Hedge Funds May Be Venture Capital Game Changers

It’s been a struggle of late for large institutional asset owners to invest in venture capital. Although some university foundations and endowments did well investing with key Silicon Valley–based venture capital firms during the dot-com boom of the late 1990s, over the past decade venture capital has not seen the same inflows or interest from large institutional investors as, say, the hedge fund industry has. Some of these investors question the risk profile of venture capital, their ability to put significant assets to work and their ability to get access to top-tier mangers. As a result, commitments from this investor base remain limited.

Large U.S. pension plans allocated an average of 8.9 percent of their assets to buyout funds, a small subsection of which is believed to be venture capital, compared with 7.4 percent for hedge funds. (Assets dedicated to venture capital itself aren’t broken out.) The five funds that make up the $122 billion New York City pension system have exited their venture capital portfolio, which was started in the late 1990s, after deciding that the asset class was not for them. That there is little reliable data on venture capital investing alone demonstrates how venture capital has yet to be firmly established by institutional asset owners as a separate, and sizable, asset class.

然而，与此同时，许多投资者认为，任何美国经济周转的最佳希望在于新的竞技场，如清洁技术，社交网络，在线媒体和金融技术。根据国家风险投资协会的数据，与2012年第二季度的情况下，对风险投资的总体流入增长了12％并不是一笔巧合。如果提供了最佳对冲基金和风险投资措施的选择，则可能会遵循更多的流入 - 这是包括公共市场的私有风险投资的资金，长短股票对冲基金投资。

基于旧金山的先驱采用这种方法，Crosslink Capital提供纯粹的风险投资基金，纯粹的对冲基金和风险投资 - 对冲基金混合资金，投资公共和私募股市。1999年以前的英特尔行政迈克尔斯塔克共同创立了18亿美元公司，刚刚关闭其最新的混合基金，交叉基金VI，后，筹集了约3.2亿美元的资金。“我们真正理解的是一家公司的成长公司，”和经销商的人说，斯塔克说。他说，他说，感觉就像一个早期的增长时刻，这在过去十年的大部分地区都不受欢迎。特别是，今天，Crosslink正在考虑数字，社交媒体和金融技术部门，依靠其经验和庞大的关系网络以及来源交易。

Those relationships Crosslink has in the private markets and the research it does on the public side produce synergy. The custom relationship management business Salesforce.com, which was a very successful hedge fund investment for Crosslink, started as a potential venture opportunity. But when Salesforce.com stopped taking venture capital, Crosslink waited until it went public to take a position. At the same time, an investment in the computer giant Apple and the realization that its music platform, iTunes, was likely to transform the way people consume music, led to a search on the venture side of the business for an online Internet radio product and an investment in Pandora — the Internet radio station — on which Crosslink made back 20 times its original investment.

对这样的任何公司的挑战是如何管理企业投资公共和私营市场时可能出现的利益冲突。交叉链接通常在其风险投资组合公司中占据董事会席位，其章程防止其投资公共股权，在那里拥有董事会席位。正如它所说，大多数对冲基金职位都在大型股票中，大多数从企业宇宙中取出。为了强调其对两个市场投资者的承诺，剧烈强调他的公司在诚信和道德上享有溢价。

While Crosslink’s business model is somewhat unique, it is certainly not the only hedge fund firm to appreciate the public and private investment opportunities in potentially game-changing technology firms. Tiger Global Management, the $6 billion, New York–based technology-focused hedge fund founded by Chase Colman, created a separate entity, Tiger Global FB Partners, and invested in Facebook before the social networking firm went public. The San Francisco–based $2.7 hedge fund firm Valiant Capital Management also took a pre-IPO stake in Facebook.

Then came the IPO in May, and its high-profile problems and swoon in share price. According to the most recent public filings, Valiant no longer has an equity stake in the company, while Tiger Global continues to hold a position. Though Facebook recently hit 1 billion active users, would-be investors and analysts alike continue to question its revenue potential. But private investors in Facebook did just fine, or at least early stage buyers did, demonstrating why investors in this sector can benefit from having both the public and private market options available to them.