Kleiner Perkins And NEA Among The Most Active Smart Money VCs In Supply Chain & Logistics Startups

The top venture capitalists increased the pace of their deals to supply chain and logistics tech startups in Q3’16. At the current run-rate, deals are on track to match 2015 totals. This would be the third-straight year in which smart money investors participated in 15 deals to the category. 

We define supply chain and logistics broadly to include companies that use software to improve efficiency across the supply chain and logistics ecosystems. However, we exclude on-demand companies restricted to specific verticals (e.g., we do not include those companies focused exclusively on restaurant or grocery delivery, or consumer moving companies).

For more on how we selected our 24 “smart money VCs,” please see the explanation and full smart money list at the bottom of this post.

Annual trends

In 2016 year-to-date (10/26/16) the top VCs have participated in 12 financing rounds to startups operating in the supply chain and logistics space, with funding from those deals totaling $215M. At the current run-rate, total projected deals are on pace to reach ~15, the same as last year’s total, while funding is on track to see more than $250M invested, which would be a decrease from last year’s total.

The largest round involving smart money included First Round Capita, which invested in freight-forwarding company Flexport‘s $65M Series B.

This year, most of the largest supply chain and logistics tech deals have not involved smart money investors. However, some of the smart money VCs’ international funds participated in a few mega-deals in Asia. Indonesia’s Go-Jek raised a $550M Series B, which included Sequoia Capital India (which is not on our smart money list as it invests separately from Sequoia Capital). Additionally, Chinese courier service YunNiao raised a $100M Series C that included Sequoia Capital China.

Quarterly trends

Smart money VCs participated in 5 deals to the category in Q3’16 which added up to $119M in aggregate. This follows 4 deals in Q2’16 and 3 in Q1’16, and represents a rebound over Q4’15, in both deals and dollars, after only $4M was invested in 1 deal.

Q3’16 included Flexport‘s $65M Series B, as well as a $22M Series B to truck brokerage startup Transfix.

Business social graph

We used our Business Social Graph to visualize how smart money VC investors and their portfolio companies in the supply chain and logistics space are interrelated.

Since 2012, smart money investors have co-invested multiple times.

First Round Capital and Founders Fund have both invested in freight forwarding service Flexport. First Round Capital participated in seed VC ($6.6M 2014), Series A ($20M 2015), and Series B ($65M 2016) financing to the company. Founders Fund invested in the Series A and B rounds.

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Lightspeed Venture Partners both invested in enterprise resource management software company Kenandy in the company’s Series B and second Series B tranche. KPCB had also invested in Kenandy at the seed stage.

KPCB participated with smart money VC Benchmark in investment rounds to shipping startup uShip.

General Catalyst Partners and Redpoint Ventures both invested in crowd-sourced same-day delivery startup Deliv. Both smart money investors participated in the seed round ($1M) in 2013 but notably passed on any follow on rounds through Series C. The company has raised $40.4M to-date.

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (with 6 investments), New Enterprise Associates (6), and Andreessen Horowitz (5) were the most active smart money VC investors in the space. Sequoia Capital, our top smart money VC, participated in investments to supply chain and logistics tech startups earlier than 2012, but has had no investments in the category since 2012.

Please click to enlarge – image includes investments from 1/1/2012 – 10/26/16.

Note: To analyze smart money trends, we looked at the activity of 24 top VC firms, selected according to portfolio valuations and investment outcomes. Some of the investors are linked to relevant research briefs. Here’s our full list of 24 smart money investors:

1. Sequoia Capital
2. Benchmark Capital
3. Accel Partners
4. Greylock Partners
5. Andreessen Horowitz
6. Union Square Ventures
7. First Round Capital
8. Bessemer Venture Partners
9. Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
10. New Enterprise Associates
11. Founders Fund
12. Lightspeed Venture Partners
13. Foundry Group
14. Index Ventures
15. Khosla Ventures
16. Social Capital
17. Emergence Capital Partners
18. True Ventures
19. Floodgate Fund
20. General Catalyst Partners
21. CRV
22. Spark Capital
23. Battery Ventures
24. Redpoint Ventures

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