The Top 10 Venture Capital Seed Investors – Whose Seed Investments Most Frequently Raise Follow-on Capital?

With the number of seed deals exploding in the past couple years and a Series A Crunch underway (read our detailed report on the Series A Crunch here), we wanted to analyze which seed investors’ portfolios have the best chance at withstanding Series A funding woes based on their portfolio’s historical follow-on investment rate.

First, we compiled a list of the most active investors in Seed VC deals from the 2010 and 2011 vintages based on deal activity. We didn’t evaluate 2012 seed investments as that vintage has investments which may still be too immature to evaluate fairly.  Below are the 30 most active Seed VC investors over the two-year time frame ranked based on number of Seed VC deals they participated in:

But of these 30 most active seed investors, whose seed investments have the highest rate of receiving follow-on investment?  Below is the list of the top 10 ranked by follow-on rate, and while there may be some names you know well, the data also uncovers some atypical suspects. The top 10 is led by east coast-based firm LaunchCapital (founded by Elon Boms) and followed by Silicon Valley’s Baseline Ventures (founded by Steve Anderson) and Floodgate Fund (founded by Mike Maples Jr.) to round out the top 3.  Interestingly, these three firms – at least relative to many other most active seed investors on the list – keep a relatively lower profile (based on a review of their news mentions using CB Insights news archive).

Overall, the top 10 highlights a mix of the top seed venture capital firms who will withstand the eventual Seed VC shakeout as well as larger multi-stage funds which participate in seed venture rounds.

The ranking of all 30 most active seed investors by follow-on rate can be found on the ‘Research’ tab here, after logging in to CB Insights. (Note: The list of investors is only available to paid subscribers with access to CB Insider.)