The Brouhaha Over Cash Distributions

A report from Carta published last week showed just how little venture capital funds have returned in cash to investors, adding to the disappointment in the asset class over the past few years. But a number of venture capitalists—and even some limited partners—say those findings aren’t as bad as they look. 

To recap, Carta, which sells software to manage investment firms’ portfolios, said only 9% of 2021 vintage VC funds it surveyed have given money back to shareholders, or had positive distributions to paid-in capital. In contrast, around 20% of funds started in earlier years (2017–19) had returned cash to investors at the three-year mark.