Shannon, thank you, thank you very much. And I'm absolutely delighted that we've all managed to get here today. Over the last four years or so, we've had a range of obstacles thrown in our way, be it COVID, the pandemic for a couple of years. We did one virtual, and indeed the train strike last year, which I know a number of you managed to struggle through to join us. But I'm absolutely delighted that everybody's managed to get here today, and I'd like to obviously add to Shannon's very warm welcome from myself, the executive team, and all of the team here from Molten. We're all here for you today, so a lot of the a ll, all of the investment team, a lot of the rest of the team are here today.
So please, when you get a break, if you, if you wander around, wander up, talk to us. You know, we'd love to tell you more about everything that we do in the business, apart from obviously the great businesses that we're gonna talk about today. I'm also personally very pleased to be here myself. I was called away on Monday. Sadly, my brother-in-law had a stroke, and I was called away to Scotland for a few days to spend some time with my, with my family.
I should say that I'm very appreciative of the team, Shannon and the team, who have been dealing over the last few days in my absence and getting everything together, particularly around the rehearsals that may become evident later on, I hope not. But it's been very little bit difficult to focus over the last few days. But I'm here, and I'm really pleased to be here for a number of reasons. One, it is because it is my job, but also because what we do really matters. What we do and the businesses that we fund really, really matter, and I think that's y ou know, I'm very passionate about us as a business, about us creating value and investing in good businesses with very large outcomes.
But also, if you look at the application of technology and what it's doing to change the way we live our lives, the way we take products and services, pretty much everything that we do in our lives, and indeed, yes, also to help preserve life. There's a company called Perfuze out of the west coast of of Ireland, out of Galway, that a number of years ago have been working on a revolutionary treatment for strokes, and had that technology been available two or three years earlier, and indeed, had the and had the funding from Earlybird, our partner in Germany and others, to enable them to commercialize that, then my brother-in-law would be with us today.
And so what we do does have a really important element as far as a range of different ways that we lead and preserve life. But also from an ESG perspective. Now, while I've been away, I've had our head of ESG contact me a number of times saying: "Can you just bring out the ESG bit on this slide or that slide?" And I'm just gonna say right from the start, I make no apology for the fact that you will not see any ESG green stamps on our slides, and the reason for that is that actually it pervades everything that we do. It runs right the way through our investment process, the companies that we invest in, what they're delivering. So ESG runs through everything that we do.
The moral and ethical way that we invest and we run our business is something that has been instilled from Stu, our founder, all the time in our business, and it's one of the things that attracted me to this business. So from an environmental perspective, technology does bring added environmental benefits, and almost everything that you'll hear today will have some form of sustainable benefit to the planet. We believe, and all of our companies, it's more increasingly important to be engaged in the society and in communities that we live and work in. Again, you'll hear that through the presentations today.
But also, as these businesses grow from very, very small businesses to very large businesses, the governance, the oversight, the management, the right way to run businesses is something that is very important. It's the way we run our business, and it's the way we help our founders to grow and scale their businesses. So it really runs right the way through everything that we do, and so therefore, it's something that I'm very proud of, that we're very proud of, and something you'll hear a lot about today. But let's start with the presentation. I'll only take you about 30 minutes of your time, and then we'll move into the founders that I know you're all very excited to hear from. So, how did we get to where we are today?
Well, last year was an incredible year. Actually, our model is very, very simple. We raise capital, we invest it, we manage it, which is absolutely critical element, and then we realize, we exit. We always look to exit at a value that is greater than the NAV that we carry and that we report every six months. It's a very important part of our model, and our track record in that speaks for itself. Our strategy of investing in disruptive, innovative businesses and working closely with those businesses have enabled us as a business to scale quite significantly. The portfolio has grown by nearly 60% compound annual growth, and that is despite the surge in the last year. That is very, very consistent growth over time.
We've demonstrated nearly £500 billion in value in realizations since the IPO, and the great thing about our model is that we can then take those realizations and put them back into funding the next generation of exciting businesses. But one of the reasons we've grown and scaled so quickly over the last five or six years is because the VC market has continued to grow. The European VC market remains a highly attractive market, and has done so over the last 10 years. It's grown at an annual percent of about 28% annual growth since 2015 and even though if you look at 2021, that obviously stands out as an extraordinary year, but if you take away 2021, then you'll see there's a very steady growth trajectory in this market.
Even though I know we talk a lot, and you'll hear me talk about some of the froth that was generated over that period, the recent period, post-COVID, the fact is, if you take that out, then the trajectory is very consistent, particularly in the areas of Series A, B, and C, which is our sweet spot. But it's not just the round sizes, but it's also the number of deals. The number of deals continue to grow, and that is as a result of these innovative technologies that are being matched with inspirational founders and with capital from firms like ours are being able to grow.
So if you look across all deal sizes, there's been a 16% annual growth, but a 22% growth in our sweet spot, the Series A, B, and C. That's why we believe it's important to stick to that stage of development. It has consistently outpaced other sectors and other parts of the venture, and it's an area that has performed very well for us. But the other reason that it's grown and that it's interesting is that the market continues to grow for tech and for venture.
And so if you look at the tech indices, the Nasdaq, it consistently outpaces other sectors, and this is because of what technology can bring to and the way it can scale. And so tech as a even within public markets, and it has had some ups and downs over the last couple of years, but over a longer period of time, it has consistently out-delivered in the public market space from the other indices. But when you look at venture, as in the private space, venture, and particularly European venture, has continued to outperform all other sectors of private markets. 60% of all vintages over the last 15 years, venture has outstripped all of the other private asset classes.
Obviously, PE is there, obviously buyouts are there, but it has still outperformed those, particularly in the last five years. Even in 2022, which we know was a very tough year, infrastructure dropped by over 12%, PE buyouts by just over 3%. The venture space was just over 1% drop. So Venture as a, as an asset class within the private markets is also, very, very attractive and continues to be attractive.
It continues to outperform against U.S. venture, against U.S. private equity, against European private equity, and as an asset class, it has continued to perform, and that is one of the reasons why we are so excited about our market, why we believe it will be able to retain that position, and also why our business has continued to grow so much. So where are we now? What's the state of play we are now? Well, I think there is a sort of cautious optimism in the markets right now. There is a bit of a fragile truce at the moment between markets and investors. I know we've got both in the room today.
But 2022 was a bruising year for everybody, all geographies, across all markets, and I think 2021, as much as that was an extraordinary year with growth, I think 2022 will be an extraordinary year as far as contraction. And I think we feel now that we are beginning to settle into what might be the new normal. The new normal, we don't know exactly what it's gonna look like, but it's quite possible that it's not all doom and gloom. We've seen the markets so far have lifted reasonably well in January. Most of the principal markets are up from between 4% and 10%, driven a lot by a resilient consumer, but also because enterprises continue...
are preserving capital. I'll talk a little bit about that later on, are managing costs, but they're also deploying capital into technology, and you'll hear a lot more about that later on during the day. And this is really about the macro factors are obviously helping. The nervousness around inflation and rates seems to be dropping off. Most commentators now take a view that the rates will come down maybe slightly earlier, and maybe slightly quicker than before, even some predicting sometime this year, possibly in the second half.
Now, whether or not that happens, the fact is that the market's getting, I think, a degree of comfort around where rates might be, what the cost of capital may be, and that inevitably has a flow-on effect on people's confidence around valuations. And so sentiment does seem to be settling into this new norm and this greater understanding about what the cost of capital may be. But the one thing we all know is that capital is gonna be more expensive than it was, it has been in the recent past, and the end of what some may view as easy money is definitely gone. So what does this new post-hype landscape look like?
Well, unquestionably, there has been last year, and there will continue to be, I suspect, in the first half of this year, some degree of global hangover from some of the excesses in 2021. And so when you look at the high-profile down rounds for the likes of Klarna, Checkout.com, you know, that has definitely last year, that definitely damaged confidence across the market. I think from where we are, and we always say, and I always say to investors, we can only comment on the companies within our portfolio. But we do feel that some of that has percolated through to the sentiment around our own portfolio.
But we're much more confident, and we'll talk, I'll talk about that later, that some of those assets that were potentially overhyped some time, some over a number of years is not something that we necessarily see within our portfolio. But even when you look at the likes of the crypto fall from grace, and I think everybody, many people felt that the crypto hype around crypto in the post-COVID environment was overcharged. I think everybody understood that. But from our perspective, and particularly with what's happened with FTX and the exchanges, for me, this highlights quite nicely why we are different and how our investment process operates.
Our investment thesis around crypto was always not about currencies, and indeed not about exchanges, but about self-custody, and our approach was always that that's where the future would be, and which is why we invested in Ledger, and which we were so excited about Ledger, because self-custody is clearly the future of crypto assets, and building out the capabilities to be able to manage that, as Ledger have, is a way that our strategy, our investment strategy has come through.
But also, we're seeing some of the cost reduction of some of the bloated, mega tech firms that grew very, very rapidly, are very much leading the way as far as managing costs and getting back down to a more sensible cost structure. But landmark deals are still getting done, and I think that's something that we're definitely seeing in our space. If you look at some of the later stages, Einride and Factorial got away a very good, well-priced Series Cs, and even Stability AI shows the excitement in this area, for a relatively early stage, +$100 million round. So these hot assets, these Tier 1 assets, continue to be funded.
There's a lot of dry powder chasing a relatively small number of top-tier assets, and we're definitely seeing that in the deals that are coming across our table and the deals that we're doing. But the other reason that we're reasonably optimistic about the environment right now is that history tells us that downturns create sustainable winners. Downturns clearly have a negative effect on many other firms, but on good businesses that are well-run, that are resilient, will do very well. And we've seen this in the downturns of the dot-com days through to the global financial crisis. Some of the best companies will thrive and will emerge as a result of the downturn. One of the reasons for this is around talent.
You've seen 50,000 tech redundancies in just seven mega tech companies, and I see this morning that Disney's laying off another 7,000. That recycling of talent, when identified by entrepreneurs, will enable the best founders to really scale their businesses quickly. This talent mobility creates huge opportunity for entrepreneurs and founders to be able to scale their businesses. So that's what we've seen over the last two significant downturns, that mobility spurs on the best entrepreneurs. The next generation of winners were very much, the current generation of winners were very much generated through the global financial crisis. The likes of Airbnb, Slack, WhatsApp, Insta, Uber, very much created in the immediate aftermath of the global financial crisis, and that's where the opportunity is created.
When we match these intelligent and inspirational founders with intelligent, supportive, long-term capital, that's when we get very large outcomes, and that's very much what our business is about, and that's very much how we create value over time. But the reality is, we are in a different environment, and I think everybody understands that, and therefore, as a result of that, we all have to change our priorities. I would say for us as a business, over the last 18 months or so, we've been, what I would call, recalibrating, rather than making significant change, recalibrating our focus to make sure that we focus on the areas that are most important. So preserving capital, the balance sheet capital, is absolutely critical for us.
Our first priority always has to be to ensure that the companies within our portfolio have the capital that they need to continue to grow. We don't want our companies to be inhibited by the lack of capital. So having capital that enables them to grow is very important, and so therefore, preserving our balance sheet capital is absolutely critical. But we also need to be able to do new deals and match those deals with third-party capital. Those who've been following us for some time know that we've been looking to build third-party capital sources for a number of years now. We're making progress there. But what we are doing is making sure that when we deploy new capital into new deals, that we do that with third-party capital alongside.
In order to do that, we need to continue to build more structures that enable us to be able to utilize third-party capital. And so again, that's something that we've been doing for a while, and we continue to do that. So what we, what we want to get ourselves into a position is that we have, irrespective of the cycle, access to public market capital or access to private capital in order to support those companies as they scale and grow. We've always found that by sticking with the companies that we know best, by following them on right the way through the process, for example, with Trustpilot, when they launched, when they IPO'd, we had 14% of the business. You know, we've followed that our money when we know these businesses very well.
And so therefore, having access to both private and public capital is something that's very important for us. We obviously want to make sure that our responsible investing is absolutely to the forefront, and this is not to tick any boxes. It's because in our experience, and in my experience over investing at a wider level over a very long period of time, the reality is that businesses that are well-run, that follow a good set of principles, that are sustainable are just better run businesses, and they deliver better returns. So that's something that's also very important to us. And it's hard to do that when you're in a downturn, and it's hard to do that when things are tough.
But sticking to those principles, we believe, is as important now as it is when things are going really well. And obviously, as a business, for us as a PLC, we want to continue to generate fees. It's really important for us as we grow our business, as we need more infrastructure to manage a larger portfolio, as the balance sheet grows, we need more income to help to cover that.
I think, again, it's understood by most of our investors that, you know, we believe that the PLC investors should be able to get access to this highly exciting investment engine, and indeed, very good returning investment engine, for as little outward cost as possible, because we're conscious that many public market investors are also paying fees on the other side as well. So therefore, we want to be able to build fees so that we can generate third-party income that offsets the costs of us running an increasingly larger business. That's a very important element of our focus moving forward. But for our business as well, not just the PLC, across the board, we need to manage the portfolio much tighter, and I think we're spending a lot more.
There's a lot more focus on the portfolio, and indeed has been really for us for the last 12-18 months. We need to manage the concentration because that's obviously where risk... We are fundamentally a portfolio business as a PLC, and so therefore, we have to be very cautious that we manage concentration and diversification at the same time. We actually have a highly diversified set of assets, and if you look at our core, 70% of the NAV, you'll see half of the companies today come from the core. You'll see that actually we are very diversified. We are not reliant as a portfolio on any single company, and I think that's something that's very important to us.
I think as a business, we have to get close to our founders, we have to get close to our portfolio, and help them and guide them through this very difficult period, a capital-constrained period. Some of the founders, you'll hear from a number of them today, will have been round this block before and will understand how it works. But many of our founders are younger, they've not been in this environment, they've not had to manage a business in the current environment or through a downturn, and that's where we can really help and support them. I think getting close to our founders and getting close to our, our portfolio to be able to help them where we can, is something that's really important. We have to have an absolute laser-like focus on the capital needs of our portfolio.
I mentioned earlier on, in preserving PLC capital, that's to make sure we've got enough to support our portfolio. We can only do that if we really understand what's going on in the portfolio. So we've really tightened up our ability to understand what's happening in the portfolio, understanding what their needs are, looking at their cash runway. You'll see that we report quite a lot on cash runways, helping our portfolio to be able to manage their own cash position so that they don't get themselves into a position where they need to go and look for cash at a time that's not right for their business. So helping our portfolio to manage their runway is something that's very important.
But also, clearly at this time, focusing on realizations and exits is something that's very important to us as well. We've always said that at the end of the day, it's not up to us how the what time a company exits. That's down to the founders and the companies. They determine that, or indeed, in an IPO, the public markets will determine that. But what we can do is work with the founders and to make sure that they're ready at the right time to be able to exit. And as I said earlier on, our objective always is that when we have an exit, that we have that exit at a value that is, is higher than we're carrying on the last reported balance sheet date, and that's something that's very important for us.
It's something that we focus on heavily. I guess the other thing I would say just from across the business is we have to retain our investment discipline. Those that have heard me talking over the last two-to-three years, you'll see that, you'll recognize that I talk a lot about investment discipline. I think we held our investment discipline when things were going crazy two or three years ago, and it's equally important that we hold our investment discipline now. So that's something that, again, we spend a lot of time talking about and focusing on because we have to continue to do deals. We must stay in the market.
It's really important that we stay in the market, not just because there's good opportunities, but also from a brand perspective and to show that we are still the place to go for the best businesses, we have to continue to be in the market. As far as our portfolio companies, you'll hear a number of this of the founders and CEO's talking about this today, but we've been helping our portfolio companies, as I said, ensure that they've lengthening their own cash runways as much as possible to help them to manage costs. Again, some will not have been in a heavily cost-constrained environment before, others know this very well.
Managing costs, and this isn't about reducing costs, this is about managing costs, because it's important that our companies continue to grow, it's important they continue to innovate, and therefore, it's important they continue to spend in the appropriate places. What we can do is just to make sure that we help them to do that and make sure their costs are focused in the right place. Focusing on profitability is something that's important, something we've always said is important in our businesses, but clearly, in the environment we're in now, having visibility through to a position where you get become cash flow positive is very important for businesses in a capital-constrained environment. Targeted growth, I talked earlier on about that, that's something that's very important.
You know, these companies are exciting companies in really good markets. We want them to continue to grow, and so it's really important that we, that we help them to do that. And finally, and I guess the most important point here, is around continuing to innovate. You know, it's really important that we encourage and support our founders and our portfolio to continue to innovate where the opportunity is there, because the opportunity is there, and as I'll talk earlier in a few minutes, you know, many of the opportunities are not driven by the economic cycle. So what does a portfolio, a Molten portfolio company look like? Well, you're gonna hear a range of different sectors, different technologies, doing different things, and very different companies.
I think, one of the things I would say is at a certain level, our portfolio companies are all very, very different, because of course they are. There are some commonalities between them, which is something that is very specific about the way we invest and what we look for when we invest. All of the companies that we invest in are run by visionaries who are looking to disrupt, and disruption does not pay attention, and innovation does not pay attention to economic cycles. The first thing you'll see is that our companies are here for the long term, and we're here to support them for the long term.
I think that's something that's very important because all of these companies, all of these visionaries that you'll hear from today, are trying to solve a big problem. Technological innovation does not respect a downturn, and so the advances that our entrepreneurs are working, turning to commercial benefit, by their nature, long-term. They're trying to fix the big problems on our planet, and I think this is something that you'll hear a lot about.
So whether it's hundreds of years old supply chains in the construction industry with Schüttflix, or indeed Gardin, helping production of plants, which has obviously got a very strong commercial benefit, but fundamentally, what these guys wanna do is to deal with world hunger, enable us to grow plants in parts of the world that previously were unobtainable. Manna, you'll hear from later on, some of you will be familiar, delivering completely new and innovative ways of dealing with this explosion in consumer demand for delivery, in a supply chain that is broken, expensive, and under pressure. This is gonna become an increasingly large issue for our consumer-driven planet.
Right the way through to outer space, where you have firms like ICEYE and Satellite Vu, you'll hear from Satellite Vu later on, using imagery from space, infrared capability to be able to measure the carbon footprint of every building on the planet. In a net zero world, there are obvious benefits. And then ICEYE, using their SAR capability to provide imagery from space that helps to deal with natural disasters, flood warnings, et cetera, et cetera. So the one thing that is common with all of our founders, and they are sensibly run businesses, and they are commercializing innovative technology, but they're also trying to solve big, long-term problems.
And I haven't even talked about health tech yet, digital health, which is, the long-term benefits are obvious. And the reason they're able to do this is because of the technical advances that we're seeing that have particularly accelerated in the last five years or so. Our portfolios, our companies, are stretching the limits of technology and applying them to the real problems that face us today as well. So if you look at AI, artificial intelligence, you know, more sophisticated algorithms that touch everybody in most parts of the world, almost every day. More complex data sets at a much larger scale, and we have firms like Mostly AI that are dealing, specifically, to deal with that.
When you look at remote working, you know, COVID has changed the way a workplace operates forever, and it's that genie is not going back in the bottle. And as a result, it's becoming a... there's greater chase for talent, there, there's greater need for talent. Workers are becoming much more demanding, and COVID has completely knocked the workplace out of kilter. And, and so one of our companies that you'll hear from today, CoachHub, again, innovative way to help develop and manage some of those those workforces. Cyber and data, I don't need to tell anyone here, I'm sure.
I read a survey from FTSE, 350 CIOs, a few weeks ago that said the number one issue that they're all facing is cyber security. So cyber is becoming an increasingly big issue. Managing security layers and the integrity of vast amounts of high quality and valuable data is very important, and Ledger, as I mentioned earlier on, is at the absolute forefront of these security layers. And finally, digital health. I don't need to explain the huge advances we're gonna hear from Eric about how that's helping treating cancer in a few minutes, but, you know, the advances in digital health are clear, and technology is playing an increasingly important role.
We have invested in a great company called Aktiia that enables patients to be able to monitor heart rates and blood pressure at a much, much greater level with much better data, and they can start to forecast and potentially deal with heart conditions. So the technological advances are there, and that's continuing to grow, and I haven't even got onto quantum or space or a whole bunch of other areas, but the technological advances are there. So what our companies need to do is to be able to commercialize those and bring them to a much wider audience. So our companies will all be disruptive. They're all disrupting something, whether it's a value chain or a supply chain or indeed dealing with something that's new.
They're all disruptive, and that will be a theme that you'll hear a lot about today. They're also all scalable. It's absolutely critical. Look, we love good ideas and we love great founders, but at the end of the day, we want them to be big. The market, the addressable market, has to be 10 to100 times the size that in order for them to properly scale. But it's not just the addressable market. They're all international by nature, but the economic model also has to be able to scale. So the unit costs is something that's very important, and some economic models scale much better than others.
But we're looking for models that economically can scale, that they can improve the margin, in a capital-light environment, and that's something that's key to being able to scale and create value. But there also has to be the desire and the ambition to scale, and that's something that's very important, and I think you'll get loads of that from the founders that you hear from today, because there has to be that desire to be genuinely world-leading and world-beating. And talent, we spend a lot of our time when we look at investment cases around talent. At the end of the day, you know, so much of this is down to the best talent. You know, good ideas with good economics will not scale without the very, very best teams.
So we look for entrepreneurs who've got a track record of building great teams, or those that are open to us helping them to build great teams, because that's where we've seen when we look at our portfolio over the years, those that have outperformed has been because they have got great teams. Those that generally get into trouble, quite often, it's not about the technology, it's not about customers, it tends to be more about, people. And so therefore, it's, it's something that we look at very, very closely. Hiring the best, senior management teams and the top talent is absolutely critical. But experience shows that that top talent are also very demanding and quite difficult to manage, and so therefore, especially in the work environment.
Issues such as diversity, inclusion, transparency, these are areas that we help our founders to work with, so that they can attract and retain and motivate the very, very best talent. Simply put, these are just well-run businesses, and many will recognize what I've been talking about. These sound like sensibly run, good businesses. That's something that we also look at very closely. You know, we want economic models that have real rigor. We want processes that are robust and as I said, scalable and relevant for the business. We're looking for businesses that are highly responsive to market demands, to the needs of their customers, and again, I think you'll hear that when you hear from our founders.
And also margin management, route to profitability, you know, good corporate governance. You know, these are, these are the tenets of sensibly run businesses, and we've got a lot of experience in our business of knowing what that looks like. And as I say, some founders have already run sensible, run good businesses, understand that, but others need help, and that's something that I hope you will see across our businesses. You know, fundamentally, they've got to make sense as a business, and we ask ourselves, we step back and ask ourselves those questions a lot when we're looking to invest. So those, I think those are the characteristics that you're going to see when you look at the companies that you see today.
I think you'll find that those run through all of our businesses. They're the firms that we believe are the best firms to grow, they're the firms that we believe that we can add the most value to, and they're the firms that we believe can create the most amount of value, and the opportunity is definitely there. We see that today, and we've seen it over the years, that the opportunity is definitely there today. So, you're gonna see a very wide range of companies. We've got 12 companies providing a platform for 12 companies today, half of those are within the core, so there's a significant amount of NAV on display today.
And, and as I said, I think that you'll find that there's those common themes run through them all. And, and, we very much hope that you enjoy the day. Now, for those of you who have been to one of these before, you'll be familiar that it is a little bit like speed dating. We do, we operate pretty swiftly, and I'll introduce each of the founders. I'm sorry that there won't be an opportunity to take questions, because if there was, then the first speaker would never get off the podium, so because there's generally so much interest. So I'm sorry that there isn't an opportunity for that.
However, I think, and I speak on behalf of the founders, I think they're all very open to talk to people, to talk about their businesses. There will be opportunities at lunch and during the break to, to speak to the founders, so you will get an opportunity. And obviously, if, if subsequently, you've got a particular interest in a company, or you want to talk to a particular company, contact Ben, myself, or the, or the team here, and, and, we'll be very happy to put you in touch.