Firms & Funds

Fund performance: Spark, Foundry top mid-decade venture portfolio at UTIMCO

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Fund Performance VC
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Funds from Spark Capital, Foundry Group and ARCH Venture Partners top a mid-decade venture portfolio at the University of Texas Investment Management Company.

The portfolio is made up of 2006 and 2007 vintage funds and favors mid-sized and smaller funds with an early-stage approach to investing.

About a third of the funds are between $400 million and $200 million in size and another third are smaller than that. Almost two thirds target early or seed-stage investing.

Technology Crossover Ventures and Intellectual Ventures manage two large-scale funds in the holdings.

Overall, the portfolio has had good results. All but two of the funds had positive IRRs as of May 2017, including six with IRRs in the double digits, according to a recent portfolio report.

The portfolio leader by a solid margin was Spark Capital II, which had an IRR of 51.79 percent as of May, the report shows. Distributions were 3.5x invested capital at the time for the 2007 fund.

The fund invested in Twitter, which went public, as well as Adap.tv, AdMeld and Boxee, all of which were acquired, according to data from Thomson Reuters.

In second place was Foundry Venture Capital 2007 with an IRR of 43.25 percent as of May, the report shows. That reflected a modest decline over the previous 15 months. But distributions were 4.2x contributed capital.

The Foundry fund was also an investor in AdMeld, according to Thomson Reuters, as well as Fitbit and Zynga, which both held IPOs.

ARCH Venture Fund VII, also from 2007, followed with an IRR of 37.6 percent as of May. TCV VII was next in line with an 22.25 percent IRR.

The firm invests in seed and early-stage deals in IT, life sciences and physical sciences. The fund was an investor in a number of companies that exited through public offerings, including Juno Therapeutics, PhaseRx, Sienna Biopharmaceuticals and Syros Pharmaceuticals, among others, according to Thomson Reuters.

The UTIMCO portfolio also holds solid funds from Sofinnova Group and Gobi Partners.

All 11 funds are included in the attached spreadsheet with IRRs, distributions and commitments.