Everyone wants to invest in a unicorn, or so it seems. These are the investments that legendary track records are made of. But truth be told, unicorns don’t always lead to the biggest pots of gold at the end of the investment rainbow. David Coats at Correlation Ventures recently posted a great piece that frames up the topic nicely: “Unicorns are Overrated. Triple Crowns are Better.”
David came up with the latter term–triple crowns–to focus attention on deals that make great returns. Triple Crowns have three characteristics: realized investment multiples of at least 10x, realized IRRs of at least 100%, where VCs invested a meaningful amount of capital (>$1M). Like unicorns, these deals are rare, but triple crowns even more so–less than 1.4% of all investments that have been made and exited over the past decade.
