Backswing Ventures: What SpaceX's 24-Year Road to IPO Says About Chasing Unicorns

The Orlando-based defense venture capital firm underwrites every investment for a 3-5x return on its own, arguing that a portfolio built to depend on one breakout winner is a slower and riskier way to generate returns than the industry assumes.

ORLANDO, Fla., Sept. 8, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Most venture funds are underwritten to need one enormous outcome: the single company that returns the whole fund and then some. Backswing Ventures, an early-stage defense venture capital firm, argues that a fund built around disciplined, independently justified bets can outperform one waiting on a unicorn, and do it faster.

The Unicorn Model Is Slower Than the Pitch Decks Suggest

Venture capital's standard model asks a large majority of portfolio companies to underperform so a single winner can pay for the fund. Backswing says that math is getting harder to rely on. Outsized outcomes still happen. They're simply taking longer to turn into cash that reaches investors.

Carta's Q1 2026 fund-performance data shows the gap. Among 2017 and 2018 vintage funds, the ones with enough time to have realized outcomes, fewer than 20% have returned even 1x DPI to their limited partners. Paper valuations don't pay LPs back. Distributions do.

SpaceX makes the same point on a bigger stage. The company was founded in 2002 and didn't hand shareholders a liquid outcome until its initial public offering closed in June 2026, 24 years later. It may be the clearest unicorn outcome venture capital has ever produced, and it still asked its earliest backers to wait a generation for a payout.

"The venture math everyone learned assumes one company in the portfolio has to do all the work," said Kyle Asman, Founder and Managing Partner of Backswing Ventures. "We'd rather build a fund where no single company has to."

Entry Price Carries as Much Weight as the Exit Headline

If a fund isn't counting on a unicorn, what it pays going in starts to matter as much as what a company might be worth someday. PitchBook's data makes the case for why:

• Median U.S. venture-backed acquisition, 2023: $60.6 million
• Share of U.S. venture exits that were acquisitions, 2023: approximately 69%

Most venture-backed companies don't need to dominate an industry. They need a buyer, and a reasonable one is usually available well below unicorn status.

"An 8% stake in a $250 million outcome and a 1% stake in a $2 billion outcome pay the same," Asman said. "One of those is a lot easier to get right, and it starts with what you pay to get in."

In Defense, a Single Component Can Be the Whole Business

Backswing applies the same underwriting logic to its core sector. A defense startup doesn't need to build a complete weapons system to produce a venture-scale outcome. A sensor that fits a dozen different platforms, a power system, a navigation or communications layer: each can be a durable, sellable business without the company ever building the program around it.

Rocket Lab's 2025 acquisition of Geost put a price on that idea. Rocket Lab paid $275 million for Geost's electro-optical and infrared sensor technology, a component built to plug into many different national-security platforms rather than a single finished system.

"Selling into an ecosystem is a smaller, more repeatable bet than trying to own an entire platform," Asman said. "Those are the kinds of businesses we look for."

A Fund That Isn't Waiting on One Company

Backswing describes its process as a series of individually justified bets rather than a search for a single breakout winner. Each investment is expected to clear a 3-5x return on its own: price, ownership stake, market size, and a credible buyer all have to line up before the firm considers what happens if a company outperforms.

"A 3x return isn't a disappointment," Asman said. "A $200 million exit isn't a failure just because someone else's company sold for $2 billion. Our job isn't to find the company that returns the whole fund. It's to build a fund that was never counting on one."

About Backswing Ventures

Backswing Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm focused on dual-use and defense technology companies. The firm invests in businesses building next-generation capabilities across aerospace, autonomy, defense systems, infrastructure, cybersecurity, and national security technologies. Backswing Ventures' Fund II surpassed 1.0x DPI in under three years, making it among the top-performing 2023-vintage venture funds in the country.

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SOURCE Backswing Ventures