Wednesday, May 8, 2013

Midas List Feeder Firms

The Forbes Midas list just came out today. But it doesn't answer the question I know you have: who do you know that can get Jim Breyer to take a look at your go-go somoloco robofoto co?

We at Neu VC decided to help you out. We scoured the Crunchbases to find out which investors coinvest with or invest prior to the Midas List investors' firms. You can think of these firms as the Midas List feeder firms.

The firms are ranked by the percentage of the companies they invested in over the past five years that a Midas List firm invested in at the same time or later.

  Fund % Midas
1. Collaborative Fund 86%
2. Glynn Capital Management 82%
3. Felicis Ventures 81%
4. XG Ventures 81%
5. Thrive Capital 80%
6. PivotNorth Capital 78%
7. Forerunner Ventures 77%
8. Start Fund 76%
9. Lerer Ventures 76%
10. Red Swan Ventures 75%
11. Version One Ventures 75%
12. DAG Ventures 73%
13. High Line Venture Partners 71%
14. Freestyle Capital 71%
15. Founder Collective 69%
16. O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures 68%
17. SoftTech VC 67%
18. Tekton Ventures 67%
19. Cowboy Ventures 67%
20. Morado Venture Partners 67%
21. CrunchFund 66%
22. MuckerLab 63%
23. Harrison Metal Capital 62%
24. Northgate Capital 60%
25. Phenomen Ventures 60%
26. NextView Ventures 59%
27. Neu Venture Capital 57%
28. Kapor Capital 57%
29. ENIAC Ventures 57%
30. TriplePoint Capital 57%
31. Radar Partners 57%
32. Spring Ventures 57%
33. A-Grade Investments 56%
34. Data Collective 56%
35. Trilogy Equity Partnership 55%
36. Advancit Capital 55%
37. Quest Venture Partners 54%
38. Thomvest Ventures 53%
39. Transmedia Capital 53%
40. Helion Venture Partners 53%
41. Vulcan Capital 53%
42. Correlation Ventures 52%
43. IA Ventures 52%
44. Jafco Ventures 50%
45. MentorTech Ventures 50%
46. Silverton Partners 50%
47. White Star Capital 50%
48. Graph Ventures 50%
49. Amicus Capital 50%
50. Mohr Davidow Ventures 49%
51. General Catalyst Partners 49%
52. Google Ventures 48%
53. Sutter Hill Ventures 48%
54. Maveron 48%

The usual caveats: the data from Crunchbase is woefully incomplete. It doesn't include all deals. It doesn't have most angel investors, who might be the best way to get to some of these firms (because of the spotty angel coverage I decided to exclude anyone Crunchbase did not consider a 'financial organization,' so almost all angels are not on the list.)

I excluded firms that were primarily life sciences/biomedical and firms that invested primarily in non-US companies. I looked at investments for the last five years and weeded out firms that made fewer than five initial investments in that period or fewer than three in the last year.

I'm sure there's some signal in here, but there's also a ton of noise. Treat it as entertainment. There are many explanations for why these firms are here and others are not. Some good, some eh. For instance, note that Google Ventures is number 52; Google Ventures is making some solid bets and adding a ton of value. Why are they 52? I don't know.

Also note that the 40 firms from the Midas List that were used to generate this list are not themselves on the list. So, if you're like "why isn't SV Angel here?" the answer is that they are on the Midas List itself.