The Death (and Rebirth) of Venture Capital Ft. Dave McClure & Ben Black

The Death (and Rebirth) of Venture Capital: The IPO “Pipeline” & The Rise of Secondaries

​Agenda:

• ​5:00 PM – Live Podcast Recording & Interactive Q&A

• ​7:30 PM – Private Dinner (Invite Only)

​About This Event

​The math behind venture capital is fundamentally broken.

​A decade ago, a company hitting $100M in revenue was the gold standard for booking an IPO roadshow. Today, companies are staying private longer than ever, often forced to wait until they clear $1B in revenue just to look at the public markets. The traditional 10-year fund lifecycle is crashing face-first into an unprecedented liquidity bottleneck.

​Join us at the Park James Hotel for a raw, unfiltered conversation with two of Silicon Valley’s most seasoned operators and pioneers as they break down how to rebuild the VC ecosystem from scratch.

​We’re bringing together Dave McClure (Founder of 500 Startups & Practical Venture Capital) and Ben Black (Founder of Akkadian Ventures, CIO at Powerlaw Corp. (Nasdaq: PWRL) to dismantle the standard talking points and dive straight into the structural reality of modern capital.

​What We’ll Cover:

• ​The Broken IPO Pipeline: Why the pendulum is swinging back, how SPACs disrupted the market, and why waiting for a $1B valuation is choking early investors, employees, and founders.

• ​The Secondary Market Explosion: How secondary vehicles are transitioning from a niche alternative to the foundational plumbing of 2026 venture investing.

• ​Inefficient Pricing: A deep dive into how poorly the private markets actually price tech assets, and how to spot genuine innovation versus overhyped macro trends (especially in AI).

• ​The Evolution of the Fund Manager: What successful emerging managers are doing differently to survive the toughest fundraising environment in a generation.

​About the Speakers:

• ​Dave McClure is an early Silicon Valley engineer, investor, and founder of 500 Global and Practical Venture Capital. Having backed thousands of companies across 75+ countries – including early bets on Canva and Credit Karma – Dave has transitioned his focus from high-volume seed indexing to solving late-stage liquidity and portfolio construction.

• ​Ben Black is the founder of Akkadian Ventures and a 27-year Silicon Valley veteran. A pioneer in secondary market design, Ben focuses on growth-stage liquidity, building robust LP communities, and restructuring the private market ecosystem through platforms like Power Law and RAISE Global.

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