MOIC (Multiple on Invested Capital)
The total value returned from an investment divided by the amount originally invested, ignoring timing.
MOIC is the simplest venture return metric: total value (realized plus unrealized) divided by capital invested. A 3x MOIC means the investment is worth three times what was put in, whether that happened in two years or ten — unlike IRR, MOIC ignores the time value of money entirely.
MOIC is useful precisely because it's simple and hard to distort with timing tricks, which is why LPs often use it alongside IRR to sanity-check a fund's headline return story. At the fund level, MOIC is essentially the same concept as TVPI, just expressed slightly differently depending on whether unrealized value is included.
MOIC = total value (realized + unrealized) / total capital investedA firm invests $2M in a startup and it exits years later for a position worth $16M to the fund. MOIC = $16M / $2M = 8x.
When comparing two funds or two deals, use MOIC to judge absolute return magnitude and IRR to judge capital efficiency over time — a great venture outcome usually needs to be strong on both, since a fund needs a handful of 10x+ MOIC deals to be a real fund returner.
What's a good MOIC for a venture deal?
Top venture outcomes at the individual-deal level are often 10x or higher, since a portfolio needs a small number of huge winners to offset the majority of deals that return less than 1x.
Related terms
Run the numbers yourself: dilution, SAFE conversion, and fund-returner calculators.