of the global share. A focus on education in science, technology, and engineering throughout the emerging world, especially China and India, has spurred innovation. Venture capital has followed the human capital to India and China. India and China both now have the human capital and growth potential to support a thriving venture capital community. For decades, the US has innovated and designed, and the rest of the world has copied and produced. The 2020s will start to see that US innovation advantage be diluted.
The other significant change is that venture capitalists are no longer seeding just start-ups and emerging companies and racing to bring them public or sell them. They are holding companies privately longer than ever before allowing them to operate in a non-earnings-driven environment. This change enhances the ability to both innovate and disrupt, because earnings are not a focal point until much later in the life cycle of the company. The life cycle of a successful venture capital company has changed. Figure 3.6 shows the average age of a successful company to go public in 2000 was six years, and the average acquisition time frame four years. This life cycle has almost doubled, because venture capital firms maintain private ownership longer.
The term unicorn was coined to designate a venture-backed company with an equity valuation greater than $1 billion. Prior to the 2008 financial crisis, unicorns were practically nonexistent. Any company with a valuation approaching $1 billion would have entered the public markets to access capital and create liquidity. Now, venture capital funds are so large they can sustain companies longer privately and absorb more losses. Managing a company for profit is something that can be pushed into the future. Figure 3.7 illustrates US venture capital invested in unicorns on an annual basis. In 2018, $46.4 billion was invested in companies with an equity valuation greater than $1 billion. Ten years ago that number was less than $5 billion.
FIGURE 3.6 Average time being held privately of venture capital backed companies
FIGURE 3.7 US venture capital invested in unicorns (billions $US)
Reviewing the initial public offering activity, in Figure 3.8, it is clear that companies are staying private longer. There is no longer the need to access capital publicly for the allure of being a public company. As Figure 3.8 illustrates, the 2010s saw the lowest number of new IPOs in many decades. In addition to having very few IPOs, the profitability of those IPOs was very low. The solid line in the chart below tracks the percentage of companies that are profitable on their IPO date. In 2019, 81% of the companies that came public were unprofitable. That level of negative earnings for companies has not been seen since the dot-com era. These are all indications that the capital markets are allowing companies to focus on taking market share over profits.
FIGURE 3.8 Initial public offerings (IPOs)
A portion of the risk capital coming into new ventures is coming from public companies hoping to find the next industry disruptor themselves before, or at least alongside, venture capitalists. Through corporate subsidiaries, public companies have created their own venture arms to try and foster innovation both synergistically and totally independently of their core enterprise. Prior to the 2008 financial crisis, these corporate venture capital funds held between $5 billion and $10 billion. Today the number has reached $66 billion, as much as a ten times increase. Corporate venture funds were involved in 51% of all venture capital deals in 2018, a significant increase from 25% ten years ago. Figure 3.9 demonstrates the significant increase in corporate interest in venture capital.
FIGURE 3.9 US corporate venture capital raised (billions $US)
Venture success leads to financially successful entrepreneurs and investors, which leads to a greater supply of young, eager innovators willing to take chances and spend their time on new ideas. Human capital focuses on innovation increases, when financial capital is successful.
In June 2019, 26% of the companies in the broad Russell 3000 US Index had zero earnings. With the exception of the 2008 financial crisis period (when investors did want profits, but they were scarce), that is the highest percentage of unprofitable companies in the index ever. Additionally many companies are profitable, but they are trading at very high valuation multiples as they invest in growth internally. Amazon, the most prominent disruptor, threatens every industry vertically and has the capital and backing of Wall Street to take large losses during the disruption period.
All this capital focused on innovation has materially accelerated the pace of technology and with it disruption. This significant innovation cycle probably does not sound like a bad outcome for society, and from many perspectives it is quite positive. I hope society reaps long-term benefits despite some shorter-term challenges of necessary new regulations and the growing pains of change. Unfortunately, viewed through the lens of a fundamental public equity markets investors, it brings many challenges. Any time the financial markets move away from the analysis of cash flow and paradigm shifts become common, fundamental investors will struggle.
Outperformance potential with unprofitable but disruptive companies?
One might say, the innovation cycle is clear: just buy companies with new technologies that are growing fast and hold on for great future success. That may work for the very top venture capital firms, but it has never been a winning strategy in the public equity markets. Venture capital company selection is more art than science, more vision then due diligence. The venture capital portfolio strategy is to invest behind 10 to 20 ideas and hope one or two of them grow into the next Google, Facebook, or Uber. The other 18 companies will go bankrupt or struggle for years hoping to return some small amount of capital. This strategy is very profitable for the top quintile of venture capital firms that can attract the top entrepreneurs and use their extensive human capital relationships to add value. Many lower-tier venture capital firms struggle, because their big winners are never quite big enough to cover the bankruptcies and they have fewer companies bought out at premium valuations.
Venture capital is one of the very few financial investment classes where one investor's dollar is worth more than another investor's. When individuals open their personal brokerage account and buy public company stock, they get the same price as the biggest asset manager in the world. The market is generally liquid and egalitarian. Although some activist or constructionist public investment firms may try to add value to the public companies they invest in, generally the management team succeeds or fails on their own. For 90+% of public equity investors, their value contribution to their portfolio companies is zero.
Venture capital (VC) investments are accessible only to the parties invited by the management team to negotiate in the potential investment. An investment from one of the premier VC firms is worth more to an entrepreneur than an investment from a local
