Data and Methods / Glossary
Glossary
Every term we use, defined once.
Each definition is the one our papers use. Where a term is contested in the market, we say so and give the definition we apply rather than the one in circulation.
Performance metrics
- Internal rate of return (IRR)
- The annualized return on a fund's cash flows. Sensitive to timing and to interim marks, which is why we never report it alone.
- Total value to paid-in (TVPI)
- Everything a fund has returned plus everything it still holds, divided by the capital called. Reported as a multiple with an x.
- Distributions to paid-in (DPI)
- Cash actually returned to limited partners, divided by capital called. The realized half of TVPI.
- Residual value to paid-in (RVPI)
- Unrealized value still held, divided by capital called. The half of TVPI that has not converted.
- Percentage point (pp)
- The unit for a difference between two rates. A gap between 17.15% and 9.94% is 7.2 percentage points, not 7.2%.
Efficiency measures
- Return per unit of risk
- A fund's IRR divided by how widely IRRs varied across every fund raised in the same year. It asks how much return a manager generated relative to the return actually available in that market that year. Across the full sample the average fund scores 0.65.
- Upside capture
- A fund's TVPI divided by the median TVPI of every fund raised in the same year. It asks how far past the typical fund of its cohort a manager reached. A score of 1.40 means the fund created 40% more value than the median fund of its vintage.
- Combined score
- Both measures placed on a common scale and averaged, so a single figure reads across both dimensions.
- Efficiently risky
- Not less exposed to a wide range of outcomes, but better compensated for the range carried. This is the distinction the two measures exist to draw.
The Institute's terms
- Emerging manager
- A fund whose firm holds under $100 million in assets under management, or that is Fund I, II, or III, or whose management firm has a vintage under five years, or whose founding team includes women or otherwise underrepresented general partners. The definition is structural. Small does not equal emerging, and diverse does not equal emerging.
- Configuration
- The set of portfolio choices a manager makes: check size, breadth, stage, pacing, and sector. Our word for strategy, because strategy is what the choices add up to.
- Configuration coherence
- Whether those choices form a plan the fund's resources can execute. Assessable before a track record exists.
- Constraint
- The mechanism, never a euphemism for weakness. Constraints shape behavior, and shaped behavior produces returns.
- Capability-based screening
- Screening on what a manager can execute, set against size-based screening, which screens on how large the organization behind the manager is.
- Dispersion
- How far a fund's results are spread. Not the same as risk, because it says nothing about which direction they are spread in.
Sample and sources
- The sample descriptor
- White Paper II: 2,142 U.S.-based venture capital funds, 2000 to 2024. White Paper I: 2,471 U.S.-based venture capital funds, 2000 to 2024. The two samples are not interchangeable and their magnitudes are never reported side by side.
- Vintage year
- The year a fund was raised. Every efficiency measure is set against the fund's own vintage rather than a fixed benchmark, which removes the J-curve objection structurally.
- Data source
- Fund-level performance data sourced from PitchBook and analyzed as part of doctoral research (Moncada, 2026).