VC

Vintage. Founder-GP. Impact/$.

Everybody sits on the same vintage curve. Impact/$ is S-tier per dollar. If they canned the founder, they are not founder-friendly. You cannot buy this number.

Today · Y Combinator vs Andreessen Horowitz desk

The field · median IRR by vintage

Carta Q1 2026 + Q3 2025 medians. 2016 blended with PitchBook/Cambridge (valueaddvc). Firm IRRs are private.

Everybody on one chart

#	Firm	Score	Impact/$	Founder-GP	Friendly	S-tier	Check	Help	AUM
1	Y Combinator	97	24.0×	Graham · Viaweb	keep	Airbnb, Stripe, Coinbase	$0.5–0.5M	86	—
2	Andreessen Horowitz	93	2.8×	Andreessen · Netscape	keep	OpenAI, Coinbase, GitHub	$1–30M	78	$106B
3	Sequoia Capital	91	3.1×	Lee · Polyvore	keep	Apple, Stripe, Airbnb	$1–30M	80	$82B
4	Founders Fund	89	3.6×	Thiel · PayPal	keep	SpaceX, Palantir, Stripe	$5–50M	76	$59B
5	Greylock	59	9.5×	Hoffman · LinkedIn	keep	LinkedIn, Airbnb, Discord	$5–25M	74	—
6	8VC	58	9.9×	Lonsdale · Palantir	keep	Palantir, Anduril	$3–25M	73	—
7	General Catalyst	57	2.1×	Fialkow · National Leisure Group	keep	Airbnb, Stripe, Snap	$5–40M	66	$43B
8	Khosla Ventures	55	3.8×	Khosla · Sun Microsystems	keep	OpenAI, DoorDash, Affirm	$1–25M	88	$22B
9	First Round	49	10.7×	Kopelman · Half.com	keep	Uber, Notion	$1–5M	80	—
10	Initialized	47	14.0×	Ohanian · Reddit	keep	Coinbase, Instacart	$0.5–3M	74	—
11	SV Angel	41	24.0×	— discounted	keep	Airbnb, Stripe, Coinbase	$0.2–1M	80	—
12	Benchmark	39	11.7×	Vishria · Rockmelt	ick · canned	Uber, Twitter, Instagram	$5–15M	62	—
13	Craft Ventures	38	5.3×	Sacks · Yammer	keep	Rippling	$1–8M	70	$2B
14	DST Global	37	4.4×	— discounted	keep	Facebook, Airbnb, Spotify	$20–200M	48	—
15	Accel	36	3.9×	— discounted	keep	Facebook, Slack, CrowdStrike	$2–25M	72	$20B
16	Kleiner Perkins	35	3.7×	— discounted	keep	Google, Amazon, Genentech	$5–40M	58	$21B
17	Thrive Capital	34	1.6×	— discounted	keep	OpenAI, Anthropic, Instagram	$5–100M	58	$50B
18	Index Ventures	33	2.3×	— discounted	keep	Figma, Notion, Datadog	$5–40M	70	$35B
19	Insight Partners	31	0.7×	— discounted	keep	Wiz, Shopify, Qualtrics	$20–150M	55	$92B
20	Tiger Global	31	0.5×	— discounted	keep	Stripe, Datadog, Spotify	$20–200M	42	$78B
21	Felicis	31	15.4×	— discounted	keep	Notion, Canva, Shopify	$5–10M	72	$1.3B
22	Menlo Ventures	31	7.8×	— discounted	keep	Anthropic, Uber, Roku	$5–40M	61	—
23	Floodgate	31	20.9×	— discounted	keep	Lyft, Twitter, Okta	$0.5–3M	76	—
24	Union Square Ventures	28	9.5×	— discounted	keep	Twitter, Coinbase, Kickstarter	$2–15M	84	—
25	Lightspeed	27	1.4×	— discounted	keep	Snap, Grubhub	$5–50M	64	$40B
26	Bessemer	27	2.6×	— discounted	keep	Shopify, LinkedIn, Twilio	$3–30M	68	$20B
27	GV	26	3.6×	— discounted	keep	Uber, Slack, Stripe	$3–25M	65	$13B
28	Bond	26	4.1×	— discounted	keep	Uber, Spotify	$10–80M	60	—
29	NEA	23	1.3×	— discounted	keep	Databricks	$5–40M	60	$28B
30	Ribbit Capital	23	3.9×	— discounted	keep	Coinbase, Robinhood	$5–40M	66	—
31	Coatue	23	2.6×	— discounted	keep	Databricks, Stripe	$20–200M	44	—
32	Lux Capital	21	3.9×	— discounted	keep	Anduril	$5–40M	64	—
33	SoftBank Vision	17	0.4×	— discounted	ick · canned	Uber, Coupang, DoorDash	$100–500M	28	$100B

Associate, top-tier · typical $165k. Market reports, 2026. Not a work-email tick. Carry is the product after partner.

• · Vintage chart is the field (Cambridge / Preqin / Carta medians). Firm IRRs are private. We do not invent them.
• · Score 0–99: founder-GP, S-tier unicorns, founder-rated help, overlap with our hottest seats, public outcome ranks (Strebulaev-Jackson, Dealroom).
• · No founder-GP: the book is discounted. Operator partnerships are not the same as having built a company.
• · Help is Founders Choice Elo where published, else a public-tape read. 92% of VCs claim value-add; 15% of founders call it critical.
• · Impact/$ is a TrustBand multiplier: S-tier hits per √(AUM × typical check). Small books that still hit, win.
• · If they iced the founder and canned them, they are not founder-friendly. Hard cut. Public tape only (Uber/Travis, WeWork/Neumann).
• · You cannot buy this rank.

vc.md · Founders Choice · Strebulaev-Jackson · Cambridge