Inside Collaborative Fund’s 4x DPI Fund I

Lately, it feels like every corner of my internet bubble is talking about venture returns—Carta charts one day, leaked DPI tables the next. I’ve seen posts on lagging vintages, mega-fund bloat, the “Venture Arrogance Score”, the rising bar for 99th‑percentile exits, and the PE-ification of VC. 

But for all that noise, I haven’t seen much that actually walks through how returns metrics evolve over time in an early-stage fund. That’s a crucial gap. Many analyses focus on funds that are still mid-vintage, where paper markups can tell an incomplete or even misleading story.

So I pulled the numbers on Collaborative’s first fund, a 2011 vintage that’s now nearly fully realized. It offers a concrete look at how venture performance can unfold across a fund’s full lifecycle.

Fund 1 was small: $8M deployed across 50 investments. Check sizes ranged from ~$10K to ~$400K, averaging around $100K for both initial and follow-on rounds. It was US-focused, sector-agnostic, and mostly pre-seed through Series A.

Portfolio metrics

Without further ado, here’s how the fund performed over its lifetime across a few core metrics:

Note: Distributions are net to LPs; contributions reflect paid-in capital. IRR data was not meaningful (“NM”) for years 1–5.

Below is a line chart of the returns data:

Note: IRR is shown as a dashed line corresponding to the secondary axis.

Contributions wrapped up by year 4, which is typical for early-stage funds. Distributions didn’t start until year 4 and peaked around year 10:

Returns metrics takeaways

• Strong overall performance: The fund achieved a 4.1x net DPI—solidly top-decile. For context, PitchBook pegs 3.0x as the 90th percentile for funds in the 2011 vintage.
• The patience premium: At year 10, DPI was 0.9x. There’s a lot of discussion right now around the lack of venture liquidity. 10 years in, this fund could’ve been a talking point. But then, in year 11, DPI jumped to 3.8x. Liquidity might be slow, but value can still be building. 
• The IRR roller coaster: Net IRR hit 18% in year 6 (off paper gains), sagged in the middle years, then popped to 22% in year 11 after a major exit. IRR can be hurt by delays, even when final outcomes are strong.
• Some juice still left: Even after 14 years, the fund sits at 4.1x net DPI and 4.6x net TVPI. That means roughly 0.5x of upside is unrealized. That tees up the classic end‑of‑life question: seek to harvest the tail or ride it out?
• Shallow J-curve: Early markups lifted TVPI above 1x by Year 2, keeping LPs above water on paper even before distributions began. 

Where did the DPI actually come from?

Returns were highly concentrated. Eight companies—Upstart, Lyft, Scopely, Blue Bottle Coffee, Maker Studios, Gumroad, Reddit, and Kickstarter—drove nearly all distributions.

Note: “Cost” is cumulative capital actually invested. “Cash Back” is cumulative proceeds received by the fund from realization events, and excludes (i) any remaining unrealized value and (ii) fund-level fees and expenses. “Multiple” is the quotient of Cash Back divided by Cost.

Together, these accounted for just $0.8M of invested capital but returned $37.6M—an average multiple of 45x. The remaining 42 investments, representing $7.2M, returned only $2.0M (a 0.3x multiple).

Within those eight, outcomes varied widely: one company alone delivered 73% of all cash returned. Adding the next three brought the cumulative share past 90%. Multiples ranged from 1.4x to 115x—illustrating just how concentrated and variable even a “winning” subset can be.

Portfolio lessons

• Power law: Eight companies drove ~95% of all returns. One contributed 73% on its own.
• Capital efficiency: Less than $1M into the top eight generated $37.6M back.
• Check size ≠ upside: Some of the biggest winners were sub-$100K checks, while some larger bets in the tail went to zero. Limiting ticket size can cap downside without necessarily hampering fund performance.
• Winner variance: Even among the winners, multiples ranged from low single digits up to well over 100x, underscoring that not every winner needs to be a moonshot but a few big outliers can matter tremendously.

Conclusion

We believe the biggest risk in early-stage VC isn’t failure. It’s missing (or mis-sizing) the outlier. In Fund I, eight companies drove nearly all distributions. One check alone accounted for more than 70% of DPI. This is the power law at work.

Collaborative’s story now spans 15 years with four early funds in harvest mode. Three rank in PitchBook’s top quartile with two in the top decile by DPI. In each, a small number of companies drove the bulk of returns. Perhaps these will make for future posts. 

Until then, I hope this serves as a reminder to take venture performance narratives based on unrealized funds with a grain of salt. Some trends are real and worth watching. But many of the loudest signals may fade or reverse as funds mature. Until they’re fully played out, their stories are still being written.

Disclaimer: 1. This post is for illustrative purposes only. Certain statements contained herein reflect the subjective views and opinions of Collaborative Fund Management LLC (“Collab”). Such statements cannot be independently verified and are subject to change. In addition, there is no guarantee that all investments will exhibit characteristics that are consistent with the initiatives, standards, or metrics described herein. Certain portfolio companies shown herein are for illustrative purposes only and are a subset of Collab investments. Not all investments will have the same characteristics as the investments described herein. It should not be assumed that any investments identified and discussed herein were or will be profitable. 2. Certain information contained in this post constitutes “forward-looking statements” that can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as “may,” “will,” “should,” “expect,” “anticipate,” “target,” “project,” “estimate,” “intend,” “continue,” or “believe” or the negatives thereof or other variations thereon or comparable terminology. Due to various risks and uncertainties, actual events or results or the actual performance of any Collab investment may differ materially from those reflected or contemplated in such forward-looking statements. 3. Performance as of December 31. 2024, unless otherwise noted. Past performance is not indicative of future results. There can be no assurance that any Collab investment or fund will achieve its objective or avoid substantial losses. Gross returns do not reflect the deduction of management fees, carried interest, expenses and other amounts borne by the investors, which will reduce returns and in the aggregate are expected to be substantial. References to “Net IRR” are to the internal rate of return calculated at the fund level. In addition, references to “Net IRR”, “Net TVPI” and “Net DPI” are calculated after payment of applicable management fees, carried interest and other applicable expenses. Internal rates of return are computed on a “dollar-weighted” basis, which takes into account the timing of cash flows, the amounts invested at any given time, and unrealized values as of the relevant valuation date. 4. The values of unrealized investments are estimated as of December 31. 2024, are inherently uncertain and subject to change. There is no guarantee that such value will be ultimately realized by an investment or that such value reflects the actual value of the investment. Actual realized proceeds on unrealized investments will depend on, among other factors, future operating costs, the value of the assets and market conditions at the time of disposition, any related transaction costs and the timing and manner of sale, all of which may differ from the assumptions on which the valuations reflected in the historical performance data contained herein are based. Accordingly, the actual realized proceeds on these unrealized investments may differ materially from the returns indicated herein and there can be no assurance that these values will ultimately be realized upon disposition of investments. Different methods of valuing investments and calculating returns may also provide materially different results. 5. For informational purposes only. Not a public solicitation. 6. References to performance rankings of the fund herein refer to PitchBook’s Venture Capital Benchmark rankings for all geographies and fund sizes with data as of Q4 2024.

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