It is innately rare (that's why they are tier 1 funds) but they empirically exist, especially in VC. The *net* IRR for the last 3 USV funds is in excess of 40% for each. GGV's is even higher. Again, even fund of funds like HBP (which has a long history of delivering a net IRR in excess of 20%) can do well.

It is wrong to compare a university endowment to a fund because there is far more money in this world than good opportunities to deploy money. A16z will only raise as much money as they think they can deploy effectively so their return will skew much higher than things like pensions, endowments, etc that need to manage whatever balance they have. But even with that being said, the top-tier university endowments (Havard, Yale, Stanford, and Princeton) are all in these funds aggressively. In fact, Yale University endowment is one of the biggest VC LPs out there (alongside the other 3). The problem is that these schools have tens of billions of dollars to deploy and are fighting for 100 million dollar allocations.

Every one of A16Z's last funds was oversubscribed. Like someone said earlier in this thread, the problem is not identifying which funds (for whatever reason) can consistently deliver incredible returns. These are pretty much known to anyone that would have a reason to seek them out. The biggest problem is getting allocation into these funds which is why this is a non-factor for most regular people that would not be given allocation even with the most generous of favors.

The firm that had the fund we went 70x on raised a smaller fund this year than they did 10 years ago (due to the driving factor discussed above). Will they go 70x again? Unlikely. But I have no doubt in my mind they will outperform the market again. Too bad they won't give me a higher allocation. That's life!