What are the world's best venture capital firms?
We build a basket of "top" VCs we'll use to represent "smart money"
Coming up with a list of the world’s best venture capital firms is not easy.
For one, the life of most funds is 10 years. And funds typically exhibit a J-curve where losing investments fail quickly, often in year two or three, whereas winners typically take seven to ten years to exit.
For the purposes of this newsletter, we’re looking for a basket of “top” VCs to represent “smart money” that we will use to evaluate investing trends in technology and the areas where value creation and change are likely to be greatest.
The typical metrics VCs are measured by include: distribution to paid in capital (DPI), total value to paid in capital (TVPI) and internal rate of return (IRR). Because these metrics vary by fund vintage, take a long time to be useful, are not published (though can be occasionally found in a pension fund limited partner’s annual report), and because we don’t need exact precision for our purposes, we will use the following mechanism to determine our “top” VC basket:
- Firms who invested early in the most billion dollar companies (“unicorns”)
- Firms who have consistently had the largest exits
- Firms with the most partners in CB Insights’ 2019 Top 100 venture capitalists analysis
- Firms with the highest peer review ratings
When we use the term “top VCs” in the newsletter, we are referring to the following basket of VC firms (in alphabetical order):
- Accel
- Andreesen Horowitz
- Battery Ventures
- Benchmark
- Bessemer
- DFJ
- Felicis Ventures
- First Round Capital
- Floodgate
- Foundation Capital
- Founders Fund
- General Catalyst
- GGV Capital
- Greylock
- Index Ventures
- Khosla Ventures
- Kleiner Perkins
- New Enterprise Associates (NEA)
- Norwest Ventures
- Redpoint
- Sequoia Capital
- Spark Capital
- Trinity Ventures
- Union Square Ventures
This newsletter is provided for informational purposes only, and should not be relied upon as legal, business, investment, or tax advice. You should consult your own advisers as to those matters. This newsletter may link to other websites and certain information contained herein has been obtained from third-party sources. While taken from sources believed to be reliable, Software Eats Money has not independently verified such information and makes no representations about the enduring accuracy of the information or its appropriateness for a given situation.
References to any companies, securities, or digital assets are for illustrative purposes only and do not constitute an investment recommendation or offer to provide investment advisory services.
Charts and graphs provided within are for informational purposes solely and should not be relied upon when making any investment decision. Content in this newsletter speaks only as of the date indicated. Any projections, estimates, forecasts, targets, prospects and/or opinions expressed in these materials are subject to change without notice and may differ or be contrary to opinions expressed by others.