I got an insanely early morning text from one of my portfolio founders that they finally got a lead for their pre-seed round, and now they're oversubscribing and doing a second tranche. I'm of the mindset, and maybe it's an abundance mindset, that there is always capital out there for you. It's just finding the right partner, and finding the right partners is the hard thing to do. There's huge shoe leather cost to fundraising, especially if you're in a non-consensus category, but if you don't quit, you can make it happen, and big things can happen from there.

Bending Spoons acquires Miro for ~$1.79b. But who gets the 💰? My usual breakdown below 👇 *This is 89.8% below the last round, and <3x EV/ARR* 📉 Yet, investors are making $370m of profits on a company that was once valued at $17.5b! Not a glorious outcome but a 1.78x blended multiple on $473m invested. 👀 There are mainly three parties doing well here: (1) founders & team, (2) @altairvc, and (3) @Accel. Most of the capital came in at the top, and the preference sheltered investors nicely from a 90% haircut... Not a great return after 5 years of equity cost of capital, but "better 1.0x than 0.1x". So let's dive in: *1) Founders, Team and Common shareholders will be sharing nearly $1b* 🥳 While I am sure they expected much better in 2021 at the height of the bubble, this is an acceptable outcome. Miro can thank its frugality for this outcome: (1) the acquisition press release implies it still has $435m on balance sheet at closing, and (2) the company only ever raised $473m! The cash added back to the $1.355b enterprise value effectively paid by Bending Spoons really helps (<3x ARR), and only the Series C claims pref. *2) Accel is getting the most $ back, but not without regrets* 🫠 They are making c.9x from the Series A. But they will have mixed feelings today, and will regret following on in the Series B and C which will return ~1.9x and 1.0x respectively. Both of which are obviously not great for six and five years of equity risk, respectively. *3) AltaIR likely still returns >100x ‼️*: investing at pre-seed can pay off, even when growth investors do not make money. *4) Disappointing outcome for growth investors. But the pref worked as intended.* 😮‍💨 The acquisition is a 90% haircut to the Series C price of $17.5b. However, the Series C investors will still make 1.0x back thanks to liq pref. ICONIQ, Salesforce, Atlassian, Dragoneer, TCV, DST and @codorniou can all thank this mechanism, without which there would have been a few very awkward LP calls!