Not all the money in Uber is dumb. Early investors like Benchmark and GV had an exit opportunity when the Softbank deal was being negotiated, but none of them took it.

But the early investors are less sensitive to the higher valuation volitity. I doubt GV really cares if the valuation is 59B or 100B. They were in early enough, that I suspect they’ll make a heavy profit regardless. It would be interesting to know if the final IPO values higher or lower than what SoftBank would have been offering, but even if Uber ends up lower, I’m sure there is relatively low risk to early investors.

I’d love to know the actual numbers though.

> I doubt GV really cares if the valuation is 59B or 100B

There is no VC that doesn't care about a 70% difference in returns.

Disclaimer: I know none of these numbers...

Let's say that GV had the opportunity to sell to SoftBank at a valuation of 50B. Let's just guess that they would getting a 500X return. Maybe they invested 1M early at a 10M valuation and got diluted to ~1% ownership. So 1% of 50B is 500M on a 1M investment.

This is a great return for them. Congrats to all involved.

But this could be considered something of a low-end valuation. Maybe it's more... maybe Uber can IPO at a 100B valuation. The difference between a 500X and 1000X exit is huge, but risky. Maybe they end up IPO'ing at only a 40B valuation. GV would still have a 400X exit. This is the risk GV would have to gauge.

Now, if you're one of the later investors and spent 100M for 1%, then the (respective) numbers would be 5X (500M for a 100M investment), 10X, and 4X. For an late round investment like this, you may chose to exit at a locked in 5X, deeming the risk of a 4X exit too great.

Thus my comment that earlier round investors would be less sensitive to whatever the ultimate IPO valuation is. A 400X exit would make a fund. A 4X exit, while good, isn't great.

Again, I don't know the numbers and I suspect they are all significantly higher. I picked numbers that made the math easier. I also don't know who ultimately ended up cashing out (or when). So really, this is all speculation. But if anyone has the numbers, I'd love to know them!