Daily Data: Instacart's IPO and VC marks

Time preferences are shorter than you think

Happy Friday everyone.

The uncomfortable year for VCs and their LPs is getting comfortabler because “yay! IPOs!” but also uncomfortabler. This too shall pass.

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Daily Data

VC Write Downs

The Information did some really good reporting¹ on who invested in Instacart (and when) and what they stand to make on the grocer’s IPO:

The company’s IPO price is now about 80% lower than it was last time it priced, when big institutions like Fidelity and T Rowe Price, invested (together with big name VCs, like Sequoia and a16z).

An 80% write-down for a profitable tech success is telling you something about VC holdings. It’s always hard to value illiquid securities (like privately held stock), but there are still plenty of funds out there holding their investments at cost (or with moderate write-downs). That’s a generous assessment, to put it mildly.

In their defense, that the stock market has rallied (even if it’s been driven entirely by 7 …