In Practice
Revenue multiples, gut-feel risk scores, and back-of-envelope dilution estimates are not risk management. Each framework here replaces a standard VC shortcut with a systematic, data-calibrated method — and maps directly to a module in the VC Risk curriculum.
Most VCs estimate exit value with a revenue multiple applied to a Year 5 projection. This framework benchmarks a company's actual growth trajectory against historical cohorts — including Stripe, Slack, Uber, and Salesforce — and produces a growth percentile that maps directly to a data-grounded P10/P50/P90 exit range. The systematic alternative to the revenue multiple.
The standard survival rate literature measures whether startups stay alive. This framework estimates something more useful: the probability a startup exits for more than $1M. Eight factors scored across two independent dimensions — Venture Viability and Commercial Scaling — produce a single, auditable exit likelihood score that drives investment thresholds and re-scoring at every financing stage.
Revenue multiples give you one number. This framework fits a lognormal distribution to real historical exit data — producing P10, P50, and P90 outcomes calibrated to actual exits in your vertical. Makes explicit whether your return thesis is P50-grounded or tail-dependent. The data-driven alternative to comp-based exit estimation.
Cap table tools tell you what you own today. This framework models what you'll own at exit — running Monte Carlo across every future financing round to produce P10, P50, and P90 ownership paths. Combined with the exit value distribution, it gives you the complete investor return distribution. The difference between a dilution estimate and a dilution model.
80% of funds haven't returned 1x DPI by year 7. Most GPs wait for liquidity to come to them. This framework treats secondaries as a first-class DPI management tool — using the IRR cross-plot to identify secondary candidates proactively, and backward induction to compute EV(hold) vs EV(liquidity) with explicit probability weights.
Every framework on this page is taught in the VC Risk 2-day intensive — the first rigorous risk management curriculum built specifically for venture capital. In-person cohorts in New York, Chicago, Miami, San Francisco, and Toronto.
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