Built & edited by
Trace Cohen
Founder, Value Add Holdings LLC
3x founder (BrandYourself, Launch.it, SPOT) and angel investor with 65+ investments across pre-seed and seed over 15 years in New York tech. Trace has operated on both sides of the table — founding venture-backed companies and investing through his family office, including through Six Point Ventures. Value Add VC is operated by Value Add Holdings LLC.
What lives here
The Research Blog
Private-company financials, fund performance, and startup benchmarks — how SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic actually make money.
Value Add Pulse
A twice-daily tech & VC news wire with original analyst commentary on every story. See the Pulse masthead for its standards.
Data Dashboards
80+ free interactive trackers: AI capex, IPOs, valuations, layoffs, fund returns — sourced and updated continuously.
How the site is made
Value Add VC runs on a research pipeline built by Trace: data is gathered and cross-checked from primary sources (S-1 filings, earnings reports, Carta and PitchBook data, company announcements), every story passes deterministic quality checks on freshness and sourcing before it publishes, and Trace sets the editorial direction, methodology, and the analysis published as “Trace’s Take.” Every number is expected to trace back to a named source.
What we cover
The focus is private-market numbers that are hard to find and harder to verify — what companies are actually worth, what funds actually return, and what founders actually raise. Specifically:
AI company valuations and revenue — OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI, and the frontier labs
Startup fundraising mechanics — SAFEs, priced rounds, term sheets, dilution
VC fund performance — IRR, TVPI, DPI, MOIC, and top-quartile benchmarks by vintage
IPO markets — pipeline, pricing, lockups, and post-listing performance
Big tech AI capex and the infrastructure buildout
SaaS multiples, public comps, and the AI-disruption debate
Secondaries, continuation vehicles, and private-market liquidity
The South Florida tech and venture ecosystem
Independence and how this is funded
Value Add VC is independent and self-funded. It is not backed by a fund, a media group, or any company it writes about. Revenue comes from two places, both disclosed: sponsorships on specific pages, and affiliate commissions on some tool recommendations.
Neither buys coverage. Sponsors do not see posts before they publish, cannot request changes to analysis, and cannot buy a ranking position. Affiliate relationships never determine what places first in a comparison — the ordering reflects the evaluation, and pages carrying affiliate links say so. Rates and inventory are listed publicly on the sponsor page rather than hidden behind a call.
Trace is an active angel investor, which means he occasionally holds a position in a company covered here. Where that applies, it is disclosed on the page.
Sourcing standards, corrections process, and independence — it’s all written down.