list: deaths of on-demand startups

Hedging

Hi there,

Lots of yuge developments in today’s newsletter.

I suggest you read it three times. Maybe four.

The best VCs in the world

I’m excited to announce that we’re partnering with The New York Times again to identify the top VCs in the world. If you are one of the few hundred VC firms who submitted data last year, you know the routine.

Go right to the CB Insights Editor to update your portfolio and board of directors data.

Deadline: Feb 24th, 2017

This year, we’re hoping to do some additional rankings including top corporate VCs and top early stage VC professionals.

If you’re curious about the process/methodology (surprise: it’s data-driven), you can go here.

Here are the top 20 VCs as published in The NYT last year and here is the entire top 100 VC list.

Land of the startups

We identified the most well-funded VC-backed technology startups by state based on disclosed equity funding. The most well-funded company featured in our map is Uber in California, with $12.5B of funding to date.

Unicorn stampede

Sometimes, you just have a good week.

This is one of those weeks.

Today, I’m excited to announce that Kenneth Lin, the CEO of CreditKarma, is joining us at The Future of Fintech Conference.

CreditKarma, a fintech unicorn valued at $3.5B, has been making big moves of late. The company which changed how individuals manage their credit history and score recently launched Credit Karma Tax.

Yes — CreditKarma is attacking the massive tax prep market dominated by the likes of Intuit, H&R Block and others.

Kenneth has a unique perspective and expertise on consumer financial services so I’m really looking forward to our conversation with him.

You’ve got until tomorrow to get $1000 off tickets (Feb 17th) with the code SmartSpeaker. Just go here.

As a reminder, we now have several unicorn company founders/CEOs speaking in addition to Kenneth including:

• Co-founder of Palantir ($20B)
• CEO / Founder of Paytm ($5B)
• CEO of Oscar ($2.7B)
• Co-founder of Kabbage ($1B)

Plus, of course, we got some public company execs, amazing VCs, corporate M&A folks, etc. And it’s at Lincoln Center.

Plus, many surprises still to come.

Ok — go get your ticket now.

I’ll wait.

And you’re back…

Now let’s move on.

This is what they call hedging

Reckitt Benckiser, a maker of contraceptives, bought Mead Johnson, a baby food maker.

#synergy

Death on-demand

We looked at a number of on-demand companies that failed to survive in the market. India-based AUTOnCAB built their hailing app around the use of rickshaws, but ultimately decided to shut down.

Geez, Vanguard is a beast

$4T AUM

Medical device financing

We analyzed yearly and quarterly investment trends as well as funding by deal stage to private medical device companies. In 2016, equity funding to medical device companies saw a 17% increase from 2015, while deals increased by nearly 3% in the same time period.

The Industry Standard

CB Insights data is the most trusted by those in the industry and the media. A few recent hits.

Bloomberg. Adam Satariano (@satariano) on the difficulties of raising a post-Brexit fund with a reference to CB Insights research on unicorn companies.

Business Insider. Oscar Williams-Grut (@oscarwgrut) digs into UK fintech funding and cites CB Insights investment data.

New York Times. Mark Scott (@markscott82) writes about Europe’s tech sector and refers to CB Insights funding data.

Times of Israel. Shoshanna Solomon reports on Israeli tech exits and cites data found in the CB Insights 2016 Global Tech Exits Report.

I love you.

Anand
@asanwal

P.S. We’ll be talking regtech startup trends next Thursday. Sign up for the briefing.