Bill Gurley: Strip out the frothy years and VC's 40-year returns aren't that impressive
FinanceYF5 · x · 2026-10-25
Bill Gurley argues VC outperforms other asset classes not through steady returns but via a few extremely frothy windows: "If you strip those years out of a 40-year assessment, it's actually not that interesting of an asset class."
The accompanying chart shows newly minted $10B+ US tech companies per year: 50 at the 2000 dot-com peak (all public), 64 at the 2021 low-rate peak (mostly private), and 42 already in 2026 YTD — suggesting another bubble-style window is underway.
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