Longtime VC Todd Chaffee of IVP says late-stage scene is now ‘M&A world’

Todd Chaffee has long been one of the most senior members of the late-stage venture firm Institutional Venture Partners. Chaffee joined IVP in 2000 after logging six years at Visa, and went on to lead rounds in numerous prominent later-stage companies, many (but not all) of which have gone public, including Coinbase, Compass, Klarna, Kayak, Omniture, Pandora and Twitter.

It's a good business to be in, particularly when companies are going public at that clip. Given that the IPO window is now shut indefinitely, we wondered what that might mean for the firm's model.

Chaffee - who, like contemporary Bill Gurley, won't be making new investments out of his firm's next fund - talked with us about that question and what else the pandemic means to the venture industry and to him personally. Our chat has been edited for length and clarity.

TechCrunch: IVP last announced a fund in 2017. I assume one is coming soon that you cannot talk about - unless you can talk about it?

Todd Chaffee: Yeah, we're currently investing Fund 16. That's all I can tell you right now.

Do you think it's time to bulk up even more, or size down? There's maybe more opportunity but also check sizes are going to get smaller, seemingly.