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May 18, 2006
Bashing European VC
One of the blogs we read, Infectious Greed, has a post entitled Trashing Euro VC, which compares historical performance of the two regions. We've seen versions of that slide a few times over the years. It's particularly popular on panels populated by limited partners where European VC bashing is the norm.
But the barrage of snarky one-liners has slowed a bit. Here's what a few LPs were saying this week at the DowJones Limited Partners Summit in Zurich:
Kathryn Abbott, Managing Director, Horsley Bridge.:
If you’re looking at past track records you’re not going to invest in Europe. We don’t invest based on geography [no forced allocation to a geographic region]. If the top 25 performing VC fund managers were based in Poland that’s where we’d invest.It’s a bit contrarian to look at Europe right now, but we think it is a nice time to invest... Some post-bubble vintage funds are performing in line with their US peers. That’s never happened before.
Rho Fund Investors, Gordon Hargraves:
European VC is interesting now…based on portfolio companies. There have been some interesting exits. No excess liquidity in the market. It’s undercapitalized and there is less competition for deals...
… Among the few managers that can execute, the dealflow is there.
It's not a sea change of opinion because these LPs we've quoted are pretty specialized and are known for targeting VC. They are the type that back qualified first-time funds, and they like niche styles. They'll be following the money, though, not the rhetoric.
Read - Trashing Euro VC (Infectious Greed blog)
Posted on May 18, 2006 07:22 AM | Posted to Venture Capital | Permalink
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