Displaying items by tag: VC

(Silicon Valley)

Venture capital has always been a hard-to-access asset class for advisors and their clients. The funds tend to have high minimums and long lock-up periods with extremely low liquidity. That said, returns are historically strong, and VC can often be an un-correlated asset class whose returns are differentiated in scope and timing from publicly-traded markets. Because of the lack of liquidity and easy access it has been an asset class that has largely been overlooked by advisors and high net worth individuals. However, there are some ways to access venture capital through liquid funds which are likely worth a look.

FINSUM: Not only can returns because excellent and uncorrelated, but VC is likely to become a more important asset class in the next few years. Why? Because more and more large companies are staying private for longer, which means investors need to ways to access the asset class in order to participate in the total return of the market.

(Los Angeles)

In what comes as a really eye-opening turn of events even for someone as outlandish as Masayoshi Son, SoftBank has announced a plan to IPO its $100 bn Vision Fund. The fund is already legendary, having invested $100bn in just two years in some of the world’s biggest startups. It currently holds positions in WeWork and Uber, for instance. Masayoshi Son is now raising for capital for another fund, so wants to access some liquidity from this first one, thus the plan to IPO.

FINSUM: This is a bonkers plan, but honestly, and interesting opportunity for investors to own pieces of some very exclusive private companies. This is like an early stage Berkshire Hathaway.