When investment giant Tiger Global heard that Shakespeare wrote King Lear during quarantine, it said, “That’s it?”
During the pandemic, Tiger went on a dealmaking run for the ages that’s culminating in a new $10 billion fund, the largest ever raised by an independent fund manager for minority tech investments.
What is Tiger? It’s a New York-based “crossover” fund, meaning it invests in both private and public companies. And in the last 12 months, it’s left the venture capital world spinning by unloading dump trucks of cash on tech startups and playing by its own rules:
- In Q1, it landed more than four deals per week on average, per Pitchbook data cited by The Information.
- It has hunted for targets at a dizzying pace, approaching founders before they even knew they wanted to raise money. In some instances, it’s gone from conversation → term sheet in three days.
Instead of asking which companies Tiger’s invested in, it’s better to ask which companies Tiger’s not invested in. It owned 10% of Roblox before its direct listing this year. It owned ~10% of Coinbase before its public debut. 20% of Peloton pre-IPO. Postmates before its sale to Uber. Credit Karma before its sale to Intuit. Discord. JD.com. Snowflake.
Crazy part is, Tiger thinks it could be doing more. In a letter to investors, it said its opportunity was “very large relative to the amount of capital we manage and evolving at a rate that is often hard to comprehend.”
Remind you of anyone?
Tiger’s aggressive move into tech has been compared to the Japanese conglomerate SoftBank, whose $100 billion Vision Fund similarly shook up the VC world in 2017. But whereas SoftBank went deep in a few moonshot startups, Tiger is going wide, throwing money at founders before other investors swoop in.
Zoom out: Tiger’s become a target of VCs who say it’s inflating valuations beyond historical norms. It says those people are just jealous.
https://www.morningbrew.com/daily/stories/2021/05/04/tiger-global-management-eating-vc-world
