Keep pulling the thread on Martin Mignot.
Over its 30-year history, Index Ventures has invested $11.5 billion, returned nearly $30 billion, and currently holds over $20 billion in assets.
The majority of Index Ventures' returns are concentrated in just eight or nine companies out of a portfolio of nearly 400.
Index Ventures' latest fund family consists of a $300 million seed fund, an $800 million venture fund, and a $1.5 billion growth fund.
Index Ventures passed on investing in Spotify multiple times due to a negative bias against the music industry formed from their prior mediocre investment in Last.fm.
The investment in Revolut was one of the most controversial deals internally at Index Ventures, partly because its FX product resonated less with US partners and the business had negative gross margins.
Martin advises investors to not be deterred by poor gross margins in early-stage companies, citing Revolut, Snowflake, and all LLM providers as examples of successful businesses that started this way.
The cost per token for LLMs has decreased by approximately 99% over the last 18 months.
A decisive factor in Revolut's success was its ability to use a Lithuanian banking license to "passport" its services across the entire European Union, enabling rapid expansion.
An internal analysis at Index Ventures concluded the firm's returns would have been significantly better if it had invested in every company that presented at a partnership meeting, due to missing outliers like Spotify.
Index Ventures' top-performing portfolio companies include Adyen, Datadog, Roblox, Figma, Revolut, and Wiz.
Early-stage LLM providers are a clear example of businesses that initially have very poor gross margins.
Index Ventures' strategy is to never pass on an early-stage investment deal due to its price.