Reconstructed first-round book from the research data, not a scrape of today's website. Public portfolio pages over-report winners, and this graph has the same public-data bias. Investor edges are essentially Crunchbase through late 2015, plus Y Combinator.
Research book · 3-year follow-on
Needham Capital Partners vs Kairos
Not ranked
Whole-book follow-on hit rate 25.0% (2 of 8 labeled deals). 95% Wilson interval 7.1%–59.1%. Vintage-weighted base rate 41.6%. This is not a fund return.
Not ranked. A book needs at least 15 labeled deals with a vintage base rate. This one has 8.
Vs same-vintage base rate
-16.6 pp
25.0% on 8 deals vs 41.6%
Vs median VC book
-25.8 pp
25.0% on 8 deals vs 50.8%
Vs top-quartile VC
-38.8 pp
25.0% on 8 deals vs 63.8%
Vs Y Combinator
-60.1 pp
16.7% on 6 deals vs 76.8%
Ranked when at least 15 labeled deals have a vintage base rate. Rank is the average-rank percentile of shrunk excess (20 pseudo-deals at that book's vintage base rate) among eligible VC books that clear the same minimum. 100 is best. The whole book is never compared to Kairos's top-50 hit rate.
What Kairos would have said
Scores are the model’s percentile at each company’s first observed funding event, not at a later round. That matches this fund’s entry only when the fund was in the first-round syndicate. A deal is flagged when its percentile clears that vintage’s top-50 cutoff. The whole book is not compared to the top-50 hit rate.
Deals with a score
8
Mean model percentile
31
Flagged deals
11/1 followed on
Five-year exit, secondary
Five-year exit labels are observable mainly for 2005–2010. A missing later exit is not counted as a failure. This panel is not the ranking.
Hit rate 25.0% (2 of 8). 95% Wilson interval 7.1%–59.1%.
Vs exit base rate
+9.4 pp
25.0% on 8 deals vs 15.6%
Vs median VC exit book
—
No overlapping vintages
Vs top-quartile exit book
—
No overlapping vintages
Companies
8 labeled follow-on deals, 0 matched without an observable label (dropped, not counted as failures).
| Company | Vintage | Follow-on | Kairos percentile | Flagged |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SpaceClaimspaceclaim.com | 2005 | Yes | 99 | Yes |
| Bioceptbiocept.com | 2006 | No | 51 | — |
| Bay Microsystemsbaymicrosystems.com | 2003 | Yes | 23 | — |
| Ceonceon.com | 2005 | No | 21 | — |
| ChipXchipx.com | 2004 | No | 20 | — |
| TestQuesttestquest.com | 2005 | No | 19 | — |
| ePartnersepartnersolutions.com | 2005 | No | 11 | — |
| Sipex Corporation | 2006 | No | 8 | — |