Valuation mark

The value an asset is currently carried at - a last traded price in public markets, or a valuation produced by a process in private ones.

Example

A position marked at 3.0x after a funding round that eventually sold at 1.4x - a difference of 53.33% of the mark.

Important

A mark multiplies your quantity by somebody else's transaction. It never claims your whole position could be sold at that price, which is a much stronger statement and is what size tests.

Related terms

• Unrealised gain — The difference between what an asset is currently marked at and its cost basis, where no sale has taken place.
• Mark to market — Valuing an asset at what it would sell for right now, rather than at what you originally paid for it.
• Liquidity — How quickly and cheaply an asset can be converted to cash without moving its own price.

Lessons that explain it

• A multiple without time and cash tells you half the story — Portfolio and fund returns are described with TVPI, DPI and IRR. Each answers a different question: total value, cash actually returned, and return per year. Reading them together avoids common misinterpretations. (11 min)
• Ask for a few numbers on a steady rhythm, not everything whenever you remember — Good monitoring of private positions rests on a consistent update, at a cadence matched to stage and position size, covering the handful of numbers that actually signal health. (10 min)
• A paper gain is a price someone paid once, not money you have — Private positions are usually marked at the last round price, adjusted for dilution. That mark is an estimate that can lag reality, and only a sale or distribution turns it into cash. (10 min)
• Deciding a position is worth nothing is a decision, and it should be made explicitly — Companies rarely announce their own failure clearly. Setting criteria for writing a position to zero keeps records honest and stops dead holdings from consuming attention. (10 min)
• Realised and unrealised: a mark is not money — An unrealised gain is somebody's opinion of what an asset would fetch. A realised one is what it did fetch. The distance between them is where a great many returns go to die. (10 min)
• A fund's value is mostly an opinion until something is sold — Venture funds report a net asset value built on the GP's own marks. Only distributions are cash, which is why DPI and TVPI tell very different stories. (11 min)

All 578 terms in the Investing glossary