Does a Bigger Felicis Fund Lose Its Early Edge?

Aydin Senkut says Felicis's latest fund is a little over $900 million, up from a $4 million start, and that the larger fund did not erase the early edge. The usual worry is that a firm gets fat and old and loses its feel. He says the people still make the firm special, and the ownership math runs the other way. Felicis owns about 5 to 10 times more of its companies than before, exits have grown about 10 to 100 times in scale, and the bigger checks are why it could get into some companies at all. He also treats physical shape as part of the job, because the work is stressful and poor shape leads to poor decisions.

He reprices the old fund before he accepts the scary multiple. A $4 million fund from 20 years ago would be at least $12 million to $16 million in today's venture market, which is not the official inflation figure. After he cuts the raw jump for that shift and for larger exits, and then counts the extra ownership, the fear that a large fund must get crushed flips. Each time the fund grew, the strategy widened. Felicis still does mostly seed and Series A. Supabase and Runway looked like growth rounds and were really seed or an early A, with hardly any traction and valuations people called reckless. Supabase and Runway later went from about $100,000 in revenue to hundreds of millions in a few years.