[mbesto]

I don't have access to the full article, but from the lede this looks like not very well researched journalism:

1. A16Z has 17 funds, with varying degrees of investing angles (early stage, crypto, bio, etc). So trying to do a fund by fund analysis is unfair.

2. IRR can be deceiving as it's time based. Some LPs invest based on "X Return" or IRR, and so cherry-picking one over the other is disingenuous without mentioning the other.

3. The larger the fund, the harder it is to have a higher IRR. A16Z keeps growing the size of it's funds (latest is $1b+). There are just simply not enough good deals out there to deploy that amount of capital. This is just like growing your top line revenue 50% from $1M to $1.5M, vs 10% from $10 to $11M. The former appears to have be semantically "better performing growth", when actually you made $500k more than you did previously.

4. The fact that they, a VC firm, are even returning their money means LPs will continue to invest. VC as an "asset class" is notoriously underperforming, with exception to the top 10% of the firms (which A16Z would likely be). Which begs the question, "so what?".

[vasilipupkin]

doing a fund by fund analysis is not unfair as funds are marketed to LPs separately. It does me no good that fund ABC had 30% IRR if fund XYZ that I am invested in from tbe same brand of manager is earning 1.5% IRR.

"IRR can be deceiving as it is time based". No, it's the other way. A return without mentioning how long it took to earn it is deceiving.

[mbesto]

> A return without mentioning how long it took to earn it is deceiving.

Except that this is how some LPs want it to be reported, so how do you explain that? If you want to do a comparison to stock market returns ("seeking alpha") then sure, IRR makes sense.

[seem_2211]

I don't think this is poor journalism (I think The Information do a good job reporting industry specific information in a non click baity way). I see this as reporting on a player in an industry that a substantial number of their subscribers are either exposed to, or interested in.

But I agree with the rest of your statements. Better to have a VC investment that brings a 12% return or whatever than some negative returning European or Japanese government bonds.

[mbesto]

> I see this as reporting on a player in an industry that a substantial number of their subscribers are either exposed to, or interested in.

Except the implication of the article is that A16Z funds are getting "worse" and thus underperforming ( = "A16Z must be a bad firm") making it newsworthy. I am far from an A16Z fanboy, but this is not newsworthy.

Normally business journalists refer to industry expert (for example, an LP analyst) to determine whether "is this bad or good?" rather than what appears to be "IRR is down, this must be bad".