Hans Tung, managing partner of GGV Capital, has often said that when it comes to a potential investment, he cares more about the size of the opportunity, the strength of the team, and how much runway the company has than he does about its valuation.
But at his venture capital firm’s Monday morning meeting this week, Tung and his partners discussed a cybersecurity company that had raised a prelaunch round at a $1 billion valuation. “That, even for me, is too much to take,” Tung said Tuesday at Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech conference in Half Moon Bay, Calif.
It was just one recent example Tung has seen that indicates how much money is floating around, how rapidly deals are getting done, and just how much valuations are out of whack. “There’s no question that all of us are bracing for a correction in 2022 in the private market,” he said.
Tung said his firm is seeing companies valued at 200 times revenue, when three years ago 15 to 20 times revenue was considered high. He noted that he hears from a lot of founders who say that because their startups tripled in size since their last round of funding, so should their valuations. “The world does not work that way,” he added.
Laela Sturdy, general partner at CapitalG, Alphabet’s independent growth fund, also stressed that valuations “are at astonishingly high levels” across the board—from public companies down to seed-stage companies.
“We’re all raising huge funds, and there’s a ton of capital out there,” she said. While there are amazing opportunities to be found, she added that “trying to think about how to get in at the right price is the hardest part of our job right now.”
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