[ Documentation · 05 / 08 ]
How a position is valued
A position is carried at the round that priced it, never at a model. The book marks at 1.38× cost. What gets published, when, and how to read the performance figures without being misled by them.
01
A position is carried at the price of the round that actually priced it. Not at a comparable, not at a discounted cash flow, not at a manager's view of what it is worth. If no round has priced it, the carrying value does not move.
Three things follow from that, and all three are uncomfortable at times.
There is one case where a mark moves down without a round. Frontier publishes each position's next technical milestone and the date it is due, and a missed milestone marks that position down automatically until the next round prices it. Marks move down on evidence; they only move up on a price.
02
The book carries at 1.38× cost, weighted by deployed capital.
| Vault | Tier | Deployed | Mark | What set it |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reserve | R1 | $132.7M | 1.02× | Cash and bills · Instant exit |
| Anchor | R2 | $412.6M | 1.14× | Pre-liquidity · Low variance |
| Shield | R2 | $141.8M | 1.15× | Hedged against the public index |
| Perpetual | R3 | $338.0M | 1.39× | Core compounders · Never fully realised |
| Structure | R3 | $214.9M | 1.24× | Converts, SAFEs, secondaries |
| Compound | R3 | $84.3M | 1.33× | Realised proceeds · Recycled |
| Keystone | R4 | $286.4M | 1.62× | Ten positions · No eleventh |
| Momentum | R4 | $167.2M | 1.51× | Marked-up rounds · Fast follow |
| Frontier | R5 | $118.5M | 1.96× | Compute, energy, defence, robotics |
| Genesis | R5 | $43.6M | 2.74× | Seed and Series A · Longest hold |
Weighted, not averaged
A flat mean of the ten marks is 1.51× — 13 points above the weighted figure. The mean would let Genesis's 2.74× on $43.6M count for exactly as much as Anchor's 1.14× on $412.6M, which is nine times the capital. Every aggregate on this site is weighted by deployed capital for that reason, and the weighting is computed from the vault records rather than typed.
03
A flat mark is not an error and, on its own, not a bad sign. It means no buyer has set a price since entry. What matters is how long it has been flat and why.
In Structure that is normal rather than notable: the vault holds convertible notes, capped SAFEs and discounted secondaries, and an instrument of that kind does not reprice until something converts. Two of its five positions have been carried flat since entry, and the vault publishes that fact rather than smoothing it with a model.
Perpetual publishes the round, the date and the price behind every position's carrying value for the same reason — so a stale mark is visible as stale rather than mistaken for a stable one. A mark that has not moved in two years and a mark that was set last month look identical on a summary page; they are not the same thing, and the date is what separates them.
At the other end, Reserve is marked at 1.02× and will never be marked higher. It owns no company. The only return there is the bill yield and the only exposure is the issuer of the bill.
04
There is one place where a priced round does not exist and a committee has to write a number: the earliest stage.
Genesis is marked at 2.74×, the strongest mark in the book. That figure is an estimate written by a valuation committee rather than a price set by a buyer, because its six positions were entered before the companies had a public price. Members are told that before they allocate, and the mark is republished every epoch with whatever round set it — where no round has, the mark says so.
Treat a committee mark as an opinion with a number attached. It is also the reason Genesis is sized the way it is: at $43.6M it is 2.2% of deployed capital, so writing it all the way back to cost would move the book's carrying mark from 1.38× to 1.34×. The most uncertain number in the book is deliberately the smallest one.
A mark is not a price
No mark on this book — committee-set or round-set — is a price somebody has offered for the position today. A round-set mark is the price a buyer paid at a point in the past for a different tranche of the same company. Marks are the best available evidence of value; they are not liquidity and they are not a bid.
05
Four cadences, none of them a quarterly document.
| Cadence | What is written |
|---|---|
| Every epoch | Every position's carrying value and the round that set it — that round's date and price. Every vault's weighted mark. Every vault's composition by category. |
| Every block | Reserve's composition, claims outstanding and the share redeemable inside one epoch. Shield's net exposure alongside its book, so the hedge ratio is proved rather than promised. |
| On the event | Entries, exits and the reason for each, written to chain on the epoch they happen. Keystone publishes which of its ten it sold before it buys an eleventh. |
| Standing, per position | Structure publishes the full capital stack each note sits inside: how much ranks ahead of it, on what terms, and what it converts into at each of three exit prices. Frontier publishes each position's next technical milestone and the date it is due. |
None of this sits in a data room behind a request. What a member can verify for themselves, and what an attestation does and does not prove, is in Custody & attestation.
06
The headline figures are +38.4% net PnL since genesis, −7.2% maximum drawdown, a 2.1 Sharpe ratio, $412M realised and a 1.38× carrying mark. Each one is measured, and each one can be misread. How to read them.
The honest summary: the book is young, the marks are conservative in method and unrealised in fact, and the risk figures understate the variance of the underlying asset because the underlying asset is not priced often enough to reveal it. Every one of those statements is a consequence of holding private companies, and none of them is fixed by putting the claim on chain.