A venture capital firm, if you think about it, is an extremely weird acquisition target.

VC firms have malleable time horizons that are long (and getting longer), and fundamentally are devoted to high-risk investing that’s reasonably likely to fail. To boot, VC firms getting acquired is an exceptionally rare occurrence—examples exist, but they’re all scattered and odd, like Meta’s half-acquisition of AI two-man-show NFDG this year, or StepStone Group’s 2021 acquisition of Greenspring Associates. There are probably more visible comets in any five-year period than notable acquisitions of VC firms.

So, when Goldman Sachs announced plans on Monday to acquire Industry Ventures, eyebrows shot up. The deal, for a venture firm with about $7 billion in assets under management, is substantial—$665

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