What's Your Preference?
More thoughts on some of Fred’s and Brad’s points about VC deal algebra, valuation, and liquidation preferences for venture-funded startups. My apologies if this gets a little too technical or too long!
On liquidation preference: Preferred stock makes sense, participating preferred makes less sense. Sure, a VC who puts capital at risk in a startup should be entitled to get his or her money out before management and common shareholders who are paid to run the business. But I’ve always had an issue (even when I was in the venture business, although admittedly not as a partner) with the participating preferred security which allows VCs to get their money out first, and then still receive their proportional share of the rest. Fred calls this “a loan with an option,” and that’s the best presentation I’ve ever heard of the security. But what’s always struck me as a bit over the top about this is that it gives VCs downside protection at the same time they’re negotiating even more upside in a deal.
One simple solution to this, if you can negotiate it, is a “kickout” provision which makes the participation feature on the security go away if the company becomes worth a multiple (usually 2x or 3x) of the post-money valuation of the financing. In other words, it gives the VC the downside protection they want but gives you and other shareholders more of the upside if things go really, really well.
On valuation and deal algebra: I completely agree that valuation is a derived number and that it’s completely misunderstood in early stage investing. However, I think that while there may be low correlation between valuation and what the business is worth today, there are a few things that have always bugged me about VC valuations:
While I understand that valuation is more a function of future potential than current value, it sometimes feels like companies get punished for having a track record. Let me clear about my point – it’s not that that I actually think VCs lower valuations unfairly when companies demonstrate poor results. It’s actually the opposite. VCs are quick to bid up the valuation on companies that don’t have revenue or even a lot of operations just because the idea is cool or because the theoretical market is large (Friendster, anyone?). I don’t think VCs as a group do a good enough job of risk-adjusting or future-competition-adjusting valuations for new companies, or they get caught up in what Fred once called Venture Fratricide and just pour money into new sectors en masse. This has the unintended side effect of making management teams of existing companies feel like their ideas aren’t interesting any more because they’re not new and shiny.
Second, it’s interesting to note that while VCs use valuation as a way of placing limits and getting protection on their bet about the future potential of the company and entrepreneur, entrepreneurs have no corresponding mechanism to place limits or receive protection against having a bad VC. (VCs actually have many tools at their disposal to reign in poorly performing management teams once the deal is signed – they can fire them, cram them down, force all their common stock to be on a vesting schedule or subject to clawback.) But make no mistake about it – a bad VC can almost kill a company, or certainly keep it from realizing its full potential, and once that deal is signed, the entrepreneur typically has little recourse. I’m not sure there’s an easy solution to this particular problem either, but it’s one that’s worth thinking through with a good lawyer the next time you negotiate a term sheet with a new venture investor (and certainly one that is easier to negotiate if you either have a good track record as an entrepreneur or multiple VCs interested in your company). I made one suggestion around participation in future financings in my earlier posting on term sheet negotiations — item #8.
The final thing that’s bugged me about valuations stems from what Fred calls the 1/3 rule (1/3 of a VC’s investments work out well, 1/3 go sideways, 1/3 go bad). As a result of the rule, valuations and deal structures can end up being about VCs getting as much upside as possible out of their winning deals to cover their losses from their zero-return deals. What bugs me about this is that entrepreneurs don’t have that same luxury of a diversified portfolio – they are 100% invested in terms of their human capital and often their investment capital in their company. I fully realize that this is the nature of the beast, but I’ve always felt as a result that entrepreneurs should negotiate – and VCs should be willing to give – proportionally much more upside to management in the event that the deal turns out to be a big winner. This point relates back to my first point about participating preferred securities.
Next up in this series…Reverse Engineering Venture Economics, and managing other kinds of investors (Angel and Strategic).