The Facebook Mafia isn’t waiting for an IPO to strike out on their own as company alumni have already raised $271 million of venture capital funding since 2006. And the Facebook Mafia’s momentum appears to be accelerating with the group pulling in $130 million in just the first 5.5 months of 2012, a 137% increase over all of 2011, and the highest total in the last 6.5 years (graph below). For those unfamiliar with the term, the Facebook Mafia refers to alumni of Facebook who’ve gone on to found new startup companies.
With Facebook’s impending IPO and the resulting number of employee millionaires it will mint, there is every reason to believe that this is just the beginning of a lot more venture funding to Facebook alumni. As happened with Google, VCs will be keen to to build relationships and fund Facebook staff (especially engineers) if said engineers decide to scratch their entrepreneurial itch and found a startup.
Of course, some VCs haven’t waited to build those relationships. The investors that have been most active funding Facebook Mafia companies to-date are also given below with the number of companies they’ve funded. Interestingly, the group of Facebook Mafia financiers has been quite diverse as CB Insights data identified 67 different investors who’ve invested in at least one Facebook Mafia company. Only the 6 venture capital firms who have invested in 2 or more Facebook alumni companies are given below.
Continue reading “2012 Venture Capital Funding to Facebook Mafia Up 137% vs. 2011. Greylock is Most Active VC FB Mafia Investor So Far.” »
We’re happy to announce a partnership with the prestigious MIT Clean Energy Prize on a free report which details the financing, geographic and industry stats for the companies who’ve participated in the competition over the last five years of this storied green tech business competition. In addition, you can now search for all MIT Clean Energy Prize participants directly on CB Insights (screenshots below on how to get the report and how to search for these companies). This year’s Grand Prize Winner will receive $200,000 and advance to represent the MIT Clean Energy Prize at the 2012 National Clean Energy Business Plan Competition in Washington, DC.
The report was done by our Green Tech Insights‘ team, a new offering we’ll be launching soon focused specifically on all things green tech. You can sign up for early access to Green Tech Insights here.
Continue reading “MIT Clean Energy Prize Competition – Financing, Industry and Geographic Statistics for Past Participants” »
Shai Goldman of Silicon Valley Bank (and long time friend and customer of CB Insights) used our data to put together some commentary and diagrams which detail the prominent relationships among investment firms doing seed investment in NYC. We thought it was an interesting application of our data so we’d suggest you check out Shai’s post for his criteria and commentary over here.
A couple of the diagrams Shai put together are embedded below but go check out his post here for his complete thoughts and rationale for conducting this analysis.
Continue reading “NYC Seed Venture Capital Investor Syndicates” »
Venture capitalists did not hesitate to open up their wallets in Q1 2012 making 785 investments in the quarter – the 2nd most in the last nine quarters. But despite the aggressive number of deals, the checks written were smaller than prior quarters as investors plowed $5.9 billion into companies – the lowest level of VC funding since Q2 2010.
The entire 68 page Q1 2012 quarterly venture capital activity report and all of our prior quarterly VC reports are available for free on CB Insights. Just login
here and visit the research tab. Or set up your free account
here if you don’t already have one.
Although this represents a 22% decline in funding from Q4 2012, we do not think that a single quarter dip in funding is in any way symptomatic of any sort of correction or any sort of bubble bursting. Deal activity which we view as a better gauge of investor sentiment remains strong. The funding dip is primarily the result of fewer VC mega deals in the quarter which as the quarter illustrates can and do move numbers significantly up when present and down wildly when absent.
Continue reading “Venture Capital Deals and Funding – Quarterly Venture Capital Report for Q1 2012” »
Tech startup valuation data is tough to come by but our technology is becoming increasingly good at identifying rumored valuations when they are leaked which provides us with an interesting view into those tech companies that represent promising future exits (IPOs or M&A) as well as the industries that are hottest. We discussed this on Bloomberg TV this past week, and we’ll be putting out a report soon about the tech IPO pipeline and valuations, but to start, we wanted to share some very high-level stats on the 65 tech companies we’ve identified with $100M+ valuations who’ve raised financing since Jan 2011.
The histogram below shows the valuation distribution of these firms followed by the data table should you want to dig into the distribution of data on your own.
Continue reading “Tech IPO Pipeline – Startups with $100 Million+ Valuations” »
We spoke with Bloomberg TV’s Deirdre Bolton earlier this week on our recently issued angel investment data. The segment also covers a great deal more including whether there is an early stage VC bubble and the tech IPO pipeline and $100 million valuations. (report on this coming soon which you can sign up for here)
To view the video, click here or the image below.
At the request of customers, we’ve integrated some insanely simple CRM capabilities into CB Insights. These allow you to leave task reminders and notes on company (and soon investor profiles). If Salesforce is the Mercedes of CRM, think of our current and forthcoming CRM capabilities as a reliable but no frills 2005 Honda Civic. You can see a screenshot below of Facebook’s company profile with one of our developers notes and tasks related to Facebook. If you want to check out the new CRM capabilities, login here or if you don’t have a login, setup a free account here.
Continue reading “Introducing CB Insights’ Super Simple CRM – Basic and Efficient (Like a Honda Civic)” »
It’s well established that New York’s tech venture capital scene has trumped Massachusetts, but with all of the data highlighting NY’s VC prominence, we are sometimes asked whether NYC is poised to take over the VC title from reigning champion California. To satisfy your curiosity with some good hard data, we put this chart together to highlight where each of the state’s stack up against one another. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words.
Continue reading “Is New York Going to Overtake California in Tech Venture Capital? (spoiler alert: Nope)” »
Angel investment data is getting a bit more transparent. Below is the first ever HALO Report issued by CB Insights in conjunction with Silicon Valley Bank and the Angel Resource Institute. In addition to the report, we’ve embedded an infographic and the press release below for your review. As always, if any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out to us.
The Angel Resource Institute (ARI), Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and CB Insights today announced findings from the first Halo Report, a collaborative effort to raise awareness of early stage investment activities by angel investment groups. The research series highlights angel investment activity and trends in North America and provides much sought after data that has not been previously available to entrepreneurs or early stage investors.
Note: infographic is first followed by press release and then followed by the HALO report
Continue reading “Angel Investment Data – 2011 HALO Report” »
We’d previously highlighted that when it comes to tech venture capital deals and funding, NY had overtaken Massachusetts with the trend starting in Q2’10. But the last time we looked at this was a year ago, and with the Giants win over the Patriots last night, we thought it might be time to see if NY continues to win when it comes to tech venture capital.
As the graph below shows pretty clearly, not only is NY winning on the tech venture capital front, but the trend actually appears to have gained steam since we last ran the numbers in Q4’10. While Massachusetts’ tech scene has gone sideways over the last 9 quarters, NY has shown growth. And this occurred against a backdrop of a record year for venture capital investing in 2011 suggesting that a rising tide in this case did not lift all ships. Of course, it is important to note that when considering aggregate venture capital deals and dollars which would include life sciences and energy/green tech in addition to tech, Massachusetts continues to be the winner.
Continue reading “NY’s Tech Venture Capital Lead Over Boston Accelerates” »
