Is venture and growth-stage technology the most attractive asset class for large institutional allocators?

Immad Akhund · May 12, 2025

More capital will flow into venture over the coming years, increasing competition for investors

Company outcomes are far larger than they used to be — a $100B company was once huge, now there are trillion-dollar companies — so people want to put more money into the space

Scope: despite the current liquidity glut, which he expects to work through the system

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David George · Dec 15, 2025

Looking only at forward opportunity, the venture and growth technology asset class is the most attractive place for a large endowment to allocate

Eight of the ten most valuable companies in the world are US West Coast venture-backed technology companies, and if the next twenty years resemble the last twenty, this asset class holds the next generation of dominant companies

Scope: admits he is heavily biased; sets aside where an endowment's existing allocation starts

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Alex Rampell · Jan 12, 2026 · hedged

In five years venture will be even bigger, because technology eats more of the world as software takes on the job of labor and creates brand new markets

The five biggest companies on earth are now technology companies, vertical SaaS like Toast already proved new markets can appear, and AI plus robotics could expand the addressable market another 100x

Scope: framed as a guess and a hope; robotics upside conditional on robots actually working

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Jason Lemkin · Nov 30, 2022

Established institutional LPs will drop many managers but will not abandon venture as an asset class

The LPs who have been in the category for decades keep committing because some combination of PE and VC is the only way to beat the Nasdaq; his own LP base has been unchanged across multiple funds

Scope: expects manager churn to be brutal, including at brand firms like Andreessen; based on his own vantage point and LP stack

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Jason Lemkin · Jan 4, 2024 · hedged

Many huge international capital pools earn only 4-5% a year or less, so venture remains attractive to them as alpha on top of mediocre returns and that capital will keep flowing into venture

They are not operating at the Harvard/Yale/Stanford level of exotic assets and top-quartile venture access, so even a small allocation beating 3-4% a year moves the needle

Scope: they will never put all of it into venture; Harry likely has better data

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Michael Eisenberg · Jun 19, 2024

Venture and startups should not be thought of as an asset class at all; venture is sui generis, and only a small number of practitioners and a small number of startups make money

Real asset classes like commercial real estate behave as classes; the S&P 500's rise has been carried by about four venture-backed generational companies while the rest trail behind

9:45 Venture is not a coherent asset class since returns concentrate in a handful of generational companies

Harry Stebbings · Oct 18, 2023

A 12-15% return from large venture funds is actually attractive when compared across macro asset classes like real estate and credit

LPs judge rates comparatively across asset classes, not against venture's own upside

19:28 Mega fund returns of 12 15 percent are attractive relative to other macro asset classes