Just 5% of VCs Make Most of the Profits

Beyond a handful of big names, most venture capitalists are relatively unknown. Who are they, and what distinguishes the superstars from the rest?

“To understand why some VCs are super successful and others are not, it is very important to get a full picture on every single player in the VC ecosystem,” says Ilya Strebulaev, a professor of finance at Stanford Graduate School of Business, who has spent much of his career trying to understand the inner workings of the venture capital industry.

In a recent paper with Blake Jackson of Ohio State University, Strebulaev assembled and analyzed the largest dataset of individual VCs to date, providing a detailed portrait of the people behind the dealflow. They find that success is highly concentrated among a small number of VCs whose professional trajectory correlates with many factors, including education, work experience, and gender.

Strebulaev explains, “This is important for three layers of ecosystem participants: limited partners, who select VCs and who now can do so with a higher degree of confidence; VCs themselves, who need to benchmark against peers; and founders, who should use our insights in selecting their investors.”

Here are some key numbers from his research:

$1.2 trillion: The total inflation-adjusted net profits generated by venture capitalists in a sample of just over 12,000 VCs at U.S. firms between 1996 and 2025. (This sample was drawn from a larger sample of 100,000 VC-affiliated professionals.)

90%: The share of all net profits generated by the top 5% of VCs in the sample. The top 1% — roughly 120 individuals — account for more than half of all profits. “[A] small number of ‘superstar’ venture capitalists, with particular backgrounds, enjoy the bulk of the rewards of venture capital investing,” Strebulaev and Jackson write.

38%: The share of VCs with at least one investment who are credited with at least one successful outcome, such as an IPO, unicorn valuation, or a sale in which a company is valued at no less than 5x of capital raised. Only 15% of VCs manage three or more successful deals over their careers.

52%: The share of VCs with six or more successful deals who majored in STEM as undergrads.

Up to 83 percentage points: How much less likely VCs who enter the industry at a junior associate level are to eventually become partners, compared with those who start as VP, principal, or other mid-level roles. “VC professionals with particular backgrounds, namely, specialized skills, knowledge, networks, or work experience, not necessarily those with junior VC experience, are more likely to become senior-level VCs,” Strebulaev and Jackson write.

16%: Percentage of VCs who are women. Yet 5.4% of the VCs with six or more deals are women. While the reason for this and other discrepancies in the performance of male and female VCs is not clear, Strebulaev and Jackson note that it’s an important topic for future research.

37%: Percentage of VCs with six or more successful deals who have an MBA from an elite business school. Stanford GSB alums proved particularly productive. “One of the most pronounced characteristics of VCs that have generated the highest lifetime profits, including market-adjusted net profits, is whether they have an MBA from Stanford GSB,” Strebulaev and Jackson write.