What Is IRR, DPI, TVPI, Blended TVPI and MOIC?

IRR stands for Internal Rate of Return. In plain terms, it tells you how fast your money is growing each year, similar to an interest rate, but one that accounts for exactly when money went in and when it came back out.

A higher IRR generally means your money grew faster. But IRR can look unusually high early in a fund's life if even a small amount of money came back quickly, so it should not be trusted on its own in the early years.

DPI stands for Distributions to Paid-In capital. It simply means: how much actual cash has the fund returned to me, compared to how much I put in? A DPI of 1.0 means you have received back exactly what you invested, in cash.

TVPI stands for Total Value to Paid-In capital. It includes both the cash you have received and the current estimated value of what is still invested. TVPI is usually higher than DPI early on, since most of the value has not yet been turned into cash.

Blended TVPI simply means the TVPI figure for a group of investments looked at together, rather than one fund alone, for example, all the private-market funds you personally hold, combined into a single number.

MOIC stands for Multiple on Invested Capital, and in practice it works very similarly to TVPI: it tells you the total value created, as a multiple of what you put in, for example, a MOIC of 2.0 means your investment is worth twice what you originally put in, combining cash returned and current value.

No single number tells the whole story. IRR tells you about speed, DPI tells you about actual cash received, and TVPI or MOIC tell you about total value, cash plus what is still invested.

A simple habit: ask for all of these numbers together, not just the one that sounds most impressive, and ask how much of the total value is already real cash in your hand versus still an estimate.