simulation page

Product Overview

This disguised case centers on Ellen Grant, who has recently launched a new venture capital (VC) firm, Everglow Ventures (Everglow). Everglow is not a VC firm “as usual”; the founders are seeking to disrupt the VC industry and address some of the shortcomings of the traditional interactions of VC funds with investors and start-ups. Along with proposing a rolling fund structure to investors with no management fee, Everglow creates an ecosystem to support its portfolio companies. One of Grant’s most pressing tasks is to understand how to communicate Everglow’s vision and structure to a new wave of investors—limited partners (LPs). Apart from showing investors the financial benefits of investing via Everglow’s structure, Grant also needs to explain Everglow’s value proposition in terms of supporting its portfolio companies and how this could help achieve higher returns. The case was written for an elective class on VC finance. It fits well as an introductory session on fund structure, capital flows, and the VC model.

Learning Objectives

- Become familiar with the traditional VC model and trends in key terms underlying fund economics such as management fee and carried interest. - Discuss the relationships between general partners (GPs) and LPs, the power dynamics and negotiations that occur between the involved parties, and points of contention, including ways of resolving them. - Highlight the disadvantages of the existing VC model from the perspectives of both investors and entrepreneurs and present recent trends in how industry participants have attempted to mitigate those disadvantages. - Analyze and model different scenarios of fund economics and interpret the financial implications of various fund terms on ultimate returns received by investors.