Half-Year Check-In: Proper Fair Value has Become Much More Practical

For a long time, compliance of fair value in venture capital, has been viewed as practically too complex and difficult to follow.

Not because the standards weren’t clear. Frameworks like IPEV and ASC 820 have long defined what strong fair value looks like.

But translating that into a repeatable, portfolio-wide process - across companies with evolving cap tables, SAFEs, convertibles, and layered preferences hasn’t always been straightforward.

That’s where things are starting to change.

Today, both the guidance and the infrastructure have evolved. IPEV and ASC 820 are more clearly interpreted in practice, and new technology - combined with better access to and management of cap table data - is making it much easier to implement structured, rights-aware valuation processes.

What was once seen as overly complex or impractical is increasingly becoming achievable in a consistent way.

In many cases, it’s now relatively straightforward to build a process that is:

• aligned with IPEV and ASC 820

• supported by clean, structured cap table data

• driven by rights-aware modeling

• calibrated to prior rounds and milestones

• consistent across reporting periods

• well-documented and audit-ready

Judgment remains central to venture valuation - that hasn’t changed. What has changed is the environment around it.

Now that we are entering the second half of the year, many funds are starting to think about their 2026 fair value processes. It makes sense to step back and reassess how those processes are designed and what’s now possible.

For VCs, finance teams, and auditors, this is a good time to explore how the right infrastructure can make fair value both more robust and easier to implement.

Happy to connect with anyone thinking about this and share how firms are approaching fair value today in a much more practical, scalable way.