At a Churchill Club meeting in Mountain View on Thursday, Michael Moritz (Sequoia Capital, two-time Forbes’ Midas List overall winner) had California controller John Chiang in the hotseat for an hour to grill him on the state's finances. When Moritz asked about pension funds, Chiang hinted that venture capital could see even less money than might be hoped from CalPERS and CalSTRS, two of the biggest limited-partner sugar daddies that fuel the Valley's VC firms.
In what appeared to be a bit of on-stage negotiating, Chiang intimated that many “alternative investments” were not “high quality,” and that the standard 2-and-20 fees typically doled out to fund managers (2% of the overall fund value plus 20% of the profits) would have to be re-evaluated.
For just a moment, it looked like Moritz, not Chiang, was in the hotseat.
That's a great piece Matt. Wow - "We're not defaulting we're renegotiating." That's a funny spin. They call it "committed capital" for a reason.