While most venture capital firms operate with a 10-year horizon to sell companies and distribute returns to LPs, Tenmile managing director Steve Burnell said it runs under a different model: when investments pay off, the money stays in the fund.
Three years since its launch by Nicola and Andrew Forrest’s Tattarang, the life sciences investor is two-thirds of the way through deploying its initial capital allocation, having invested $150 million across 23 companies.
Returns from exits don’t get distributed to limited partners — because there aren’t any. Instead, they recycle back into the business, funding the next generation of drug developers, diagnostics firms and medtech startups.
It’s an evergreen structure that Burnell, who spent 25 years in the US biotech industry before taking the helm at Tenmile, says is “more like an investment business than a fund”.
