Hi friends,

Happy Tuesday! Some of you are new here (welcome, friends of Z-List), and some of you may not have heard from me in a while (I took a pause from writing over the past year). But I’m back with ttrreenndd report, a weekly consumer round-up of news + occasionally more. On Tuesdays I share a cool chart and some useful data. On Fridays I share a fun brand activation or creative campaign.

Today, I have for you: Carta’s inaugural report on VC fund performance, as well as dive into how Ozempic is changing food and the way we eat. In the headlines, we have the proteinification of food, a chatbot that allows you to haggle, takeover proposal for 7-Eleven, and more. Hope you enjoy!

CHART OF THE WEEK

Carta: VC Fund Performance Analysis

What it is: Carta dropped a bombshell report last week. Their VC fund performance report offers a comprehensive examination of over 1,800 venture funds across six recent vintages, detailing the effects of rising interest rates on both fundraising and liquidity, highlighting increased competition among fund managers for LP investments. Carta is especially credible because they're not data scrapers — as fund admins for some of the country's most prominent VCs, they have primary data to support this report. Most notably, it shows that nearly half of 2018-vintage VC funds have not made a single distribution.

My take: The data doesn’t surprise me, especially in the consumer world, but I believe venture has always been (and still is) a long game. Early exits are typically not the best performing assets — so if the choice is between an early, lackluster exit vs. a late, top quartile fund returner exit, the choice is clear and I would much rather take the latter. David Clark was also quick to respond with some different statistics on X. He wrote:

Source: Carta