Recently, I stumbled across a captivating perspective on aphorisms via Tim Ferriss’ 5-Bullet Fridays. The Procrustean Bed. To be fair, before reading it on Tim’s newlsetter, I haven’t even heard of the concept. In one of his newsletters, he cites two incredible sources:
” ‘Something designed to produce conformity by unnatural or violent means. In Greek mythology, Procrustes was a robber who tied his victims to a bed, either stretching or cutting off their legs in order to make them fit it.’ (Source: Oxford Dictionary of English Idioms).
“Nassim Taleb has a related book of aphorisms titled The Bed of Procrustes. He explains the title thusly: ‘Every aphorism here is about a Procrustean bed of sorts—we humans, facing limits of knowledge, and things we do not observe, the unseen and the unknown, resolve tension by squeezing life and the world into crisp commoditized ideas, reductive categories, specific vocabularies, and prepackaged narratives, which, on the occasion, has explosive consequences.’ “
Down the investing rabbithole
There exist a number of aphorisms in the investing world. Chief of which reads “buy low, sell high.” Public market assets are quite liquid. Hypothetically, you can cash out whenever you want. Such liquidity has paved way for psychological inconsistencies to maximize gratification. In language with unnecessary jargon redacted, the option to sell is less motivated by rational thinking but more by fear of losing money – loss aversion. If you invest $100 into the public market, you can choose if you want to cash out at $95, $90, or $120 or $200. While there is a non-zero chance of you losing your entire principal, chances are you’ll liquidate your positions before that happens.
On the other hand, private market investments are illiquid. Upon investment, there is no liquid market in which you can sell immediately. At best, you have to wait 3-5 years before a rapidly marked-up investment creates opportunities for distributions in the secondary market. In other words, cash money while companies are still private. In the private markets, your principal either appreciates in multiples, rather than percentages, or bottoms out. Any in-betweens will neither make or break your investment strategy, and are often out of your immediate control. So in this case, illiquidity is a feature, not a bug.
The notion of exiting positions as a private market investor, therefore, gravitates towards a singularity – when you make a damn good investment. The only time you really have an option to choose whether you can sell or not, when otherwise, it becomes a tax write-off or a small exit outside of your immediate control.
When should you sell?
Should you ever sell?
And if you sell, how much should you sell?
To answer all the above questions…
With the help of Shawn and Ratan, I wrote a blogpost on how to think about exiting positions at the beginning of this year. A topic of which I am still very much a rookie at, which may be quite apparent in this essay as well. Nevertheless I’m going to try to elaborate more on the notion of selling positions as an early-stage investor.
In a memo earlier this year, Howard Marks wrote that there are two main reasons people choose to sell: “because they’re up and because they’re down.”
When “they’re down”
Let’s start with the latter. When “they’re down.” Like I mentioned before, there are often very few options to sell when things are down. While I’m not proud that these investors exist in the early-stage private markets, I’ve seen and heard of some investors who try to make a last ditch effort to regain some of their principal when the startup goes south. Selling off IP. As well as assets. Or forcing the founders to make a modest exit, so that the investors cap their downside. Maybe at best, this returns them 2x on their capital (rarely the case).
But let’s say that’s the “best” case scenario. And let’s say it’s a $25M Fund I, writing $250K checks. A 2x net return means they got back $750K. $750K is far from returning the $25M fund. Not even close to doing so. You need over 30 of those “exits” to just break even for your fund. So, if you’re an investor penny pinching here, you’re in the wrong game AND you’re going to lose out on the relationships with the founding team.
Why the wrong game?
Venture is a hit-driven business. It’s not about your batting average but about the magnitude of the home runs you hit. We bat for 100x returns, which also increases the probability of misses, determined by ability to return the fund or not. If you’re optimizing for local maximums, you’d probably do better as a public market investor.
And why do relationships matter?
One, the startup world is a smaller world than you think. People gossip.
Two, statistically, first swings at bat rarely work out. In research done by Cowboy Ventures, they found 80% of unicorns had at least one co-founder with previous founding experience. Paris Innovation Review also found that “86% started their project with a partner, after having created other companies.” Two of many other studies. So, even though this venture didn’t achieve financial success for an investor, the next might. Or the one after that. Assuming you bet on the right people, it’ll just take a couple iterations before timing, market, and product also match up. If you leave on bad terms on this deal, you won’t be able to get in when things do work out.
Three, what makes early-stage investing incredible is the relationships you build along the way. The ability to learn and grow with really smart people.
When “they’re up”
The question of if to sell often leads to controversial debate. I know of some investors who never sell any of their stock. And that if they sell, to them, it is a measure of their lack of faith in a founder. And they would never want to feel that they’re betting against the founders. That’s okay if you’re an angel. But if you’re a VC, you have a fiduciary responsibility to your investors, which means you’ll eventually have to sell.
The question of when to sell is often answered in broad strokes with laws around QSBS, which states that if you hold a qualified small business stock for longer than five years, you’re not subject to capital gains taxes in the US. But should you sell in the 6th year or 10th year? And under what market conditions? Do you sell in a boom market or on the precipice of a bust market? For a company you believe in the long-term potential, regardless of short-term fluctuations, I’m a big fan of what Bill Miller said in his Q3 2021 Market Letter. “We believe time, not timing, is the key to building wealth in the [market].”
But when things are going really, really, really well, it’s okay to take money off the table, even ahead of the end of the fund’s 10-year lifespan. In fact, Union Square Ventures generally sells 15-30% of their position in their top portfolio companies to distribute back to their LPs. Fred Wilson‘s personal framework lies around “[selling] one third of the position immediately, put one third away for a long term hold, and actively manage the other third.”
To most, including myself, the goalposts for selling how much seem arbitrary. USV sold 30% of their position in Twitter to return twice the entire fund. Menlo Ventures sold almost half of their stake in Uber when Softbank offered to buy. Whereas, Benchmark sold 15% of its Uber shares. I also have really smart friends who liquidate 50% of their stake in a token if a single cryptocurrency reaches double digit percentages of their net worth.
It’s all about the opportunity cost
In a game where arbitrage matters, and the “why” matter more than the “what”, it was love at first sight when Howard Marks shared his mental model on selling. He boils it down to the simple economic concept of opportunity cost:
- “If your investment thesis seems less valid than it did previously and/or the probability that it will prove accurate has declined, selling some or all of the holding is probably appropriate.
- “Likewise, if another investment comes along that appears to have more promise – to offer a superior risk-adjusted prospective return – it’s reasonable to reduce or eliminate existing holdings to make room for it.”
In sum, the option to sell is not an isolated decision, but rather one which considers the other investment opportunities you have available to you. For a number of VCs, this breaks into the calculus of recycling carry and what to use early distributions to invest in next. If you’re a VC with consistent AND high-quality deal flow, you’d probably want to reinvest. If you’re a VC without either of the two (i.e. only consistency or quality) or an emerging angel, your goal is to get both. In having both, you then have access to relative selection.
Photo by Sina Asgari on Unsplash
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Any views expressed on this blog are mine and mine alone. They are not a representation of values held by On Deck, DECODE, or any other entity I am or have been associated with. They are for informational and entertainment purposes only. None of this is legal or investment advice. Please do your own diligence before investing in startups and consult your own adviser before making any investments.