Venture Capital Database and Directory Comparison

Every quarter, there are three main venture capital databases (including CB Insights) that issue quarterly venture capital reports detailing the funding levels they tracked in the prior quarter; i.e., deals and dollars of venture capital.  Those reports are different in format, timing of issuance and ultimately in the data they contain.  We thought it might be useful to see how these services compare to one another from a purely data-driven perspective.

The three main issuers of these reports are:

Note:  For reference, here is our Q2 2010 Venture Capital Activity Report.  Page 49 of the report available there details the steps we take to ensure data integrity and contains our definitions of what is and what is not included in our quarterly venture capital reports.

We looked back at the quarterly venture capital reports data from all three of the above venture capital database and directory firms from Q4 2008 through Q2 2010 to see how the data compares.  Specifically, we looked at three statistics reported or calculable by each:

1. Amount of aggregate Venture Capital funding by quarter
2. Number of aggregate Venture Capital deals by quarter
3. Average deal size by quarter

First, the statistics regarding what each firm reported for aggregate quarterly venture capital funding over the last seven quarters.

While you do see variation amongst the three venture capital databases from quarter to quarter, the aggregate statistics show less divergence especially between CB Insights and Dow Jones.

• CB Insights tracked $38.5B of venture capital funding
• Dow Jones tracked $38.9B of venture capital funding (VentureSource / VentureWire)
• Thomson tracked $33.4B of venture capital funding

On a deal count basis, the comparison of the three venture capital directory firms is given below.

On a deal count basis, the trend mirrors that of aggregate venture capital funding with CB Insights and Dow Jones being similar over the quarters in question.

• CB Insights tracked 4407 venture capital deals
• Dow Jones tracked 4373 venture capital deals (VentureSource / VentureWire)
• Thomson tracked 5045 venture capital deals

And finally, we looked at average deal size across the three primary venture capital database and directory services.

As would be expected from the number of deals and aggregate funding statistics above, Thomson, which reports more deals and smaller venture capital fundings, has a smaller average deal size.  Again, Dow Jones and CB Insights appear to be similar on this statistic.  While the average deal size over the seven quarters in question is not meaningful beyond this comparison, we do see that average deal sizes over the entire period are calculated as follows:

• CB Insights’ average deal size came in at $8.73 million per deal
• Dow Jones’ average deal size came in at $8.89 million per deal (VentureSource / VentureWire)
• Thomson’s average deal size came in at $6.63 million per deal

Please note that CB Insights generally provides median funding statistics in its quarterly reports as we feel that is a more accurate and useful measure but for purposes of this comparison, we’ve used average deal size as it was available for Dow Jones VentureSource and Thomson.