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In investment terms 'return' normally refers to profit. See http://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/returnoninvestment.asp

So I think you should have ended up with 1240%.

E.g turning $1 to $1.50 is a 50% return and $1 to $2 is 100% so $1 to $13.4 is a 1240% return. Still a spectacular return given the short time period.

Otherwise I agree with your numbers. The cost doubling sounds high at first but YC is by definition very hands on.

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No, I work in VC and OP is right. If you have a $100M fund, you invest it all, and you don't lose any money, but you also don't make any money, then you will return $100M to your LPs. Your fund will be a 1x fund and you will return 100% of capital invested. So, I'd stick with the 1340% number.

I understand we are really just disagreeing about the semantics of the word "return", but I'm just including how I see it most commonly used in my line of work.

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