Loading Fund Benchmarking...
Compare your fund metrics against industry benchmarks
Built by Trace Cohen · Free to use · Data refreshed regularly · Reach out at t@nyvp.com
Compare your fund against the latest public benchmarks: Carta's VC Fund Performance data as of Q2 2026 (published September 23, 2026) and the Cambridge Associates US Venture Capital Index as of March 31, 2026. Full vintage-by-vintage quartile tables sit behind each provider's form or paywall, so this page shows only the figures they publish openly, with links to the source reports.
TVPI (Total Value to Paid-In) is a fund's total value — cash already distributed to LPs plus the remaining unrealized NAV — divided by the capital LPs paid in. It answers "what is every dollar I put in worth today, on paper and in cash combined." DPI (Distributions to Paid-In) is only the cash actually returned to LPs divided by paid-in capital — the only number an LP can spend. Net IRR is the annualized rate of return on those cash flows after fees and carry; it is the most quoted and the most gameable of the three, because subscription credit lines and early markups can inflate it years before any real cash comes back. MOIC (Multiple on Invested Capital) is TVPI's gross cousin — the same math before fees and carry — which is why a fund's pitch deck MOIC always looks better than the TVPI its LPs experience.
Worked example: a $50M fund has returned $30M in cash to LPs and holds portfolio positions marked at $45M. Its DPI is $30M ÷ $50M = 0.6x, and its TVPI is ($30M + $45M) ÷ $50M = 1.5x. The 0.9x gap between the two numbers is unrealized paper value — the portion of the fund's story that still depends on future exits.
| Vintage | Median DPI | Top-decile TVPI | Top-decile TVPI, 2 yrs earlier | Top-decile IRR |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | 0.37x | 4.14x | 3.31x | 25.7% (28.7% two years earlier) |
| 2018 | 0.15x | 3.71x | 2.96x | Declining (figure in full report) |
| 2019 | 0.04x | In full report | In full report | Declining (figure in full report) |
Source: Carta, VC Fund Performance: Q2 2026 (September 23, 2026). Top decile = 90th percentile. Medians and quartiles for every vintage, plus IRR and TVPI charts, are in Carta's full report. For the cash side of the story, see our DPI Drought report.
| Horizon | US VC Index (net to LPs) | Nasdaq mPME | Russell 2000 mPME |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 year | 26.13% | 25.40% | 25.41% |
| 3 years | 11.03% | 21.46% | 13.04% |
| 5 years | 7.43% | 11.57% | 4.84% |
| 10 years | 15.99% | 17.22% | 9.85% |
| 20 years | 13.00% | 12.96% | 7.94% |
Source: Cambridge Associates, US Venture Capital Index and Selected Benchmark Statistics, March 31, 2026. Pooled horizon returns, net of fees, expenses and carried interest, from 2,836 US venture funds formed 1981-2026. mPME shows what the same cash flows would have earned in the public index.
Top quartile means your fund beats 75% of funds from the same vintage year — the comparison is always vintage-to-vintage, because deployment-era market conditions move returns more than manager skill. For vintages younger than about five years, IRR is mostly noise: the J-curve means fees are drawn before value is created, so early IRR punishes normal pacing and rewards aggressive early markups. From roughly year 7 on, the ranking that matters flips to DPI. For scale: the median 2017-vintage fund has returned 0.37x in cash nine years in (Carta, Q2 2026), so any late-2010s fund that has already returned 1.0x or more is well ahead of the typical fund.
Always compare against funds of the same vintage year — market conditions at deployment time drive returns more than manager skill in many cases. A 2019 fund benchmarks against 2019 peers, not 2021.
TVPI is most relevant in early years (years 1-5). DPI becomes the dominant metric in later years (6+) once exits have occurred. Carta's Q2 2026 data shows top-decile TVPI rising for 2017-2018 funds while top-decile IRR falls: gains are arriving later and are mostly still on paper. A high-TVPI, low-DPI fund at year 8+ is a red flag — ask why capital hasn't been returned.
Seed funds benchmark against seed funds. Growth equity funds benchmark against growth equity. Comparing a seed fund's net IRR to a growth fund's DPI is meaningless — strategy determines the appropriate comparison set.
Smaller funds (< $100M) typically show higher IRRs due to the power law math of smaller checks. Compare your fund's size tier: micro (< $50M), emerging ($50-150M), mid ($150-500M), or large ($500M+). Top-quartile thresholds differ materially across size buckets. Capital is concentrating at the top: in 2025, 64% of capital raised by VC funds on Carta went to funds over $100M, up from 38% in 2017.
PME compares VC returns to what the same cash flows would have earned in public markets (S&P 500 or Russell 2000). Cambridge Associates' mPME as of March 31, 2026: over 10 years the US VC index returned 15.99% a year versus 17.22% for the same cash flows in the Nasdaq and 9.85% in the Russell 2000. Over 20 years VC roughly matched the Nasdaq (13.00% vs. 12.96%).
The 2/20 standard (2% management fee, 20% carry) is giving way to more LP-favorable terms for newer or first-time managers: 2/20 with a 6-8% hurdle and European-style waterfall. GPs with strong performance records command 2.5/25 or better. With median DPI still low across late-2010s vintages, managers who have actually returned cash have the strongest hand in fundraising.
TVPI (Total Value to Paid-In) measures a fund's total value — cash already distributed plus the remaining unrealized NAV — divided by capital paid in. DPI (Distributions to Paid-In) counts only the cash actually returned to LPs divided by capital paid in. The difference is realization: a fund can show a 1.5x TVPI with a 0.6x DPI, meaning most of its value is still paper markups. DPI is the only number LPs can spend.
It depends heavily on vintage, so always compare against your own vintage year, not an all-vintage average. For context, Carta's Q2 2026 fund-performance data puts the top-decile (90th percentile) TVPI at 4.14x for 2017-vintage funds and 3.71x for 2018-vintage funds. Those are the best 10% of funds; the typical fund of the same vintages sits far lower, and most of that value is still unrealized.
Exact top-quartile cutoffs by vintage are published in the full Carta, Cambridge Associates and PitchBook reports, which sit behind a form or paywall. The openly published reference points: per Carta's Q2 2026 data, the top-decile TVPI is 4.14x for the 2017 vintage (up from 3.31x two years earlier) and 3.71x for the 2018 vintage (up from 2.96x). A top-quartile fund sits below those top-decile figures and well above the median.
Per Carta's Q2 2026 data, the top-decile (90th percentile) IRR for 2017-vintage funds is 25.7%, down from 28.7% two years earlier, and top-decile IRRs for the 2018 and 2019 vintages have declined gradually too. IRR is falling for these funds even as TVPI rises, because the gains are taking longer to produce and are mostly still on paper. A top-quartile fund sits below the top-decile figure; the full quartile tables are in Carta's gated report.
IRR is an annualized rate that can be inflated early in a fund's life through subscription credit lines, early markups, and recycling — it is a time-weighted estimate, not money in hand. DPI is actual cash returned to LPs and cannot be gamed. After roughly year 7, LPs weight DPI over both IRR and TVPI: a fund at year 8+ with a high TVPI but a DPI below 0.5x is a warning sign that paper value is not converting to distributions.
The primary sources for VC fund benchmark data in 2026 are Carta (large sample of emerging managers, quarterly updates), Cambridge Associates (institutional LP perspective, global coverage), PitchBook (broad coverage, some survivorship bias), Burgiss (institutional-quality, widely used by endowments), and Aduro Advisors (emerging managers specialist). Most require subscriptions; Cambridge Associates and PitchBook publish summarized benchmarks publicly.
Less than the headlines suggest. Per Carta's Q2 2026 data, the median 2017-vintage fund has a DPI of 0.37x, the median 2018 fund 0.15x and the median 2019 fund 0.04x: nearly a decade in, the typical fund has returned well under half of its capital in cash. Carta notes that the share of recent funds with some DPI is growing, but the amounts are still small. See our DPI Drought report for the full picture.
To compare your fund to VC benchmarks: (1) identify your vintage year, fund size tier, and strategy (seed/early/growth/sector-specific); (2) pull top-quartile, median, and bottom-quartile TVPI, DPI, and net IRR for your vintage from Carta or Cambridge Associates 2026 reports; (3) calculate where your fund falls across each metric; (4) weight DPI more heavily if your fund is past year 6; (5) calculate your PME vs. a public market index for the same cash flow schedule.