ABSTRACT
During the initial decade observers often viewed ARD’s prospects as dim but the firm’s investment record began to look respectable fifteen years after it had been formed, even apart from the remarkable success of Digital Equipment. By the early 1960s, ARD was the oldest and largest publicly owned venture capital firm and an observer noted that: “For this reason, its record is conspicuously and frequently quoted.”32 By 1961, 3,300 prospects had been investigated and sixtysix invested in (about 2 percent of those worthy of initial study). Of the sixty-six, twenty-nine had been sold for a gain of $3 million on twenty, with losses of $850,000 on the other nine. The thirty-seven remaining firms in the portfolio had expanded investments totalling $11.1 million to a value of $30 million. ARD had invested in eighty-four companies in total by 1961. The forty-two still held comprised ARD’s then current assets of nearly $39 million.33
