Grandparent poster has since clarified his question (he was talking about liquidation preferences and multiples). But yeah, back in the day, tranched rounds wit

Grandparent poster has since clarified his question (he was talking about liquidation preferences and multiples). But yeah, back in the day, tranched rounds with company performance targets were not unusual. In fact, they're still practiced today -- typically by big corporate investors, as opposed to angels or VCs. My personal opinion is that performance targets specifically, if not tranched payments in general, are bad for all concerned. Ostensibly they cover some downside for the investor, but startup investing is abot maximizing upside, not covering downside per se. At their worst, tranches and targets hold the company hostage to goals that are often arbitrary, and are almost always gamed accordingly. As a result, you have a company that is checking boxes and focusing on its arbitrary numbers, and you've got investors who don't realize they're creating perverse incentives. Also, it's basically impossible to run any variant of the Lean Startup methodology when under the gun of performance-based tranches. I say this having worked for a startup that accepted big corporate money on a tranch-based system with performance goals. Total headache for all concerned.