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New York Venture Firms: Bigger Fund or Bigger Buzz?

with 18 comments

I’m just going to leave this here.

Venture Firms with a Strong NYC Presence, by Buzz*
Who is mentioning NY venture firms?

Venture Firms with a Strong NYC Presence, by Size of Newest Fund
What size are NY venture funds?

* Presence in Blogosphere as measured by TechMeme

Written by Brad Hargreaves

March 11th, 2010 at 10:46 am

Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

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  • Jen_McFadden

    Brad–Does the graphic include Betaworks new influx of cash?
    JHM

  • Brad Hargreaves

    @Jen_McFadden It does, although counting their latest round ($20 MM) as opposed to their previous round ($15 MM) doesn’t make a big difference in the scheme of things. Ultimately Betaworks is a different beast, and I debated whether or not to put them in this graphic at all.

  • Jen_McFadden

    It would also be interesting to parse it out based on the % of each fund that is allocated towards social media/consumer internet plays vs. other sectors. Those firms with Energy, Infrastructure or Biotech in their portfolios are naturally going to have larger overall funds vs. the First Round/Union Square/Betaworks of the world. Just a thought.
    JHM

  • Michael Segal

    Hi Brad,

    For Bessemer, are you counting the last fund as the $350m “annex” that was raised in early 09 to invest more aggressively in the downturn?
    http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-194458876.html

    If so, that’s not really representative of the size of BVP’s fund, BVP VII, which is closer to $1b (or $1.35b with the annex).
    http://www.altassets.net/private-equity-news/article/nz11319.html

    Michael
    BVP

  • http://www.tomloverro.com tomloverro

    Is Insight Venture Partner’s fund size correct? Which fund are you using for them? Wasn’t their last fund 1.25bn? Or are you somehow splitting that one out in stage?

    Also, what are you using for Bessemer’s fund size? Looks too small on a relative basis or is that split out somehow? Also how are you measuring their fund?

    One thing that this chart suggests is that there is a negative correlation between buzz and stage of investment (although I haven’t run the regression). In the Buzz pie chart, it does look like all the mid-stage and later investors are clustered into the smaller slices.

  • Brad Hargreaves

    @tomloverro For Insight, I’m using the $1.25bn fund that you mentioned. I’m not aware that they’ve raised one since.

    Bessemer was tough to measure, since their latest “raise” was actually a $350MM expansion to BVP VII, which in total was over $1bn. I used the $350MM number in this chart, though in hindsight the total fund size may have been the better one to use. Hard to say without more information about fund allocation, though.

    The weird thing about the correlation is that most of the “mid and later stage” investors listed here with minimal buzz actually do seed-stage investments — often at least as many as dedicated early-stage funds like USV. But they tend not to publicize these investments, often not even publishing them on their website.

  • Joe Entrepreneur

    Why isn’t Rho Ventures included in this list – they are managing almost $2 billion dollars and their last fund was almost $600m raised in 2007…

  • Brad Hargreaves

    @Joe Entrepreneur I tried to only include firms that do early stage (companies with <$1MM in revenue / yr) deals. Otherwise you starting getting into the netherworld between private equity and VC, and that would make my analysis a bit less interesting.

    That said, I may be wrong to put Rho in this pot. But I've always assumed they were focused on growth stage.

  • http://twitter.com/cshapiro Craig

    I wonder where Founder’s Collective ranks in Buzz – considering Chris Dixons efforts…?

  • http://twitter.com/cshapiro Craig

    …Also, I’d love to see which funds have driven (or are projected to drive) the most returns versus buzz

  • Joe Entrepreneur

    @Brad Hargreaves Rho does do pre-revenue and early revenue deals.

  • Brad Hargreaves

    @Craig Probably really high. But I wanted to focus this analysis primarily on old-school VC firms, with one alternative model (Betaworks) thrown in to boot. It’s hardly an exhaustive analysis. My own firm, Tipping Point Partners, isn’t even included.

    @Joe Entrepreneur Oops.

  • http://www.zelkovavc.com Jay Levy

    Brad –

    How did you pick the funds you wanted to graph in this? Zelkova isnt on there, we are one of the more active early stage funds in NY. About 16 deals in the past two years.

  • Brad Hargreaves

    @Jay Levy First dozen firms that came to mind, really. If I had known how many annoyed emails / tweets I would get I would’ve been a lot more rigorous.

  • http://www.tomloverro.com tomloverro

    Brad,
    Thanks for the responses. Yeah, I think you used the right number for Insight then. Bessemer is probably very light if you just took the add-on vehicle.

    One other graphic / data point that could be interesting would be number of deals/firm done in the NYC area. You can probably get most of the data off the VC websites. (Also, I bet most of the firms on that list would be willing to volunteer it if you asked and you would get more complete data.) Isn’t that one of the most important measures of being a “NYC VC”? Doing deals in the NYC-area?

    [BTW, I would not limit NYC just to the five boroughs, but include a reasonable drive's distance. I think this is one of the reasons NYC VC numbers sometimes are deflated. They often exclude companies and $ from a stone's throw away in NJ and CT, but meanwhile CA defines the Bay Area as CA minus north of Eureka and south of LA ;-) ]

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