At Dakota, our private fund performance data covers more than 14,000 private funds across venture capital, private equity, real assets, plus private credit, enabling allocators and managers to benchmark performance, compare vintages, and identify true outperformance. With comprehensive return data and flexible analytics, Dakota’s dataset highlights the strategies, managers, and vintages that have consistently delivered above-market results.
Within the venture universe, the 2014 early-stage vintage stands out as one of the more competitive and top-performing cohorts of the past decade. A strong innovation cycle, abundant seed-stage experimentation, and early bets on today’s breakthrough technologies contributed to several funds meaningfully outperforming their peers. Below are five such managers that surfaced as standout performers within Dakota’s benchmarking data.
Union Square Ventures 2014 (USV 2014 Fund)
Union Square Ventures is one of the most respected early-stage venture firms, known for its thematic focus on network effects, open systems, and digital platforms. The USV 2014 Fund continued this strategy, backing mission-driven entrepreneurs at the seed and Series A stages who were building internet-enabled products with strong community dynamics. This vintage captured the firm’s early conviction in decentralized technologies, developer ecosystems, and scalable SaaS models. USV’s hallmark ability to identify companies capable of broad user engagement and defensible network effects helped make this one of the firm’s top-performing funds.
Vertical Venture Partners I
Vertical Venture Partners’ first fund reflects the firm’s targeted approach to backing early-stage companies building specialized enterprise software for defined vertical markets. VVP focuses on founders with deep domain expertise who are creating workflow tools, data platforms, and automation technologies tailored to industry-specific pain points. This strategy allows the firm to identify high-value opportunities where product-market fit can be achieved early and competitive moats form quickly. This fund captured VVP’s disciplined investment philosophy during a period of accelerating enterprise digitization, positioning the fund to benefit from the convergence of cloud adoption, operational modernization, and niche-market software expansion.
True Ventures IV
True Ventures Fund IV continued the firm’s mission of supporting product-focused founders at the seed stage, spanning consumer technology, wellness, enterprise SaaS, hardware, and creator-economy tools. True Ventures is widely recognized as a pioneer of the founder-first philosophy, offering hands-on operational support and building an ecosystem that promotes long-term community among its portfolio companies. Fund IV benefited from True’s early positioning in connected devices, modern SaaS tooling, and consumer-tech enablement, capturing a strong wave of innovation that helped establish the fund as one of its standout performers.
ARCH Venture Partners VIII
ARCH Venture Partners has long been a leader in early-stage life sciences and deep scientific innovation, and Fund VIII is a prime example of their strategy in action. The firm specializes in spinning companies out of major research institutions and national laboratories, backing pioneering work in biotechnology, emerging therapeutics, advanced materials, and platform science. ARCH’s model is defined by co-founding companies around fundamental IP, which allows them to invest at the earliest stages of transformative scientific breakthroughs.
Khosla Ventures V
Khosla Ventures Fund V embodies the firm’s core philosophy: backing bold, high-risk, high-reward ideas led by technically ambitious founders. The fund invested across AI, climate tech, deep tech engineering, digital health, and disruptive software platforms, prioritizing opportunities where the impact of success would be industry-changing. KV’s willingness to bet early on unconventional ideas allowed Fund V to capture emerging trends long before they were widely recognized. The result is a fund vintage that stands out for its asymmetry, technological audacity, and strong performance within Dakota’s benchmarking universe.
Start Using Dakota’s Private Fund Performance Data!
With Dakota’s private fund performance data, allocators and managers can easily compare vintages, analyze strategy-level returns, and identify which managers meaningfully outperform their peers. Whether evaluating early-stage venture, growth equity, or private credit, Dakota’s dataset provides the clarity needed to make informed decisions and uncover high-conviction opportunities across the private markets.
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