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Comment by Aurornis | Hacker News Reader

This is a common structure. It's confusing to people who don't know finance or startups when they first see it.

Even VCs don't get all of their fund money delivered into their bank account when they raise a funding round. It's inefficient and undesirable for everyone involved to have to move all of the money up-front, at once.

If you talk to anyone in startup funding or finance they'll be familiar with the term "capital call" which describes how committed capital obligations are delivered at a later date than the initial deal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_call

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I've been involved in many startups, and this type of fundraising is not common, or at least it wasn't common before a few years or so ago

The whole concept of talking about "runway" is basically calculating how much cash in the bank, that is actually in your bank account, will last. And this arrangement is different, as there are contingencies. In the past, VCs would just give you money in a particular series, and then if your business did well, they'd eventually give you more money in a later series. But it wasn't like they announced it all up front in, say, a Series A, but a big chunk of the money would only be delivered if you met milestones.

Same. I know $100m+ range arrives in the bank account. Don’t know more than that. But for that sum, I know it routinely just arrives.

Obviously this is 1000x as large so I make no claims to knowing that sum. But it’s routine for startup funding to arrive in bank account.

Both of CFS B rounds were cash, in recent years, and each in the range of "low billions". Sure another 2 orders of magnitude is another story, but so is selling hope. I'd say the latter is the thing that is unique here.

Sure for like $5-10MM, but no one is landing $100B cash in a startup's bank account

$100B isn't a startup. And if there's a $100B deal, you better believe the cash is there. Case in point - Netflix/Paramount wanting to buy WB. Or the $44B that Musk had to raise to buy out Twitter shareholders.

Both your examples are purchases. Musk had to raise actual capital to buy Twitter because the people getting the money were taking it and walking away.

Funding doesn't work like that. Investors are giving you money as part of a longer-term deal where they stick around.

This was already common in tech for Series C+ fifteen years ago when I raised a round. Once you’re talking tens or hundreds of millions, almost everyone wants milestones and tranches instead of giving all the money up front.

No, it's not common for the startup itself to make capital calls. The phrase (and your link) refers to capital calls made by VC firms to their limited partners. Same thing in PE.

> Amazon agreed to invest up to $50 billion in the startup

> Nvidia invested $30 billion

> Microsoft, one of OpenAI’s longtime partners, also participated

There is a lot of non-cash, never-will-be cash, investment here. Credits for compute.

I think more people are aware that VCs raise commitments for a fund that they can pull in via capital calls than are aware that startup funding from VCs come with hurdles to clear.

This is perhaps because the most common round to raise is a small/early one, and these tend not to have hurdles. Founders that only ever raised these rounds wouldn't necessarily know what happens in later/bigger rounds.

Also, I wonder if capital calls come with hurdles as well? That is, can an LP refuse to put in more money if the VC's recent investments have not done well? I would think not, since it typically takes many years to determine whether investments were good or not.

I think both things are true at once:

1) For a $100bn round, you won't get a single transfer of $100bn into your checking account, this is normal

2) Sam Altman is a liar and people (correctly) don't really believe him when he starts throwing numbers around

Gotta hit that high IRR as a fund manager and the clock starts when the cash comes in so capital calls are appreciated by fund managers. Unless they are emerging managers (the startup equivalent in finance) and their LP’s are less than institutional and ghost them when the capital call hits.

IRR is so trivial to manipulate - it'd be wonderful if more investors began demanding actual metrics on capital performance. If you're parking cash with an investment firm you want to know about how much of a return you can expect when it is withdrawn, and while history is a guide and not a guarantee, there are much better ways to inform that expected return than IRR. "My million got a return of 2% during a year when your reported IRR was 10% - where's the other 8%!" is a common cry from those who haven't just rolled over their investment, unaware of how little it has functionally appreciated.

It’s confusing because it’s meant to be confusing. Bigger numbers are more impressive.

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