This is an excerpt from Mattermark Weekly, our free weekly newsletter bringing news and insights from the startup community. If you like what you’ve read here we hope you will subscribe.
Portfolio companies tend to fall into 3 buckets of traction: negative, positive, and then 1 or 2 hyper-growth startups. Some do a little early stage and others do a lot. Some invest in many companies and some pick just a few. There are several strategies, which are nuanced far beyond volume and stage. It’s all about finding the whales.
Top 10 Series A Portfolios – VCs with the Highest Aggregate Average Mattermark Score
One simple way to keep tabs on overall portfolio growth is to look at the average Mattermark score across all companies with a positive score. In keeping with our theme, we’ve broken down the Series A portfolios to see which portfolios (of the 50 we sampled) have the highest average Mattermark scores:
- 614 – Baseline
- 516 – Floodgate
- 490 – Union Square Ventures
- 455 – Redpoint
- 448 – Battery Ventures
- 421 – Freestyle Capital
- 395 – General Catalyst
- 393 – SV Angel
- 391 – Matrix Partners
- 388 – Correlation VC
Putting Money to Work – What Will Traction Cost You?
It is generally accepted that startups fail, so for many firms managing downside is a losing proposition and precious time is better spent nurturing the companies who are growing to help them grow faster.
So what happens if we look at portfolios and throw out their declining startups? In this graph we’re using total capital raised to date to determine which portfolios’ companies are putting dollars to work to gain traction most effectively, on average. This takes into account ALL the funding a startup has raised, not just the dollars coming from the portfolio it belongs to. I’ve also included a few incubator programs to give you a sense of how efficiently their companies who have made it to Series A are gaining traction.
Points Earned per $1M in Total VC Funding – Series A Stage
Wondering why your firm wasn’t included? Curious where you stand?Don’t worry, there is no hidden agenda… we simply profiled as many firms as we could before we ran out of time. We’re happy to send your stats and include you next time around, just drop a note to support@10.147.21.165 or hit reply.
Mattermark News Last Week
We’re blogging daily – visit our front page to catch the latest. Here’s a quick rundown of what you might have missed on the blog last week:
- Jesse Robbins & Greg Albrecht Raise $445K for Stealthy Mobile Device Startup OnBeep
- Pure Launches Sex-on-Demand App, Already #9 Among Fastest Growing Dating Startups
- Mattermark is Hiring Research Analysts
- Serial Entrepreneur Barry Zane Raises $10M for SPARQL City, Helping Data Scientists & Analysts Manipulate Big Data
- CornellFetch Went Live 4 Days Ago – Already Has 1 Million Views, 400,000 Votes, Death Threats
- 15 Fastest Growing Startups Who Are Hiring Now
Upcoming Industry Events
- August 20th – Y Combinator Demo Day (invitation only)
September 20th – FundersClub Upround Conference – Mattermark Weekly readers can get tickets for 50% off if you register through this link by August 23rd.
Have an event you’d like us to include next time? Let us know.