After much tussling with venture funds and (mostly) the media, CalPERS finally released performance data for its venture capital investments. Here is that data in a more useful form:
| Year | Funds | Average | St dev |
| 1993 | 5 | 19% | 3.6% |
| 1994 | 18 | 13% | 6.0% |
| 1995 | 14 | 17% | 8.8% |
| 1996 | 17 | 6% | 5.2% |
| 1997 | 13 | 11% | 7.1% |
| 1998 | 21 | -3% | 3.8% |
| 1999 | 12 | -8% | 5.4% |
| 2000 | 29 | -15% | 9.8% |
Basically, you can see how returns deteriorate rapidly once you get past 1997. While it is a reasonable excuse to say that funds in their early years typically show poor returns, 1998 funds are now five years old and should be showing better than break-even numbers.
One other point: the standard deviation of returns is remarkably high. For vintage 2000 funds, the table shows that a 95% confidence interval (assuming return normality) would range from almost -35% to +5% — a very large range.
Here is the same data for CalPERS’ venture investments:
Year | Funds | Average | St dev |
1993 | 1 | 28.6% | 2.0% |
1994 | 5 | 11.2% | 2.2% |
1995 | 4 | 23.4% | 6.9% |
1996 | 10 | 10.9% | 4.2% |
1997 | 3 | 25.3% | 3.2% |
1998 | 12 | -3.9% | 2.8% |
1999 | 4 | -29.7% | 4.4% |
2000 | 14 | -22.8% | 8.2% |
2001 | 20 | -29.8% | 11.9% |
2002 | 3 | -27.6% | 3.1% |
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