“Liquidity is only there when you don’t need it.” - Old Proverb
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Dans l’une des scènes cultes du Loup de Wall Street, Jordan Belfort apprend les bases du métier de la haute finance lors de son premier lunch avec son mentor Mark Hanna :
Mark Hanna: Stay with me. We don’t create shit; we don’t build anything.
Jordan Belfort: No.
Mark Hanna: So if you got a client who brought stock at eight, and it now sits at sixteen, and he’s all happy, he wants to cash it and liquidate and take his money and run home. You don’t let him do that.
Jordan Belfort: Okay.
Mark Hanna: Cause that would make it real.
Jordan Belfort: Right.
Mark Hanna: No, what do you do? You get another brilliant idea, a special idea. Another situation, another stock to reinvest his earnings and then some. And he will, every single time. Cause they’re addicted. And then you just keep doing this, again, and again, and again. Meanwhile, he thinks he’s getting rich, which he is, on paper. But you and me, the brokers?
Jordan Belfort: Right.
Mark Hanna: We’re taking home cold hard cash via commission.
De nos jours, les Ferrari blanches de Wall Street ont été remplacées par les Tesla - parfois en feu et rarement autonomes - de la Silicon Valley. Toutefois, le principe de base de Wall Street reste le même : gagner de l’argent grâce aux commissions apportées par les clients chanceux de pouvoir placer leur argent avec les meilleurs.
Parmi eux, les plus agressifs : les fonds de capital-risque.
À titre de comparaison, le capital-risqueur est le joueur de roulette qui mise sur quelques numéros en espérant que ses gains compensent ses pertes (et retourne au distributeur de billets tant que cela ne s’est pas réalisé) lorsque les investisseurs plus traditionnels seraient tentés de suivre le principe de l’interdite martingale.
Matt Levine (dont l’excellente newsletter est gratuite ici) décrit le business model qui a été appliqué par l’un des gagnants du dernier boom technologique, Tiger Global Management :
A reasonable model of venture capital investing, particularly during a boom, is something like:
Most of the returns of venture investing come from a few big home-run deals, so the trick is to be in those.
Due diligence and careful deal selection don’t matter very much: Being in the handful of big home runs and losing 100% on a bunch of other deals is better than missing some home runs and avoiding most of the losers.
Valuation doesn’t matter very much: Overpaying for the handful of big home runs is better than missing them.
What matters is getting into all of the good deals, which means acquiring a reputation, with startup founders, for being easy to work with.
“Easy to work with” certainly means moving fast and paying top dollar.
Some VCs clearly think that it also means something like “bringing my expertise and wisdom to the board of directors,” but Tiger Global plausibly concluded that saying “nah, we don’t need a board seat, we trust you” and not calling startup founders to share their wisdom would actually be received pretty well.
Also, by moving fast, paying top dollar and not doing much diligence, Tiger Global got a lot of press — often quoting other VCs complaining about them — which probably inspired some startup founders to say “hey, actually these guys sound good, let’s call them.”
En 2021, ce modèle fonctionnait à merveille. Il y a à peine plus d’un an, Tiger Global levait encore plus de 12 milliards de dollars, ici rapporté dans le Wall Street Journal :
As an investor, Tiger Global surpassed all other venture firms last year, backing 335 deals, a more than fourfold increase from the 79 transactions it did in 2020, according to data provider CB Insights. The firm picked up the pace as this year began, doing two deals each business day into mid-February, the data show.
Dans un fond de private equity, faire deux acquisitions par jour équivaut à tester 30 restaurants dans le même laps de temps pour un critique gastronomique du guide Michelin.
Au menu aujourd’hui : en entrée, les banques qui finançaient ces opérations ont disparu ayant oublié le b.a.-ba de la gestion des risques, en plat principal des sociétés acquises à prix d’or qui ne génèrent pas de profit et en dessert des clients qui étaient riches sur papier qui veulent retirer leurs fonds.
En 2022, le principal fonds de Tiger Global a souffert de sa plus grande perte historique de plus de 50% et a dû comptabiliser des provisions de 20% sur ses investissements non cotés.
On se tourne vers le Financial Times pour la situation qui vous donne une idée du dessert :
Technology-focused hedge fund Tiger Global is exploring options to cash in a piece of its more than $40bn portfolio of privately held companies, according to people familiar with the matter.
The New York-based investment group is working with an adviser to tap the so-called secondary market to help return money to some of its investors, the people said.
Talks are at an early stage and potential buyers have said that any deal would probably be complicated by difficulties valuing Tiger’s private holdings, which include stakes in companies such as payments business Stripe, US software group Databricks and China’s ByteDance, some of the people said.
Les téléphones des opérateurs du marché secondaire doivent commencer à sonner. Le tigre, comme le loup, sait où trouver ses prochaines proies.