---
title: "What Is Vintage Year Benchmark?"
term: "Vintage Year Benchmark"
description: "A vintage year benchmark compares a venture fund's performance to other funds that started investing in the same calendar year — controlling for market conditions and cycle timing."
date: 2026-07-25T00:00:00.000Z
updated: 2026-07-25T00:00:00.000Z
topics: ["venture-capital"]
source: https://venturecapitaltracker.com/glossary/vintage-year-benchmark
---

# What Is Vintage Year Benchmark?

> A vintage year benchmark compares a venture fund's performance to other funds that started investing in the same calendar year — controlling for market conditions and cycle timing.

**A vintage year benchmark** groups venture funds by the year they started investing and ranks their returns against peers from the same cycle.

### How it works

When a fund holds its first close in 2019 and begins deploying, its vintage is typically 2019. Data providers aggregate IRR, TVPI, and DPI for all 2019-vintage US venture funds (or relevant geography/strategy).

LPs compare:

- **Median vs fund** — are you above average for your vintage?
- **Quartile rank** — top quartile fundraising narratives rely on this
- **DPI maturity** — young vintages show paper marks; older vintues show real distributions

Macro matters: 2012-vintage funds rode a long bull market; 2021 vintages faced sharp public market corrections and slower exits. Absolute returns without vintage context mislead.

Benchmarks lag — private marks update slowly. GPs and LPs supplement with peer references and public comparables for recent vintages.

Founders rarely cite vintage benchmarks directly, but fund behavior (follow-on appetite, reserve strategy) shifts when a vintage is underwater vs outperforming.

### Why it matters

- **Founders:** Funds raising Fund III in a strong vintage may compete aggressively for deals; weak vintages may pull back or push portfolio companies to exit sooner.
- **Investors / LPs:** Allocation decisions use vintage-relative performance, not headline IRR alone. Re-up commitments depend on quartile placement within the same year cohort.

### Common mistake

Comparing a 2018 fund's current TVPI to a 2022 fund's — different exit windows, mark policies, and deployment pacing make the comparison meaningless.

### Related ideas

See also [benchmark](/glossary/benchmark), TVPI, DPI, and [XIRR](/glossary/xirr).

## FAQ

### What is a vintage year benchmark in simple terms?

Funds are grouped by the year they began deploying capital — their vintage. Benchmarks like Cambridge Associates or PitchBook show median and top-quartile IRR and TVPI for each vintage so LPs can compare peers fairly.

### Why does vintage year benchmarking matter?

For LPs, a 15% net IRR means different things in 2010 vs 2021 vintages. For GPs fundraising, top-quartile vintage rank is a core marketing claim — if data supports it.


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Source: https://venturecapitaltracker.com/glossary/vintage-year-benchmark