EXCLUSIVE: BlueYard Capital Returns Data Shows a 7x Markup on its First Fund
How the fund pushed ahead by making strategic bets in AI, crypto, and defense
Most venture capital firms are afraid to talk about their returns. Oftentimes, they’re worried they won’t measure up or they’ll hold themselves to a watermark that they won’t be able to maintain. They may want to maintain a certain mystique.
But BlueYard Capital knows its returns are strong, and believes founders are owed the performance transparency that VCs often demand of them. So they came to Newcomer to walk us through how they generated 3.4x DPI on their first fund with slides that breakdown both the firm’s and its GPs’ performance since its founding. Its portfolio spans crypto startups like Protocol Labs, the makers of Filecoin, to the missile maker Castelion.
Many of their best returns have come from crypto deals done years before the rest of the venture world was ready to dive in seriously. Now, they’re betting big on defense tech and AI infrastructure.
Here are the key details on BlueYard’s returns and major investments:
BlueYard’s first €111 million fund from 2016 is a standout. With a gross IRR of 76%, Net IRR of 49%, and DPI of 3.4x, it’s more than tripled what LPs put into it.
The firm’s most prominent foray into crypto began in 2016 with a check into Protocol Labs, the maker of Filecoin. Sequoia Capital, a16z, and Union Square Ventures purchased a large stake in the token pre-sale in 2017, which ended up raising $205 million in its Initial Coin Offering. The team split the equity on that round with USV, so they didn’t reap all of the couple-hundred million in returns that they could have, but it was still a strong win.
BlueYard’s crypto funds are broken out and run as separate funds from their core funds for regulatory and tax reasons. UTIMCO was an investor in BlueYard’s second crypto fund, which on its own showed a positive IRR of 12.31% last year, despite it being a 2021 vintage.
A lot of their markups after this first fund are mostly on paper — although co-founders Ciaran O’Leary and Jason Whitmire’s investments pre-BlueYard have brought in 4.8x DPI on deals like Peak Games and Wunderlist. Peak Games eventually sold to Zynga for $1.8 billion, with Wunderlist being acquired by Microsoft for an undisclosed amount. These transactions generated roughly $500 million in cash proceeds.
BlueYard’s second fund has taken a bit longer to hit the J-Curve. There were more tech bio deals in this fund which has slumped in returns in the last year or so compared to other categories the partners have invested in. However, we can see BlueYard’s second fund set has a positive IRR of 20%, which shows some positive momentum 6 years into its lifecycle. Their portfolio company Privy’s acquisition by Stripe in June of last year as well as a sizable position in Solana have also led to early liquidity in the second fund.
Byrd’s angel investments before joining the firm, including into chipmaker Groq, have a 5.4x DPI profile. Unfortunately for the team, though, Byrd sold many of his shares in Groq for $5 billion in December of last year, well before it landed the licensing acquihire deal with Nvidia.
The BlueYard team pride themselves on their track record of betting on soon-to-be hot categories years before they reach consensus with other investors.
“When lots of other VCs say, oh, no, this is too early, or this will never be venture capital, then we say this is probably one for us,” said O’Leary.
As partners together at a separate fund, Earlybird Venture Capital, O’Leary and Whitmire wrote checks into mobile gaming startup Peak Games and the task manager Wunderlist during the early 2010s.
But seeing a chance to strike it big on their own, Whitmire and O’Leary broke off to form BlueYard in 2016.
Since launching the fund, they’ve backed some of venture’s trendiest sectors — crypto, AI infrastructure, and defense tech — all before they’ve hit a fever pitch in the markets.
BlueYard first caught our attention after our piece on UTIMCO’s venture capital holdings last year. In the endowment’s portfolio, BlueYard Fund I from 2016 held a 53% IRR in 2024, making it one of the highest performing fund vintages across their entire portfolio.
O’Leary and Whitmire hired their first outside GP, former Wunderlist CTO Chad Fowler, in 2021 to manage the team’s crypto funds, which were spun out for regulatory compliance reasons that year.
In the middle of Fund 2, investor David Byrd joined and brought in his portfolio of AI infrastructure deals including holdings into chipmaker Groq and the quantum computing startup IonQ.
BlueYard’s fifth and newest general partner, Michael Wax, had historically been an operator as the co-founder and CEO of the European logistics company Forto. Wax joined the team just two months ago.
Since the 5 GPs came to the funds at different times, the data is broken down by each partner’s investment track record before BlueYard alongside the formal BlueYard funds.
BlueYard raised their most recent fund in 2023.