John Curtius is leaving Tiger International after 5 years main again greater than 250 startups.
Courtesy of Tiger International
John Curtius is leaving funding agency Tiger International because the prolific investor continues to scale back its stakes in personal know-how corporations.
The Midas Checklist investor is leaving Tiger International in a transition now underway, the corporate instructed buyers Monday in a quarterly letter seen by Forbes. Curtius will “work intently with different members of the funding group over the approaching months as we transition his duties,” the agency wrote. “We’re grateful for all of his contributions to Tiger International and respect his work ethic and mind.”
The transfer comes as Tiger International’s multibillion-dollar public funds continued to generate losses within the third quarter, the corporate’s letter mentioned, partly attributable to long-term positions in China-based corporations. The corporate mentioned its sizable personal portfolio of enterprise capital-backed startups can also be down as Tiger lowered the valuations of its holdings each single month in 2022.
Tiger International declined to remark by way of a spokesman. Curtius didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
In a letter primarily mourning the deaths of Julian Robertson, the billionaire founding father of hedge fund Tiger Administration, and Tiger International founder’s mentor and first supporter Chase Coleman III, Curtius talked about briefly in direction of the tip after he acquired a The bulletins seem to mark a detailed finish to greater than 5 years of exercise throughout which the investor purchased again greater than 250 personal know-how corporations.
Throughout this time, Tiger turned often known as one of the vital energetic tech buyers. Beneath Midas Checklist Fixture Scott Shleifer, the enterprise aspect of Tiger’s enterprise grew into his largest, accounting for as much as two-thirds of his fortune, which reportedly reached $95 billion a yr in the past. In April, an evaluation by Crunchbase Information discovered that Tiger had led 87 funding rounds in startups within the first quarter of 2022 alone, for a complete of $7.6 billion in invested capital — greater than $2 billion greater than the following largest checkwriter, the SoftBank Imaginative and prescient Fund.
Curtius, who joined the agency from Elliott Administration in 2017, was the most recent movie star face behind a lot of these startup offers, particularly after Lee Fixel, one other Midas record fixture and longtime Coleman lieutenant, left in 2019 to begin his personal new agency to discovered. Ultimately named Tigers software program and business-to-business startup funding chief, Curtius made a splash within the Miami space when he purchased a $22 million Coral Gables mansion final yr that beforehand belonged to singer Marc belonged to Anthony. In April, his portfolio helped him debut at No. 64 on Midas’ record of the world’s prime personal know-how buyers.
Extra just lately, Tiger’s has made headlines for the billions it has misplaced in its public market positions. The agency’s flagship fund misplaced half its value within the first six months of the yr, billions of {dollars} price of positions; In August, Reuters reported that the corporate was trimming positions in tech corporations like Coinbase, Crowdstrike, and Snowflake, whereas exiting positions in others like DocuSign, Robinhood, and Zoom. Just lately public corporations backed by Curtius, similar to information infrastructure corporations Snowflake and Confluent, are down about 50% or extra for the yr.
And as Tiger’s investor be aware revealed, the corporate has additionally quietly downgraded its personal firm valuations since Curtius’ look on the Midas record — downgrades which can be unlikely to be taken given the lag in re-rating personal corporations versus publicly traded stocks. Curtius’ portfolio contains pre-IPO corporations like information infrastructure firm Databricks and cybersecurity agency Snyk, which can battle to defend their current valuations of $38 billion and $8.5 billion.
Then there’s healthcare automation startup Olive AI, which was backed in December 2020 at a valuation of $1.5 billion and at its newer funding spherical in July 2021 Curtius and Tiger at a valuation of $4 billion -dollars have been concerned. Final month, Olive AI introduced that its chief financial officer and chief product officer have been leaving the startup, two months after it laid off 450 staff. Curtius additionally invested in London-based digital occasions startup Hopin at a $2 billion valuation in December 2020 and continued to speculate as much as its $7.8 billion valuation in August 2021. The digital occasions platform fired 29% of staff final July.
Amid such losses, Tiger International instructed buyers this summer time that it might sluggish its startup investments with the intention to write earlier, smaller checks, in response to a TechCrunch report. Curtius’ alleged departure, in the meantime, turned a frequent subject at different VC corporations, with companions from a number of corporations telling Forbes that they had heard of the transfer (they requested to stay nameless in order to not danger future offers). As late as August, sources near Tiger International denied that Curtius left, with a supply telling Forbes that Curtius was nonetheless making investments for the corporate.
In a funding spherical introduced final week, a $50 million Collection B spherical raised by information onboarding service Flatfile, Curtius was cited on behalf of Tiger, the spherical’s lead investor. Startups typically wait months to announce their funding information, which means such an announcement might have been delayed.
Of their letter to buyers, Tiger International’s partnership mentioned they “stay up for working intently and discovering methods to work with Curtius,” who might search to boost his personal fund after a possible lull in competitors. Nevertheless, Curtius can have to take action, pointing to funding returns in Tiger, which seem to have fallen sharply, a minimum of for now. “We enter the ultimate quarter of 2022 after acknowledging that this won’t be a yr for which the Scoreboard will make us proud and with our minds firmly set on the longer term,” the corporate wrote.