Understanding Sequoia, Accel and Kleiner Perkins’ Venture Capital Investment Syndicates (in Pictures)

Understanding venture capital syndicates (aka co-investment relationships) provides insight into the relationships that exist among and within the investment community.  While answering the question of “What investors does Sequoia Capital most frequently co-invest with?” is interesting, it is a superficial question that loses a lot of of the subtle interesting patterns that are visible in the investment syndicates that Sequoia or any investor tends to create.

The more interesting questions that should be asked are:

• Who does Sequoia Capital co-invest with by stage, i.e. who do they do later stage deals with vs. early-stage deals?
• Who does Accel Partners co-invest with in different geographies?  Do they tend to partner with certain firms in NY and others in Silicon Valley?  Are their geographies that Accel seems to avoid?
• Who does Kleiner Perkins co-invest with by sector?  Are their certain key relationships they have for tech investments vs. clean tech investments for example?
• Who are the angel investors that a firm is participating with in deals?  (This is useful in understanding which angels may be most influential and have access to proprietary dealflow which is in many ways the lifeblood of VC)

Sequoia Capital co-investors by stage

The below image (taken directly from Sequoia Capital profile on CB Insights) show’s a sample of who Sequoia co-invests with by series. As you can see, this quickly provides you not just color on who Sequoia invests with but provides a precise view into who they invest with at different series or round levels.  In the case of Sequoia, we see DAG Ventures participating in mid- to later- rounds with the firm and Accel Partners investing alongside Sequoia pretty evenly across the spectrum.  If one scrolls down further on this visualization on CB Insights (not visible in this screenshot), you also see that Sequoia invests with Felicis Ventures in earlier stage companies.

We’re happy that we can answer questions about investor syndicates via the new Co-Investor feature on investor profiles on CB Insights.  The screenshots above and below are some examples of this visualization, but to really see the interactivity and data underlying these visualizations, we recommend you logon (it’s free so just sign up here).  On CBI investor profiles, the visualization is updated real-time with new deal data and it is also interactive so clicking on any bubble shows you the specific deals the firms participated in together.

(Note: in a separate post, we’ll be discussing the technology and visualization libraries used to build the co-investor visualization)

Accel Partners co-investors by geography

The co-investor visualization on any profile can also be seen from the perspective of geography as shown below for Accel Partners.  As expected, we see a lot of co-investment relationships between Accel and investment syndicate partners in Silicon Valley.  But we also see that the firm’s syndicates often include First Round Capital and Index Ventures on NY-based deals.

Kleiner Perkins co-investors by sector

The final way to cut any of these visualization is by sector of investment.  This is particularly useful for multi-sector funds who may invest in areas ranging from clean tech to tech to life sciences.  So to illustrate this, we’ll look at a screenshot of the co-investors for Kleiner Perkins through this sector lens.  This clearly shows the sector preferences that Kleiner has with its co-investment partners.

To see the Co-Investor visualization for any venture capitalist, private equity firm, corporate venture arm or angel investor, simply logon to CB Insights (or sign up for free here) and visit the investor’s profile and click on Co-Investors in the left side navigation.