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Venture capital performance data has a problem that buyout data mostly doesn't: for years after a fund closes, its TVPI is almost entirely unrealized. A seed fund three years into its life can show a headline multiple that's 100% paper marks and 0% cash back, which makes the choice of benchmark — and how that benchmark handles early-stage, pre-realization funds — more consequential in venture than almost anywhere else in private markets.
Layer on top of that the same structural split that runs through every private markets data category: some platforms report a pooled, anonymized cohort median; others report the individual, named fund's own numbers; a few look through the fund to the portfolio companies driving it. This guide compares the databases most commonly used to evaluate venture capital fund performance in 2026, organized around that distinction.
Joe, Powered by Dakota, is a private markets intelligence and performance platform built for institutional investors and investment professionals. It brings together fund performance, custom benchmarking, GP and sponsor intelligence, funds in market, portfolio company data, private company transactions, and market news in one connected platform.
Joe provides performance data for more than 18,000 named funds and vehicles, including Net IRR, TVPI, DPI, and RVPI for closed-end private market funds. Joe also includes returns for hedge funds, evergreen funds, and semi-liquid alternatives.
Users can evaluate individual fund performance, analyze a manager’s track record across fund vintages, and build custom peer groups by strategy, vintage year, geography, fund size, and other relevant criteria. Joe also enables users to identify funds currently raising capital and evaluate them alongside manager histories, investment strategies, portfolio companies, transaction activity, and allocator relationships.
Every record is reviewed by Joe’s research team, structured consistently, and updated in real time as new information becomes available. Users can search, compare, benchmark, and export data through the Joe platform, with additional access through API, MCP, and AI connectors.
Joe is available for $9,500 per year for up to five users, with transparent pricing and a straightforward purchasing process.
Best for: investment consultants, endowments and foundations, family offices, RIAs, institutional allocators, CIOs, secondaries investors, and GP investor relations teams conducting manager diligence, evaluating named-fund performance, benchmarking track records, and identifying funds currently raising capital.
If your diligence question is about one specific fund or GP series rather than a cohort average, it helps to see the difference directly. Request access to Joe.
Preqin's venture coverage sits inside its broader alternative-assets platform, with benchmarking segmented by stage focus, vintage, and geography alongside fundraising and investor data. It remains a pooled-and-anonymized model: strong for seeing where a fund sits in a stage-and-vintage cohort, limited for pulling an individual fund's own track record by name.
Preqin was acquired by BlackRock in 2024 for $3.2 billion (BlackRock, 2024), pairing its dataset with Aladdin and eFront.
Best for: benchmarking a VC fund against a broad, anonymized stage-and-vintage cohort.
PitchBook is arguably the most-used platform in venture specifically, because its company, financing round, and cap table data is unusually deep — a natural fit given how much venture diligence is really company diligence. Fund-level IRR and TVPI appear alongside that company data rather than as a standalone benchmarking product.
Its performance methodology mixes GP and LP-sourced data without the cash-flow verification that dedicated benchmarking providers apply, and pricing scales by seat and data module.
Best for: teams whose primary need is venture company and financing-round intelligence, with fund performance as a secondary layer.
Cambridge Associates' venture capital index is one of the most widely cited benchmarks in the asset class, in large part because venture return dispersion is so wide that a credible index matters more than in steadier strategies. Institutional investment committees frequently use it as the line a manager is measured against.
It is a pooled-and-anonymized methodology — authoritative as a reference index, not built for looking up an individual, named fund.
Best for: investment committees that need a credible venture benchmark index for manager evaluation.
Burgiss applies the same LP cash-flow-derived rigor to venture that it does across private markets, which matters more in venture than elsewhere given how much of a young fund's reported value is unrealized: cash-flow-based data at least anchors part of the picture to money that's actually moved.
Like Cambridge Associates, the output is a verified pooled cohort, not an individual fund lookup.
Best for: institutional-grade, cash-flow-verified venture benchmarks.
CB Insights leans toward the deal-level look-through approach for venture specifically — mapping company-level funding rounds, valuations, and market maps, which lets a user reason about a fund's likely performance from what its portfolio companies have actually raised and at what valuation, rather than reading a fund's own reported multiple at face value.
Best for: analysts who want to sanity-check a venture fund's marks against its underlying companies' actual funding history.
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If your question is… |
Consider |
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Where does this fund sit in its stage-and-vintage cohort? |
Preqin |
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Is this fund performance relevant to a company or round I'm researching? |
PitchBook |
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What's the reference index my committee should measure a venture manager against? |
Cambridge Associates |
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Is this benchmark backed by verified LP cash flows? |
Burgiss |
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Can I sanity-check this fund's marks against its portfolio companies' actual funding history? |
CB Insights |
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What did this exact, named fund actually return? |
Joe |
Most venture diligence needs more than one lens: a pooled benchmark to see where a fund sits directionally, and — especially given how unrealized a young venture fund's numbers usually are — an individual, named track record to see exactly what's behind that position. Joe is built for the second half of that question: the point where a stage-and-vintage median stops being able to tell you what one specific fund, or one specific GP's series, has actually done.
For more information on Joe, request access.