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Blueprint Intelligence / Research / What the emerging-manager performance study found
Research
A closer look at the Institute’s U.S. fund study: the average returns, the differences between definitions, and the questions worth taking into diligence.
A familiar fund name can make a shortlist easier to defend. It does not settle the investment question. In White Paper I, Colibrí Institute studied 2,471 U.S. venture funds from 2000–2024. Under the paper’s main definition, emerging funds had higher average IRR, TVPI, RVPI and DPI than established funds. That finding supports a closer look at individual managers; it does not predict the result of choosing one.
A fund needs to meet at least one of these four criteria under the paper’s main definition. That combines fund and firm characteristics with founding-team gender. The authors also test alternative definitions, because the choice of definition can change the comparison. Consistent information on race, ethnicity and other dimensions of founder background was not available across the full sample; the founding-team measure is limited to gender.
All four group-mean differences are statistically significant under the main definition. These are averages across available observations, not the return of a typical fund or a matched investment portfolio. Funds within each group still differ substantially.
The main-definition comparison shows a roughly 7.2 percentage-point difference in average IRR. It does not show that every emerging fund beats every established fund. Source: Colibrí Institute, Why Emerging Venture Capital Managers Matter (Moncada and Salas, 2026).
The definition matters. Removing the founding-team criterion and using only size, fund sequence and firm age leaves a statistically significant IRR gap of about 7.4 percentage points. Funds meeting at least three criteria show a gap of about 13.8 points. But the demographic-only and compound definitions do not show statistically significant IRR differences in Table 3. These comparisons test how the result changes across classifications; they do not establish that adding constraints improves a fund’s performance.
Emerging funds also invest slightly earlier on average. These differences describe how the groups deployed capital. They suggest questions about portfolio design and available resources, but the comparison alone does not establish why the return gap exists. The linked research guide looks more closely at deployment size and investment stage.
The practical question is whether a screening rule helps an allocator identify capable managers or simply narrows the field. The study gives reason to examine size-based exclusions. It does not calculate the return of an allocator’s actual portfolio or establish the dollar cost of excluding a manager.
The Institute argues for examining capability and configuration alongside size. For an LP, that means testing whether a manager can carry out the proposed strategy. For a GP, it means showing how the team, capital and investment plan fit together. White Paper II studies a separate question, risk efficiency, in a separate sample of 2,142 funds; its findings should not be treated as another cut of this 2,471-fund performance sample.
Source check recorded: September 18, 2026 (claim-scope review).
The study and supplied tables support the research statements above. The September 2026 editorial review clarified descriptive findings and their limits; it did not change the paper, rerun the data or validate a fund’s future returns.
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