The data shows that billion-dollar valuations are on the rise and now, with Snapchat rumored to be raising from investors including Kleiner Perkins at a $10 billion valuation, that list is also growing.
Not counting Snapchat, three other U.S. venture-backed companies are currently valued at $10B+ – Dropbox, Uber and AirBnB. Xiaomi, the Chinese smartphone company backed by investors including IDG Capital Partners, QiMing Partners and Morningside Group has also achieved the vaunted 11-figure valuation.
Using CB Insights’ Business Social Graph, we visualized which investors stand to gain the most from what some are already calling the ‘decacorns’ (eyeroll).
The Business Social Graph below shows the investor networks of Uber, Dropbox, AirBnB and Snapchat (the latter will be included for the purposes of this analysis but is only rumored to be valued at $10B at this point). Of note, 12 different investors including frequent black swan VCs Sequoia Capital and Greylock Partners and active mutual fund firms like BlackRock and T. Rowe Price were able to get into two of the four companies. Remarkably, prominent Silicon Valley venture firm Benchmark is the only firm in three of the four startups.
Of course, the real winners in the $10B club – if it holds up – will be investors who had the conviction to get in at the earliest stages. Public market investors who are now highly active at the late-stage may make money but the gaudy returns will accrue to those who invested early.
Peeling back the institutional investors (VC, asset management, corporate venture, etc.) by the stage in which they first invested, we see Benchmark as the lead investor in both Uber and Snapchat’s Series A rounds. Benchmark got in a bit later in Dropbox, participating in the cloud storage firm’s $250M Series B. Sequoia also stands out at the early-stage. Both of its first investments – AirBnB and Dropbox – came at the seed-stage (highlighting its dominance in Y Combinator’s biggest hits).
Greylock Partners counts one early-stage investment (AirBnB) and one Series B deal (Dropbox), while General Catalyst, Goldman Sachs and Institutional Venture Partners each got into the B rounds of two companies. Of course it’s worth noting that Series C rounds by three of the companies (Dropbox, Uber and AirBnB) can hardly be considered ‘mid-stage’ – each totaled over $200M per round.
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