Last Money In

The Valuation Dilemma: Raised at a high valuation, so now what? (sharing this from this weeks Last Money In post) There were so many SaaS, ecomm, fintech and other startups that were able to raise capital quickly, and at high valuations (2x, 5x, 10x, 50x of what they’d be valued in today's market). I’m not going to pretend our syndicate did not participate in many of these rounds and companies… we did. We invested alongside all the tier 1 VC’s (and backed great founders) out there during this time while the capital was flowing and we did not see a sharp turn right around the corner. But now those same companies find themselves in extremely difficult funding environments and situations. These startups that raised at exceptionally high valuations during the bull market are facing many unique challenges today including: Valuation Mismatch: Current market conditions often don't support previous valuations, leading to potential down rounds or in many situations small internal rounds or no rounds because founders and existing/new investors cannot agree on terms. Example: Peloton at one point was valued at around 23x sales; today it's achieving a 0.85x sales multiple or almost 97% multiple compression. Higher Bars for Growth: To justify their valuations, these companies need to demonstrate exceptional growth and progress. Most of these companies are trying to figure out how they can get back to their recent valuation in 1-3-5+ years with limited capital needs i.e. do it without heavy dilution. Burn Rate Pressure: High valuations often came with high burn rates, which are now unsustainable in the current climate. Most companies flipped the switch and performed massive budget cuts and got rid of many employees, to as quickly as possible, figure out how to get to profitability or extend their runway many years down the road. Investor Expectations: Previous investors may be resistant to lower valuations, complicating new funding rounds. Many founders are now upset that they sit in cap table purgatory even when the VC’s agreed to these terms previously. I’d also imagine (and have seen) a bunch of VCs stepping up to lead internal bridge rounds to help extend runway to get to the next milestone, next funding, or profitability. Full post in comments. -- Powered by Sydecar, Last Money In is the most actionable Venture Capital newsletter with 55k+ subscribers. Written by Zachary Ginsburg and Alex Pattis, the global syndicate leaders with 800+ VC SPVs closed.

Why Startups Are Shutting Down (Right Now) in Droves Today, Last Money In published a piece on what’s behind the startup shutdowns we are seeing right now, and how we got here. Link to post in comments. The startup landscape is experiencing a seismic shift. In Q1 2024 alone, 254 venture-backed companies went out of business, many of which have previously achieved nine figure valuations. Just last week brought a sobering cascade of LinkedIn posts: founders of AI startups, direct-to-consumer brands, and fintech platforms all penning heartfelt goodbyes to their teams and customers. These weren't just failures—they were casualties of a fundamental market reset that's forcing us to reexamine how we build and value early-stage companies. The reality is that the past couple of years have been a rollercoaster for the global economy and startups that raised venture capital. We've emerged from a bear market that saw significant downturns in public equities, cryptocurrencies, and other asset classes. This market downturn has had a ripple effect on the startup world, creating a challenging environment for startups to navigate and/or stay afloat. In this post, we’ll cover the aftermath of the bear market we are seeing play out in real time. -- Powered by Sydecar, Last Money In is the most actionable Venture Capital newsletter with 55k+ subscribers. Written by Zachary Ginsburg and Alex Pattis, the global syndicate leaders with 800+ VC SPVs closed.

How often were Management Fees charged on SPVs (a look at 833 SPVs)? Last Money In partnered with Sydecar to share SPV management fee data from Oct 2023 to Sept 2024. We used this dataset to highlight a number of findings and trends we are seeing as it relates to management fees charged on SPVs. Across the 833 Sydecar SPVs: •40% of these vehicles did charge a management fee. •60% of SPVs run on the Sydecar platform did not take a management fee. •The average management fee taken was 2.86%. •The median was 2%. •The range was .2% to 20%. Of the 40% of SPVs that did take management fees: •21% took a 2% management fee, making this the most common management fee used •21% of co-investment SPVs (SPVs that were created alongside a Sydecar Fund+ committed capital fund) charged a management fee. Of the management fees taken on a co-investment SPV: •Average management fee = 1.19% •Median = 1% •The range was .75% to 2% % of deals charging management fees by funding round: •Pre-Seed = 25.21% •Seed = 36.43% •Series A = 37.10% •Series B = 49.30% •Series C = 40.91% •Series D = 61.90% •Series E = 75% •Bridge Rounds = 41.18% -- Powered by Sydecar, Last Money In is the most actionable Venture Capital newsletter with 50k+ subscribers. Written by Zachary Ginsburg and Alex Pattis, the global syndicate leaders with 800+ VC SPVs closed.

VC SPV Trends Data → Q3, 2024 As we enter the final quarter of 2024, we've compiled a comprehensive analysis of the SPV ecosystem trends observed over the past three months via our newsletter Last Money In. This report combines our firsthand insights as active syndicate leads managing deals and collaborating closely with LPs, along with quantitative data generously provided by our partners at Sydecar, the best-in-class SPV and fund administration platform for venture capitalists. In this post we’ve split this into 2 sections: 1) Quarterly insights we’re seeing in the SPV ecosystem (Zachary Ginsburg and I have run over 180 SPVs in the trailing 12 months)    2) A deep dive into SPV management fees based on 833 SPVs run on Sydecar’s platform in the trailing 12 months Some of the topics in this post include: - Breakdown of management fees on 833 SPVs run via Sydecar - More willingness to pay for management fees - Slower for LPs to commit to deals - LPs are increasingly picky at Seed, but the top deals still raise $$$ - Many LPs write the minimum check acceptable in syndicate - and much more!! Link to full post in comments. -- Powered by Sydecar, Last Money In is the most actionable Venture Capital newsletter with 50k+ subscribers. Written by Zachary Ginsburg and Alex Pattis, the global syndicate leaders with 800+ VC SPVs closed.

Why Your VC Portfolio May Seem to Be Underperforming (And Why That's Normal) If you’re new to the VC asset class, you might be feeling discouraged by the apparent lack of returns in your portfolio. For most firms this is a normal part of the VC investment cycle, known as the J-curve The J-curve shows typical VC investment returns over time: Initial dip: Early-stage investments often show negative returns due to: - Upfront costs and fees - Startups failing fast (60% fail between pre-seed and Series A) Upward trajectory: After several years, successful investments start to generate positive returns through: - Maturation and success of portfolio companies - Exits (acquisitions or IPOs) - Exponential growth of successful startups The Reality of VC Returns - it often takes 5 years or more to materialize. Take Figma: the Seed round in 2013 at $0.09 per share; 5 years later in 2018, it was only marked up 3.7x on a price per share (pps) basis. However 2 years after that in 2020, it achieved a 51x pps markup against the Seed and 1 year after that in 2021, it achieved a 237x pps markup against the Seed; meaning ~98% of the returns for Seed investors in Figma took place 5 years post entry investment. And this pattern is normal for many outlier winners. This is all to say the outlier winners can take 5+ years to significantly impact your TVPI/IRR, etc. so if your VC portfolio isn’t performing early it isn’t necessarily cause for concern. So what should you take away from this:  - Patience is crucial: Expect to feel potentially discouraged for the first few years. - Portfolio construction matters: Aim for at an absolute minimum 25-30 investments at pre-seed / seed (the data suggest much more as missing the outlier is extremely costly) as you need a big winner for the j curve to truly take hold - Access: Ensure you're getting into promising deals; shots on goal help but you need the access If you’d like to read Last Money In’s full deep dive into this topic, we’re including it in the comments for full reading. Powered by Sydecar, Last Money In is the most actionable venture capital newsletter with over 50,000 subscribers. Written by Zachary Ginsburg and Alex Pattis, the global syndicate leaders with 800+ VC SPVs closed.

🥳 🎊 50,000 subscriber milestone for Last Money In This is cool cause we kinda have no idea what we are doing when it comes to operating a newsletter… (using beehiiv does help tremendously though) But! We (Zachary and I) believe we can provide the most transparent and thoughtful content when it comes to Special Purpose Vehicles in Venture Capital. Happy to report that we’re 15 months in and we have not missed a weekly deep dive on Syndicates. We also write all our content ourselves (no ghostwriters). A combined 800+ (probably 900 now) SPVs run across us and I’m confident we will never run out of topics to write about. -- Powered by Sydecar, Last Money In is the most actionable Venture Capital newsletter with 50k subscribers. Written by Zachary Ginsburg and Alex Pattis, the global syndicate leaders with 800+ VC SPVs closed.

What size checks do LPs write into Venture Capital SPVs? For Riverside Ventures, see below: • 10k+ average deal commitment = 314 LPs • 20k+ average deal commitment = 131 LPs • 30k+ average deal commitment = 53 LPs • 40k+ average deal commitment = 46 LPs • 50k+ average deal commitment = 40 LPs • 100k+ average deal commitment = 15 LPs My Takeaway... I think many might be surprised how small a ton of LP checks are. Many likely compare this to venture funds whereas syndicates are just going to have smaller checks from LPs who are almost all investing individually, and typically smaller amounts. When we say you can angel invest with as little as $1k, we are not kidding, it’s really true. As you can see above (from the many LPs not including in the $10K or higher average check size), many do! Considering we have had 2,940 LPs invest with us and only 314 LPs average above $10k per investment, then we have TONS of LPs investing in the $1k to $10k range, which is where most LP commitments land per deal. Again, this likely sounds like small dollars but this category is core to our syndicate and core to our focus with Last Money In and Deal Sheet to democratize the asset class. While I feel this seems like a small check to many outside the syndicate ecosystem, I think it is a good thing if this is because LPs are building larger portfolios to spread out their capital commitments across 10-20-50+ deals over the years. It’s also safe to say that many of these LPs have similar commitments with other syndicates, so it’s not that their entire portfolio is composed of our deals and rather 3-5-10-20+ different syndicates. This is the right way to tackle early-stage investing as an angel/syndicate LP in my opinion. Full post link in comments. -- Powered by Sydecar, Last Money In is the most actionable Venture Capital newsletter with 50k subscribers. Written by Zachary Ginsburg and Alex Pattis, the global syndicate leaders with 800+ VC SPVs closed.

📈 How Last Money In Grew Their Newsletter to $700k In 14 Months Had a great time chatting w/ the king of newsletter growth, Matt McGarry. Sharing some of his newsletter feature of us below w/links to the full write up and podcast in comments. *******   In just 14 months, Alex Pattis & Zachary Ginsburg grew their newsletter Last Money In to over 41,000 subscribers and ~$200k/year in ad revenue. He also runs a paid newsletter called Deal Sheet that he started in Feb 2024. Deal Sheet has a $4k annual subscription fee, approximately 165 subscribers, and is now over $500K ARR, 7 months after launch. That’s a $700k business built on the back of newsletters. Pre-existing credibility... Prior to starting their media company, Alex and his co-founder Zach Ginsburg led more than 800 SPVs and deployed over $200 million in deals. They spent years building their network in the SPV space and establishing authority and credibility. Picked a niche... Alex and Zach realized there was a gap in the market. While there were tons of VC newsletters, there wasn’t anything covering special purpose vehicles. So they built it. If you’re personally struggling to find a niche for your newsletter, I wrote about it here but below is a quick recap: 1) What unique experiences and skills do you have? 2) What are your passions and interests? 3) How lucrative is this niche/topic? 4) How exactly can you monetize? The next step is to select a niche that fits this criteria: 1) You have genuine interest in it (so you can consistently write about it) 2) You have experience in (so you can create insightful content) 3) Has lucrative monetization opportunities (so you can build a successful business) Building an owned audience... Alex initially wanted to start a podcast about SPV investing, but Sam Parr advised them not to. Instead, he recommended starting with a newsletter because it's shorter and easier to capture someone's attention, own the audience, and collect data. With an owned audience you can collect and store valuable audience data like engagement, location, interest, purchase behavior, and more. Plus, if your newsletter is successful, you can always turn it into a podcast. Have a clear audience... Since their first post 14 months ago, Last Money In has been serving two audiences: 1) Individual accredited investors who have invested in syndicates and deals with Alex and Zach 2) People looking to start a syndicate of their own and want to learn how to do it Consistency... Alex and Zach publish Last Money In every Wednesday. Every week they switch who writes the newsletter and have a brainstorming session to come up with topics to write about. They also keep a spreadsheet with a backlog of ideas that they continuously add to. ******** Link to full Newsletter Operator Post & Podcast in comments.

Super cool to be featured on the beehiiv blog on our path to a $500k ARR Newsletter! "Last Money In has already secured six figure sponsorship deals, while their paid newsletter, Deal Sheet, has reached $500,000 in annual recurring revenue (ARR) in just under seven months! Thanks to Alex and Zachary—both noticed a need, and they carved out a unique niche with their newsletters.  In this case study, we’ll learn more about the genesis of Last Money In and Deal Sheet newsletters, building a community with a subscription model, and the creators behind the newsletters." In the beehiiv blog you can read up on: - The Inception of Last Money In Media & Deal Sheet Newsletters - The First 1,000 Subscribers Odyssey - Next Stop: 70,000 to 80,000 Subscribers - Joining the Ranks of Successful Creators on beehiiv - Buzzing on Profits With Monetization - Why Trust Me - Building A Newsletter Foundation For Novices - Syndicating Success, One Newsletter at a Time - And more! https://lnkd.in/eYBhybRG

Get Your Deal Featured: Sydecar x Deal Sheet collab! This is for anyone syndicating a private market SPV! Here’s how it works: 1) Submit your actively investable deal for a chance to be featured in an upcoming Deal Sheet newsletter, a platform that delivers top startup investment opportunities directly to accredited investors seeking their next big opportunity. 2) Submissions will be personally reviewed by myself and Zachary Ginsburg, creators of Deal Sheet. 3) The most compelling investment opportunity will be selected and featured in an upcoming Deal Sheet newsletter, giving you direct access to a network of accredited investors w/high interest in startups. Submit your deal here → https://lnkd.in/eS-SYJtr