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**$1.2B** in markdowns for Airtable and Miro; **47 unicorns** still carried at 2021 marks; secondary bids now **10-20%** below exit comps.
92%
discount to its 2021 funding round
88%
below peak
$1.2 billion
and both companies had stayed on balance sheets at…
25x ARR
multiples when rates were zero and now seeks liquidity…
Airtable sold at a 92% discount to its 2021 funding round. Miro followed at 88% below peak. The aggregate markdown sits near $1.2 billion, and both companies had stayed on balance sheets at stale valuations until the transactions cleared. The exits are not outliers. They are the first clean price discovery in a cohort that raised at 25x ARR multiples when rates were zero and now seeks liquidity at 3x to 5x.
Airtable last raised at a $11.7 billion valuation in December 2021. The company sold for approximately $950 million. Miro raised at $17.5 billion in January 2022 and exited near $1.4 billion. Both rounds were led by top-decile venture firms. Neither company disclosed material revenue declines. The markdowns reflect multiple compression, not operational failure. The acquirers paid what growth software commands in 2025: single-digit ARR multiples for low-teens revenue growth.
The exposure sits with three parties. Venture GPs who marked positions at cost through 2023 now face Step One write-downs in Q1 letters. LPs who modeled distributions on 2021-era DPI assumptions will adjust return forecasts downward by 200 to 400 basis points across vintage years 2020 through 2022. Public crossover funds that participated in late-stage rounds—Tiger Global, Coatue, Insight Partners—already took the markdowns in 2023 but the venture portfolios lagged. The backlog is now pricing. Secondary brokers report 47 companies with last rounds above $5 billion that have not raised or exited since 2022. Of those, 31 are held at cost or near-cost by at least one institutional LP. The median markdown, when liquidity arrives, is expected between 60% and 75%.
Allocators should track three follow-on events. First, Q1 2025 venture fund letters, due by mid-May, will carry the initial repricing wave. Funds with more than 15% exposure to 2021-2022 vintages will show net IRR compression of 400 to 600 bps. Second, secondary volume in venture stakes is expected to rise 30% to 40% in H1 2025 as LPs seek liquidity ahead of further markdowns. Pricing will clear 10% to 20% below the Airtable-Miro reference points. Third, watch for M&A activity in the $10 billion to $20 billion 2021 cohort—Databricks, Canva, Discord. Any transaction below 50% of last-round valuation confirms the repricing is structural, not idiosyncratic.
The backlog is not a crash. It is the cost of waiting. The companies that raised at 20x forward revenue in 2021 are now worth 4x trailing revenue in 2025, and the difference is no longer hidden. The venture asset class repriced in public markets eighteen months ago. Private books are catching up, one exit at a time.
Branded by POPS4 · proof in 60 seconds
For the principal
Any venture allocation above 12% in 2020-2022 vintages requires fresh liquidity modeling; assume 60-75% markdowns before year-end exits.
For the operator
Model DPI delays of 18-24 months for funds with >15% exposure to late-stage 2021 rounds; secondary bids now trail NAV by 25-35%.
For the house
Short duration on crossover secondaries; avoid any LP stake priced above 70% of 2021 marks; favor 2018-2019 vintages with realized exits.
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