The Death (and Rebirth) of Venture Capital Ft. Dave McClure & Ben Black
*please note limited seating for the private dinner, starting at 7:30pm
The Death (and Rebirth) of Venture Capital: The IPO "Pipeline" & The Rise of Secondaries
Agenda:
5:00 PM – Live Podcast Recording & Interactive Q&A
7:30 PM – Private Dinner (Invite Only)
About This Event
The math behind venture capital is fundamentally broken.
A decade ago, a company hitting $100M in revenue was the gold standard for booking an IPO roadshow. Today, companies are staying private longer than ever, often forced to wait until they clear $1B in revenue just to look at the public markets. The traditional 10-year fund lifecycle is crashing face-first into an unprecedented liquidity bottleneck.
Join us at the Park James Hotel for a raw, unfiltered conversation with two of Silicon Valley's most seasoned operators and pioneers as they break down how to rebuild the VC ecosystem from scratch.
We’re bringing together Dave McClure (Founder of 500 Startups & Practical Venture Capital) and Ben Black (Founder of Akkadian Ventures, CIO at Powerlaw Corp. (Nasdaq: PWRL) to dismantle the standard talking points and dive straight into the structural reality of modern capital.
What We’ll Cover:
The Broken IPO Pipeline: Why the pendulum is swinging back, how SPACs disrupted the market, and why waiting for a $1B valuation is choking early investors, employees, and founders.
The Secondary Market Explosion: How secondary vehicles are transitioning from a niche alternative to the foundational plumbing of 2026 venture investing.
Inefficient Pricing: A deep dive into how poorly the private markets actually price tech assets, and how to spot genuine innovation versus overhyped macro trends (especially in AI).
The Evolution of the Fund Manager: What successful emerging managers are doing differently to survive the toughest fundraising environment in a generation.
About the Speakers:
Dave McClure is an early Silicon Valley engineer, investor, and founder of 500 Global and Practical Venture Capital. Having backed thousands of companies across 75+ countries - including early bets on Canva and Credit Karma - Dave has transitioned his focus from high-volume seed indexing to solving late-stage liquidity and portfolio construction.
Ben Black is the founder of Akkadian Ventures and a 27-year Silicon Valley veteran. A pioneer in secondary market design, Ben focuses on growth-stage liquidity, building robust LP communities, and restructuring the private market ecosystem through platforms like Power Law and RAISE Global.
Huge thanks to our sponsors:
The Park James Hotel - Menlo Parks #1 Luxury Hotel
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