Revisiting Tiger Global's Strategy in 2026
In 2021, @EverettRandle wrote a great essay about Tiger Global's dealmaking dominance, and how their strategy was different from everyone else's: randle.substack.com/p/playin…
Tiger's portfolio ended up returning poorly -- having bid up and bought the top on a lot of mediocre assets, in particular in crypto. Too much ZIRP exposure; they got the macro wrong.
But their overall strategy -- using speed and size to dominate dealmaking and never miss a deal, which allows them to construct an index of high-value assets -- is interesting to revisit. Because in today's environment, it actually looks like it would've done really well.
@haridigresses wrote recently:
> The equal-weight index of every growth round (valuation $1B-25B) in the last 3 years would be at 1.6× MOIC & 36% IRR. But... there is no such index. The only way to earn access — and even beat the index — is by building conviction on a subset, and then tracking them down.
This reminds of what Tiger was trying to do. It even reminds of what YC is doing right now at the early stage -- processing about 800-900 companies a year. They're doing a lot of smart things, and one of them is effectively constructing an index.
Think about how well Tiger could've done if they had pursued their strategy starting in 2023 focused on AI, rather than starting in 2020 focused on crypto. They would've crushed it.
The lesson here may be a macro one: using the Tiger Strategy in a ZIRP era in industries with unclear fundamentals won't do well. But in a moderate interest rate environment in industries with obvious fundamental disruption, it could work very well.
This is especially the case when you notice that the power laws of venture are becoming stronger and stronger. The tail outcomes get even larger. It's moving from underwriting toward in 1/20 outcomes to 1/1000 outcomes. And then all the importance is in not missing The One.