The Tiger problem

The secondary market news of the last week is that Tiger Global is looking to run a strip sale a large chunk of their startup portfolio. Their LPs seem to not be happy with the future prospects of the fund and are likely demanding the fund to return as much capital as possible.

The prospect of hundreds of millions (if not Billions) of dollars of startup equity up for sale in a depressed market is not generally a positive thing for the ecosystem. Most of the shares will undoubtedly be sold at severe discounts.

The effects of this have been felt immediately. I spoke to a few partners and unfortunately buyers have been pulling out their bids once the news broke.

I don’t know how this will all end. It’s hard for me to see a lot of buyers for a lot of Tiger’s positions in the short-term, even at a big discount.