We have had a number of exits, and two or three times we've sold some of our stock in our larger companies for cashflow for operations. Partners have also contributed money.
Going forward, we'll get some management fees from this fund that will contribute to operations.
We also practice what we preach to startups, and spend surprisingly little money each year--our all-in cost for 2015 is about equal to the salary of 2 GPs at many other firms.
Someone want to chime in and give us an idea of approximately how much the "salary of 2 GPs" is? Also, by "all-in cost" is he talking about all expenditures except for actual monies invested?
Sama, how does this commitment to fund companies for life, up to $300 million valuation combine with your own belief that current funding rounds might be bubbly: specifically does this not substantially raise the bar for applicant companies that you are not sure about, by eliciting in you the natural reasoning while you're thinking about YC applications: "Interesting idea. On the other hand this idea may suck. I'm not decided. But if it does suck they may still continue to raise rounds until the overvaluation climate is corrected, and we are committed to funnelling them money while they do. Then it will correct, and since the idea sucks we will lose money. So, we won't invest now, it's too big of a commitment. If they build the idea elsewhere and it turns out not to suck, we can reconsider then."
The direct effect of this is that "backtesting" this reasoning would have resulted in many of your biggest successes, simply not being funded at all. (Because they were too large gambles.)
Note: due to the provocative question I would have preferred to ask you by email, but I think it just gets routed away and you don't see my emails.
Going forward, we'll get some management fees from this fund that will contribute to operations.
We also practice what we preach to startups, and spend surprisingly little money each year--our all-in cost for 2015 is about equal to the salary of 2 GPs at many other firms.