any investor’s portfolio or any model portfolio. IRR figures are calculated for each transaction into an offer on the Equitybee platform from the date the investor's funds were received through the distribution date of proceeds, if any. If the distribution date was less than one year after the invested date, the IRR represents an unannualized return. For distributions one year or more after invested date, IRR is annualized. Data quoted excludes partial returns of invested capital, e.g., tender offers for a portion of covered securities, and investments which have not experienced a liquidity event. As of July 31, 2024 approximately $108M million has been invested on the Equitybee platform; 17.9% of invested capital has experienced a fully realized return, 82.1% of invested capital is unrealized or partially realized.