Losing Money
Can someone help me do some math here?  Take these sentences:<p>"It was all about five investments in which we made 115x, 82x, 68x, 30x, and 21x."<p>"In our 2004 fund, we invested a total of $50mm out of $120mm of total investment in our nine losers. "<p>OK so in the 2004 fund we have $70mm being invested in companies with rates of return between 21x and 115x.  Let's be conservative and say the total return on that $70mm was 50x.  That means 70mm --> 3.5B.  If we assume that's the total return on the fund we get 120mm --> 3.5B.<p>I am now going to assume these returns were realized over a period of 10 years. So that works out to about 40% gains each year (compounded 10 times).<p>Is USV really making 40% every year for a decade?  Are other VCs doing that well?  I knew these funds were good investments but I didn't realize just how good.