TVPI

Total Value to Paid-In — the primary output metric of a venture fund’s Portfolio Construction model, measuring total value (realized + unrealized) divided by capital invested. A “good” fund returns 3–5x TVPI; a simple $10M seed fund model targeting $150k checks into ~50 companies projects ~7x TVPI under favorable graduation rate assumptions. TVPI is most sensitive to graduation rate assumptions (the % of portfolio companies that advance to the next funding stage): if 75% of companies get follow-ons, expected TVPI is 7.11x; if that drops to 50%, TVPI falls to 3.71x. Distinct from DPI (distributed to paid-in, i.e., actual cash returned) — the J-Curve gap between TVPI and DPI can be large even for highly successful funds.

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