Tiger Global has been making a splash the past few years. The hedge fund spun out a venture capital arm that has been making deals bigger, faster and more founder friendly than the traditional VC world.
This recent tech sell off has been tough for Tiger. The Financial Times have reported that the hedge fund has lost $17 billion, one of the biggest dollar declines for a hedge fund in history. According to the FT, Tiger’s hedge fund has been hit so hard that in four months they lost two-thirds of the gains they produced since founding in 2001.
Now analysts are wondering if this fall in their hedge fund business will affect their VC business. Their VC’s have been deploying capital at a rate of knots – in 2020, they closed their 12th fund at $3.75 billion of committed capital, in 2021, the 13th with $6.65b before this year’s 14th fund with $12.7b. They have then been deploying this capital in massive cheques, fast due diligence and founder friendly terms.
In Australia, some of the biggest recent VC rounds have come from Tiger – online broker Stake raising $90m, used car platform Carma raising $75m, logistics platform Shippit raising $65m, and 10-minute grocery delivery app Milkrun raising $75m.
Last year alone, Tiger added 118 unicorns to its list of global portfolio companies and saw 38 portfolio companies IPO.
At this stage, the VC market hasn’t been too affected by the public market sell off (expect for late stage VC – Canva and Instacart are two companies that have been marked down in investors portfolios lately). If this tech sell off continues, we should expect that to change. Lower public market valuations will force a number of start-ups into down rounds. Tiger will be an interesting fund to watch to see how the VC market responds.
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