Venture investing is hard: 3 out 4 start ups fail with investors losing much not if not all of their money when those 75% of firms liquidate assets. While VCs are always on the lookout for the next big thing, no one can really say whether today's startup will be tomorrow's industry behemoth that makes investors very rich. To improve their odds, VCs will invest in many businesses in a number of markets with the understanding that statistically only a few of their bets will (hopefully) generate big returns.
It's not surprising then that VCs don't like to advertise their losses. They'd much plaster their websites and marketing materials with their successes. And they certainly don't want to remind you of their great misses...companies they passed on that eventually became household names (whose success in hindsight is so blinding obvious, it might give prospective investors pause to hand you any of their money).
Bessemer Venture Partners ("BVP") is refreshingly different. BVP is one of America's oldest venture capital and private equity firms, founded in 1911. Whether because of humility, or the firm's track record, or simply because they think it's clever marketing...BVP maintains a list of (ex-post) game-changing companies they evaluated but decided not to invest in for one reason or another. As BVP quips: "Whatever the reason, we would like to honor these companies —our “anti-portfolio”—whose phenomenal success inspires us in our ongoing endeavors to build growing businesses. Or, to put it another way: if we had invested in any of these companies, we might not still be working."
And the list is (drum roll, please)...
These 16 companies, which include four Magnificent 7 members, had a collective market capitalization of more than $8.5 trillion, as of June 6, 2025, or roughly 1/6 of the value of the entire U.S. stock market.
Thanks for keeping it real BVP.
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