Denis Dougherty of Intersouth Partners was recently interviewed by Brian Gormley of The Wall Street Journal on the decade-long liquidity crisis that continues to plague the venture capital industry. Responding to the question “What do you see as the biggest investment opportunity for venture capital in 2013?”, Dougherty said, “If we have a broadly rebounding economy, the big corporations would begin to buy products and programs that they want to have, not just the ones that they have to have. Venture capitalists that have an inventory of acquisition-ready companies will do well.”

I agree with Dennis. My concern, based on my direct experience negotiating half a dozen acquisitions sine 2008 (three in 2012), both inside and outside of technology, is that the negotiating environment for such ‘acquisition-ready’ companies is fraught with challenge from the seller’s perspective.

Recent reports reveal that mergers and acquisitions still account for over 90% of liquidity events for venture-backed companies in 2012, a lamentable condition that has plagued the US innovation ecosystem for close to a decade. In my view, many acquisitions of emerging growth companies often lead to the burial of promising technologies by incumbents more focused on protecting market share than on delivering the best product or service to their customers… (think Linksys, Flip…)

It is critical to know the state of the art in merger terms leading to an acquisition and in post-merger covenants, particularly with respect to the release of cash consideration held in escrow or as a holdback by the buyer.

Shareholder Representative Services (SRS) has produced another excellent report that investors and management teams should scrutinize very carefully before engaging in merger negotiations.

I have one general comment to make about the SRS report before reviewing its key findings:

In any negotiation, just because the average term is X, you should not abdicate your responsibility to improve your position and negotiate to get a better outcome for yourself.  You may consider some terms to be acceptable in the agreement because your lawyers tell you “it’s the market” in the heat of battle.  That might be OK, but it also might be a rock that will not always be floating above your head…

Because the current world of venture-backed exits remains dramatically and asymmetrically skewed to the advantage of the acquirer, the aggregate statistics in the SRS report reveal a landscape pockmarked by buyer-friendly terms. Challenge yourself to do better as a seller!  More on this topic to follow…

After a one-year hiatus, I am back.  Stay tuned for new posts on venture capital, corporate governance trends, and current public policy issues that impact investors and entrepreneurs. I have also done a lot of hiking throughout America and Europe in the last year and will share highlights from my hiking experiences as a new topic.

Over the past year I’ve made meaningful personal and professional changes. Today I am healthier, happier, and more energized than ever. I look forward to sharing my thoughts with readers and welcome all constructive comments.

Spencer Stuart recently previewed their annual public board governance analysis in the November 2011 Harvard Business Review, comparing board demographics in 1987 and 2011.  Some highlights and my thoughts on the implications:

* Directors are older:  boards whose average director age is 64 or older:  1987, 3%; 2011 37% .  This may have as much to do with director liability issues as it does with the increased oversight responsibilities associated with being a public company director.  It takes more time to be a public company director– more formal meetings, more preparation, and more informal consultation.  Older directors have more time and also have the flexibility to accept the liability risks as their other corporate responsibilities diminish.

* Director compensation is up: average board retainer plus meeting fees per director: 1987: $36,667; 2011 $95,262. The 1987 figure equates to $69,428 in 2010 inflation- adjusted dollars, or a real increase in director compensation of 38%.

*Smaller is better: public company boards with 12 or fewer members: 1987: 22%; 2011 83%. In my view, this is one of the most positive trends among public boards, as smaller groups generally work together more cohesively than larger groups and larger boards are most often dominated by smaller groups within them– sometimes formally, most times de facto.

* More independent directors: the independence rules have become more clearly defined, with Sarbanes Oxley’s passage in ’02 driving the trend.  1987:68%; 2011: 84%.  Having more independent directors, however, does not necessarily correlate to having a more effective board– let’s not forget models of director independence, such as Tyco and Enron, that were emblematic of poor board governance.

* Still dominated by white males: in 2011, 9% of boards have no female directrs, 16.2% of corporate directors are women, and 15.3% of directors at the top 200 companies are African-american, Hispanic, or Asian.

I never expected to have my first book published in China, much less in Mandarin, but that goes to show how much the world continues to change.  My contributions to this undergraduate textbook, Venture Capital: Theory & Practice, are the result of two important collaborations.  First, the body of collaborative work on corporate governance best practices that I have developed since 1999 with other venture capitalists and professional service providers to the venture industry; and, second, the direct collaboration on venture capital that resulted from meeting Professor Mannie Manhong Liu in the summer of 2007 at the  Symposium on Building the Financial System of the 21st Century between China and the US, sponsored by the Harvard Law School together with the CDRF (China Development Research Foundation) and PIFS (the Program on International Financial Systems).

Venture Capital started in China in 1985, when the first government-sponsored venture capital firm was established. The industry built slowly until a few years into the new century. In 2006, China’s total venture capital investment reached $1.78 B, becoming number two globally, next to the US; the US venture capital investment was $25.6B that year, accounting for 67.9% of the world total ($37.7b).  While China was far behind, accounting for about 4.7% of the total, nevertheless, China became number two and has kept that status ever since.

Venture Capital is a popular buzzword in China. Renmin University was among the first universities to create a venture capital major in the School of Finance and teach venture capital for undergraduates.  In recent years, many universities have followed, teaching venture capital as an elective course. In October 2010, our new textbook will become available.

Mannie and I share a strong interest in research in the field of venture capital and private equity. Mannie was working for Professor Josh Lerner at Harvard Business School before she returned to China to teach these subjects. The backbone for my contribution to our effort is the best practices work “for practitioners by practitioners” that I have developed in the area of venture capital through the multiple articles and three white papers that I’ve written.

Mannie was invited by a publisher in Beijing to write a textbook for undergraduate students in China; she in turn invited me to join her as the book’s co-author. Writing the book was a very intensive task, and both of us have worked on it for many months, with Mannie and her team translating my work and both of us discussing the context of the content for the Chinese audience.

Venture Capital: Theory and Practice, is in Chinese and is categorized as one of  “China’s National College Major Investment Textbook Series for the ‘Twelfth Five-Year Plan.’” The book has three parts and a total of 12 chapters. The Theory includes chapters on the venture capital concept, entrepreneurship, and a simple history; The Practice covers fundraising, business plan construction and analysis, investment due diligence, post investment monitoring and exit; and The Future emphasizes early stage investment, especially angel investment, as well as Cleantech VCs and socially responsible investment.  In the last chapter, Venture Capital in China, we explore the amazing development of China’s unique venture capital industry.

This textbook combines the strength of my Silicon Valley experiences as a venture capitalist and Mannie’s research as a professor, and it will help strengthen Chinese college-education programs in this particular field.  The book draws on and acknowledges important contributions from the members of the Working Group on Director Accountability and other experts in the field of venture capital.  I’ve donated all of my royalties from the book to the Society of Kauffman Fellows, which reported on the publication of this book in their July report.

This is the last in our series of 10 frequently asked questions from investors in venture capital partnerships.

Susan Mangiero, CEO of Investment Governance’s Fiduciary X, asked me the following:

Question: I’ve read that some GPs are suing LPs for not making capital calls. The LPs claim that they are cash constrained and/or the VC fund has not performed. Why throw more money their way? Do you see a trend here of broken contracts?

Answer: First, it would appear that the reports of numerous LP  defaults exceed the reality. Based upon discussions with industry  participants, most institutional LPs have, in fact, met their  obligations to make capital calls. Second,  the decision of a GP to sue an LP over a default is most often the absolute  last resort. The GPs are not in business to institute litigation — this a  distraction for the GP and added publicity that neither GPs nor LPs desire.  When the LP Agreement is executed, all of the parties enter into a contract  with the expectation that both LPs and GPs will honor their respective  commitments. The GPs have committed their time, and have built an organization  to implement an investment strategy and program for the fund. They should be  entitled to rely on the contractual obligations of those sophisticated  investors who agreed to support this program over the long  term.

This is the eighth in our series of ten frequently asked questions from investors in venture capital partnerships.

Susan Mangiero, CEO of Investment Governance’s Fiduciary X, asked me the following:

Question: What happens if an LP wants to exit a VC fund? What are their rights?

Answer: The options here are limited, and they are (1) the LP can try to sell their interest, including the obligation to fund future capital calls, to a fund that acquires secondary interests.  The good news is that a robust market exists for such interests in venture capital partnerships today; or (2) default.  If you do wish to sell, the GP needs to approve the transfer, and the standard partnership agreement language leaves this decision in the “sole discretion” of the GP.  There is no free lunch if you change your mind several years into a 10-year-plus partnership participation. And there shouldn’t be, which also means that either the secondary market buyer will take their pound of flesh by buying the LP’s interest at a substantial discount, or the GP will by offering the interest and its economic value on a discounted basis to the other LP’s.  It is far less disruptive to the GP and to the GP-LP relationship for the exiting partner to sell to a secondary buyer, but these buyers are totally financially driven and are going to get the best deal possible for themselves.

This is the seventh in our series of ten frequently asked questions from investors in venture capital partnerships.

Susan Mangiero, CEO of Investment Governance’s Fiduciary X, asked me the following:

Question; How should institutional investors contact VC funds? Directly or via an investment consultant? Do the traditional investment consultants have the background to conduct due diligence on the VC fund(s)?

Answer: First, nothing beats direct contact with managers.  I think the VC industry conferences in specific industry sectors provide a great forum for institutional investors to meet directly with VC funds.  Historically the two largest conferences have been sponsored by IBF and DowJones.  There are also sector specialty conferences, such as the IT Security Entrepreneurs Forum held annually on the Stanford campus, the bring out domain experts.I think that it also makes sense for institutional investors who don’t have the resources to do a full search to work with consultants—however, I will say that, in my experience, many consultants become gatherers of statistics and information—meaning paper pushers—and few of them actually bother to have a deep and current understanding of what is really going on in the market. I’ve actually been shocked at how clueless some consultants are about what is really going in the VC industry. I think the evidence supporting this point is in the fact that, because of the long term nature of the VC business, consultants will choose to back a certain fund and then assume that they can sit back and wait for five or ten years to see if they made the right choice.  This is a big mistake, and one of the root causes is because there is a low probability that the same analyst or partner in the firm that made the original “commit” decision is still going to be at the consultant even four years after the original decision to recommend the fund was made.  So I am suggesting that a lot of the “standard” recommendations by the consultants in VC are stale.  So you need to do research on the consultant’s process as well as directly meet with the venture firms.  Any venture firm that won’t meet with you probably doesn’t need your money and won’t give you the kind of respect in a relationship that you should expect, so that’s a great first cut in your process.

This is the sixth in our series of ten frequently asked questions from investors in venture capital partnerships.

Susan Mangiero, CEO of Investment Governance’s Fiduciary X, asked me the following:

Question: You had some thoughts about contract terms. Do you think the trend is shifting in favor of institutional LPs to receive better terms?

Answer: Certainly as the sources of capital have become more  selective and scarce, the GPs have had to become more aware of LP concerns over terms. While  the GPs in top tier funds will still be able to maintain favorable terms (and  LPs will always want to get into their funds), even these GPs have made some  concessions to maintain a supportive investor base. For example, recent press  reports have indicated that at least two prominent funds had lowered their  ”premium” carry structures, and made the payment of a 30% carry rate subject  to the return of a multiple of the investors’ capital. For those other funds  that are not oversubscribed, there will undoubtedly be some pressure on  terms. Though there has been a lot of talk about the terms suggested in the  recent guidelines published by the ILPA, these guidelines have not fully  caught hold (and some proposed terms –like joint and several liability  on clawbacks — may be seen as too extreme). Still, in the current fundraising  environment, there will certainly be some movement to provide an  alignment of interests between LPs and GPs, while trying to maintain the  appropriate incentives for the GPs.

This is the fifth in our series of ten frequently asked questions from investors in venture capital partnerships.

Susan Mangiero, CEO of Investment Governance’s Fiduciary X, asked me the following:

Question: Please differentiate between the governance of a VC fund versus the governance of companies in a VC fund’s portfolio? Is one more important than the other?

Answer: This is a very important question, and it starts with recognizing that VC funds, as partnerships, are governed very differently from portfolio companies, which are corporations.  The VC fund may have one managing partner that sets the tone and controls the entire firm, or it may have a collegial distribution of governance among several senior partners.  The best way to understand how a VC fund is governed begins with an analysis of the fund’s investment committee, its deal due diligence process, and the specific allocation of the fund’s investment capital among the individual partners.  An important question to ask is, do the partners evaluate themselves and each other on an annual basis or at all? You might be surprised to learn that many VC funds lack an internal feedback loop, that the partners may not communicate openly among each other, and that the partners themselves may lack a formal measure of accountability among each other, even though the economics are divided formally in the management company agreement.

Turning to portfolio companies, the board of directors is responsible for the governance of the company, and here we have a very interesting dynamic which often leads to board dysfunction—the VC directors have inherent conflicts of interest as representatives of their funds and as fiduciaries who must act in the best interests of all of the shareholders.  In addition there is a major tension and conflict between the management team and the VC directors—the management wants more share ownership, and the common equity is at the bottom of the seniority stack behind the various series of preferred equity rounds.  The VCs want capital efficiency, which means they want management to do more with less.  Compounding the complexity is the fact that most VC-backed companies replace their CEOs twice between the founding and the liquidity event.  So you can imagine that the VC boardroom governance equation is very complex and rife with opportunities for problems.

This is the fourth in our series of ten frequently asked questions from investors in venture capital partnerships.

Susan Mangiero, CEO of Investment Governance’s Fiduciary X, asked me the following:

Question: Are there ways to mitigate the team risk when in fact VC funds often back a particular team or particular CEO?

Answer: When we back serial entrepreneurs, it is critical to assess where they are today in their lifetime achievement and performance potential curve.  By that, I am reminded of the fundamental risk in looking at track records—“past performance is not indicative of future returns.”  It amazes me how many investors chase performance and don’t pay attention to the current team composition at the VC manager, to the current dynamics of the partnership.  Ideally you want to back a proven winner who is still hungry enough to deserve a seat at the table.  Venture capital is totally a hits- driven business, but there are very few hitters, either VCs or entrepreneurs– who are able to hit multiple home runs.  When you look at VC’s, you want to find VC’s who are magnets for great entrepreneurs, whether they are first timers or veterans, and rely on the VCs’ pattern recognition ability to make that judgment call in picking a winner.  One way to mitigate risk is to assess how deep the team is in the VC organization—remember that you are making a 10 year bet on a team, and few teams stay together through an entire cycle.