Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future · chapter 7 · id zero-to-one-c7-08-a-single-vc-investment-must-ha

“A single VC investment must have the potential to return the entire fund to be worth making. This is the fund-returning threshold that should guide all investment decisions.”

holdsconfidence: high⚠ extracted by pipeline, re-audit pending

Receipts

Seth Levine -- Venture Outcomes Are Even More Skewed Than You Thinksource alive

In a $100M fund with 20 investments, only 0.8 companies produce >5x return, generating ~$100M. Without that fractional company, the fund fails to return capital after fees. 65% of financings fail to return 1x.

AngelList -- Empirical Power-Law Distribution in VCsource alive

Return multiples are consistent with a power-law distribution with alpha = 2.42. After five years, winning investments draw from alpha < 2 (unbounded mean), suggesting theoretically unbounded returns.

This claim is a stable, citable object. If you can falsify a verdict, tell us — corrections are loud here.