THE BEST REPORTS OF 2014

The Best Research

Reports of Q1 2015

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Table of Contents

Research Brief Page

Disrupting FedEx: The Startups Unbundling FedEx, UPS and the

Logistics Industry

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The Periodic Table of Venture Capital Blogs 6

The 10 Y Combinator Startups Worth Over $32 Billion 12

The 106 Most Active Seed Venture Capital Firms 15

Unbundling Craigslist – $8.87 Billion Raised to Date by Startups 20

Disrupting Banking: The FinTech Startups That Are Unbundling

Wells Fargo, Citi and Bank of America

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Top 5 European Countries for Tech Venture Capital

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The Food Tech Startup Boom in Graphs

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Disrupting FedEx: The Startups

Unbundling FedEx, UPS and the

Logistics Industry

From Shyp to Haven to Uber, companies like FedEx and UPS are being

unbundled by an army of startups. (3/13/2015)

Are shipping & logistics titans like FedEx and UPS being unbundled by

startups? Drawing inspiration from Andrew Parker & David Haber’s

Disaggregation of Craigslist (both of Spark Capital), as well as the

Disaggregation of a Bank by Tom Loverro (RRE) and Alexander Pease (Union

Square Ventures), we looked at today’s US startups targeting shipping and

logistics companies to visualize the Unbundling of FedEx.

The graphic below includes startups like Shyp, which simplifies the process of

shipping packages using a mobile platform and a fleet of “Shyp Heroes”, to

freight rate comparison products like Pivot Freight, to on demand

delivery/courier options such as Postmates and Uber.

(click to enlarge)

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With the clear rise of US-based companies targeting various verticals within

shipping and logistics, we used CB Insights data to analyze the investment

activity around the space as well. We found that deals reached a three year

high in 2014 and were up 65% year-over-year. Through the first 2 months of

2015, there have already been 6 deals to FedEx “unbundlers” so the space is

heating up.

How real is the risk to UPS’ and FedEx’s business model from these emerging

companies? Could FedEx and UPS lose their market dominance because of

these “unbundlers”, i.e., death by a thousand cuts? Let us know your

thoughts.

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The Periodic Table of Venture

Capital Blogs

The 89 active bloggers in the venture capital, angel and accelerator

community. (2/10/2015)

When Fred Wilson started blogging every day and gaining notoriety, a

number of other VCs began blogging. But over time, many of those VC blogs

became zombies. But today, there is a bit of a renaissance for VC blogging.

And since our team follows these closely, we wanted to share some of the

best ones with you.

Today, we’re introducing The Periodic Table of Venture Capital Blogs – a

resource for entrepreneurs, investors and those in the larger innovation

economy – which highlights 89 active venture capital bloggers (defined as

blogging at least a couple times in the past year) in the venture capital, angel

and accelerator community. The table is a bit different than our previous

periodic tables, which primarily focus on active investors and key companies

by vertical.

(click to enlarge)

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We expect that this list of 89 will change over time as new investors become

active in the VC blogosphere and others become zombies so we’ll continue to

update.

Navigating the Periodic Table of Venture Capital Blogs

The table focuses on investors with personal blogs broken down as follows:

The left side of the Periodic Table of Venture Capital Blogs includes

names of investor-bloggers who belong to mid-size or large-cap

venture capital firms ranging from Andreessen Horowitz to Foundry

Group to Union Square Ventures. A handful of investor-bloggers at

corporate VC firms are also highlighted.

On the right of that are investor-bloggers at micro VC firm (<$100M

funds). These range from Homebrew to NextView Ventures to SV

Angel.

The far right covers angel investor-bloggers as well as those belonging

to or running accelerator programs such as Y Combinator and

Techstars.

Below we’ve detailed the full list of bloggers, their blog coverage and links:

List of Venture Capital Bloggers

Investor Firm Blog URL

Fred Wilson Union Square Ventures avc.com

Bill Gurley Benchmark abovethecrowd.com

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Chris Dixon Andreessen Horowitz cdixon.org

Mark Suster Upfront Ventures bothsidesofthetable.com

Brad Feld Foundry Group feld.com

Ben Horowitz Andreessen Horowitz bhorowitz.com

Benedict Evans Andreessen Horowitz ben-evans.com

Albert Wenger Union Square Ventures continuations.com

Jeff Jordan Andreessen Horowitz jeff.a16z.com

Seth Levine Foundry Group sethlevine.com

David Skok Matrix Partners forentreprenuers.com

Tomasz Tunguz Redpoint Ventures tomtunguz.com

Fred Destin Accel Partners freddestin.com

Josh Hannah Matrix Partners joshhannah.com

Om Malik True Ventures om.co

Marc Andreessen Andreessen Horowitz blog.pmarca.com

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Greg Bettinelli Upfront Ventures gregbettinelli.com

Bubba Murarka Draper Fisher Jurvetson bubba.vc

David Cowan Bessemer Venture Partners whohastimeforthis.blogspot.com

Andy Weissman Union Square Ventures blog.aweissman.com

Phin Barnes First Round Capital sneakerhead.vc

Josh Breinlinger Sigma West acrowdedspace.com

Bruce Booth Atlas Venture lifescivc.com

Andrew Parker Spark Capital thegongshow.tumblr.com

Nabeel Hyatt Spark Capital nabeelhyatt.com

Matt McCall Pritzer Group VC vcconfidential.com

Bruce Cleveland InterWest Parters interwest.com/rolling-thunder

Matt Turck FirstMark Capital mattturck.com

Glenn Solomon GGV Capital goinglongblog.com

David Hornik August Capital ventureblog.com

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Steve Schlafman RRE Ventures schlaf.me

Jamie Davidson Redpoint Ventures correlatedcausation.com

Bilal Zuberi Lux Capital bilalzuberi.com

Josh Kopelman First Round Capital redeye.firstround.com

Chris Fralic First Round Capital nothingtosay.com

Jeff Bussgang Flybridge Capital Partners bostonvcblog.typepad.com

Larry Cheng Volition Capital larrycheng.com

Roger Ehrenberg IA Ventures informationarbitrage.com

Ian Sigalow Greycroft Partners sigalow.com

Jon Sakoda New Enterprise Associates jonsakoda.com

Cem Sertoglu Earlybird Venture Capital csertoglu.typepad.com

Mike Abbott Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers uncapitalized.com

Amish Jani FirstMark Capital ajnyc.wordpress.com

Rob Day Black Coral Capital cleantechvc.com

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MG Siegler Google Ventures parislemon.com

Christina Herron Intel Capital christine.net

Jason Ball Qualcomm Ventures jasonball.com

Hunter Walk Homebrew hunterwalk.com

Jason Lemkin Storm Ventures saastr.com

Renee DiResta O’Reilly AlphaTech blog.noupsi.de

Leo Polovets Susa Ventures codingvc.com

David Lee SV Angel daslee.me

David Beisel NextView Ventures genuinevc.com

Lee Hower NextView Ventures agilevc.com

Adam Besvinick Deep Fork Capital ventureminded.me

Bryce Roberts O’Reilly AlphaTech bryce.vc

Gerry Neumann Neu Venture Capital reactionwheel.net

Lenny Pruss RRE Ventures lennypruss.co

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Jay Deng Nouveau Capital jaydengvc.tumblr.com

Christoph Janz Point Nine Capital christophjanz.blogspot.com

Nic Brisbourne Forward Partners theequitykicker.com

Charlie O’Donnell Brooklyn Bridge Ventures thisisgoingtobebig.com

Satya Patel Homebrew Capital venturegeneratedcontent.com

Ezra Galston Chicago Ventures breakingvc.com

Mike Brown Jr. Bowery Capital mikebrownjr.com

Michael Arrington CrunchFund uncrunched.com

Jeff Carter Hype Park Angels pointsandfigures.com

Paul Kedrosky SK Ventures paul.kedrosky.com

Semil Shah Haystack Fund blog.semilshah.com

Jalak Jobanputra FuturePerfect Ventures thebarefootvc.com

Jason Heltzer Origin Ventures ventureevolved.com

Rob Go NextView Ventures robgo.org

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Kanyi Maqubela Collaborative Fund blog.kanyi.me

Guy Turner Hyde Park VP vcwithme.co

Zach Shulman Cayuga Venture Fund ithacavc.com

Boris Wertz Version One Ventures versionone.vc

Jason Calacanis - calacanis.com

Joanne Wilson - gothamgal.com

Naval Ravikant AngelList startupboy.com

Elad Gil - blog.eladgil.com

Fabrice Grinda - fabricegrinda.com

Dharmesh Shah - onstartups.com

Andrew Chen - andrewchen.co

Mark Cuban - blogmaverick.com

Martin Varsavsky - english.martinvarsavsky.net

Paul Graham Y Combinator paulgraham.com

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David Cohen Techstars davidgcohen.com

Sam Altman Y Combinator blog.samaltman.com

Christine Tsai 500 Startups christinetsai.co

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The 10 Y Combinator Startups

Worth Over $32 Billion

Sequoia Capital has invested in all of Y Combinator's billion-dollar

startups and eight of YC's 10 most highly valued alumni. (1/5/2015)

Instacart’s $210 million Series C round capped off an impressive 2014 for Y

Combinator backed companies. How impressive? With huge valuation step-

ups by alums including Zenefits, Docker and Mixpanel, and exits by the likes

of Twitch Interactive to Amazon, Y Combinator’s top 10 grads have accrued

$32 billion in aggregate value to date, according to CB Insights data. This

includes both financing valuations for still private companies and exits where

the company’s valuation, real or rumored, was disclosed.

Together, these 10 companies raised over $1.5 billion in financing in 2014.

The three largest financings by the 10 YC alums went to Airbnb’s $475 million

Series D round close, Dropbox $350M Series C round and Instacart’s

aforementioned funding. Stripe’s 2014 funding rounds, which totaled $150M

also were a major contributor to YC’s killer 2014.

Many of these companies are on the 2015 Tech IPO Pipeline. Notably,

Sequoia Capital is a pre-Series B investor in all of the currently private billion-

dollar Y Combinator alumni as well as mobile analytics firm Mixpanel, which

recently notched a $865M valuation. Even more impressive, Sequoia is an

investor in 8 of the 10 companies below, highlighting Sequoia’s ability to get

in to tech’s most valuable companies.

It’s worth mentioning that although Quora has a reported valuation of $900M

and participated in YC in 2014, it was not included given its prior financing

history to YC. See the list of companies by disclosed valuation, batch and VC

investors below.

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Top 10 Y Combinator Startup Alumni By Disclosed Financing or Exit Valuation

Rank Company Valuation

($MM)

Batch Early VC Investors

1 Airbnb 13,000 W09 Sequoia Capital, Y Ventures, Greylock Partners

2 Dropbox 10,000 S07 Sequoia Capital, Accel Partners

3 Stripe 3500 S10 Sequoia Capital, SV Angel, Andreessen Horowitz, Lowercase Capital,

General Catalyst Partners

4 Instacart 2000 S12 Sequoia Capital, Khosla Ventures, Canaan Partners

5 Twitch

Interactive (exited)

970 S07 Felicis Ventures, Alsop-Louie Partners, Draper Associates

6 Mixpanel 865 S09 Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz

7 Zenefits 500 W13 Andreessen Horowitz, Venrock, Maverick Capital

8 reddit 500 S05 Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz

9 Weebly 455 W07 Baseline Ventures, Felicis Ventures, Floodgate, Sequoia Capital

10 Docker 400 S10 Trinity Ventures, SV Angel, Lowercase Capital, Benchmark

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The 106 Most Active Seed

Venture Capital Firms

The number of active seed venture capital investors jumped to a new

high in 2014, rising 23% from 2013's total. See who they were.

(1/10/2015)

While huge valuations and funding rounds dominated the headlines in 2014,

it turned out to be another huge year for seed-stage venture investing.

According to CB Insights data, the number of active seed venture capital

investors jumped to a new high – up 23% from 2013′s total.

The rise of micro VC funds has helped contribute to this trend, but it’s not

just the small guys getting busy. Khosla Ventures, which ties for 9th based on

seed activity this year, is looking to raise a whopping $400M seed fund

according to filings.

The number of active seed venture investors has grown over time as

illustrated below hitting 138 investors in 2014. An active seed venture capital

firm is defined as one making four unique seed investments in the year. To

ensure consistency with last year’s report, corporate VCs including highly

active seed investor Google Ventures were excluded for the purposes of this

analysis.

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2014′s most active seed VC investors were led once again by 500 Startups,

followed by SV Angel, Andreessen Horowitz, Foundry Group and Lerer-

Hippeau Ventures. Among the firms that fell within or out of the top 10 from

2013 was First Round Capital which dropped from 5th to 9th place and

CrunchFund which fell from 6 to 15th based on unique company seed deals.

New entrants to the top 25 most active seed funders included Metamorphic

Ventures, Foundry Group and Lowercase Capital.

106 Active U.S. Seed Investors

1 to 26 27 to 52 53 to 78 79-106

500 Startups Social Starts Kleiner Perkins Caufield &

Byers

Green Visor Capital

SV Angel Sherpa Ventures Lightbank Innovation Endeavors

Andreessen Horowitz Mucker Capital Morado Venture Partners A-Grade

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Foundry Group Collaborative Fund NewSchools Venture Fund KEC Ventures

Lerer Hippeau Ventures Greylock Partners Floodgate SK Ventures

BoxGroup Rothenberg Ventures Innovation Works MESA+

New Enterprise

Associates

Vayner RSE Greycroft Partners Lighter Capital

Data Collective BOLDstart Ventures Founder Collective Long Island Emerging Technologies

Fund

Khosla Ventures Connecticut Innovations Cowboy Ventures Scout Ventures

First Round Capital CIT GAP Funds Hyde Park Venture Partners Neu Venture Capital

VegasTech Fund Accel Partners Formation 8 Softbank Capital

RRE Ventures ff Venture Capital Amicus Capital Quotidian Ventures

Kapor Capital XG Ventures Deep Fork Capital Tallwave Capital

ENIAC Ventures NextView Ventures Kickstart Seed Fund Red Sea Ventures

CrunchFund Crosslink Capital Social Leverage Vaizra Investments

Metamorphic Ventures FirstMark Capital True Ventures Resolute.vc

Atlas Venture Draper Associates Promus Ventures Silverton Partners

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Great Oaks Venture

Capital

Cultivation Capital Maveron CRV

SparkLabs Global Ventures Freestyle Capital TEEC Angel Fund Foundation Capital

Kima Ventures Upfront Ventures Lux Capital K9 Ventures

Lowercase Capital Homebrew Tekton Ventures Dorm Room Fund

General Catalyst Partners Fuel Capital Redpoint Ventures Founders Fund

Felicis Ventures Drummond Road Capital Index Ventures Contour Venture Partners

SoftTech VC Menlo Ventures Galvanize Cue Ball Capital

LaunchCapital Mercury Fund Azure Capital Partners Correlation Ventures

Structure Capital QueensBridge Venture

Partners

Chicago Ventures CincyTech

Forerunner Ventures

Expansion VC

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Unbundling Craigslist – $8.87

Billion Raised to Date by Startups

In 2012, Spark Capital took a look at the marketplace startups carving

out niches from CraigsList. Today, those startups have raised $8.87B in

funding and four have gone public. (1/30/2015)

Five years ago, Andrew Parker of Spark Capital published a now well-known

post highlighting the different startups attacking different parts or services of

Craigslist entitled the Spawn of Craigslist. Then in December 2012, former

Spark analyst David Haber updated the chart further expanding the list of

companies to more than 80.

So we wanted to revisit that chart with some good ol’ data.

Flash forward to 2015 and the verticalization of web marketplaces has

accelerated substantially. Funding activity to Haber’s original list of

companies has skyrocketed. Collectively, the 82 companies on Haber’s list

have raised $8.87B in funding and have notched 13 exits to date as well as

the merger of Elance and ODesk. Four of the companies have gone public

including Lending Club, Care.com, Chegg and Castlight Health for aggregate

exit value of $8.4B.

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Below is Haber’s version of the chart:

(click to enlarge)

Interestingly, deal activity to the companies is trending down since 2012 –

falling 66% YoY between 2012 and 2013. One reason that may partially

explain the deals drop is the growth in smartphone usage. Uber and Lyft

were two of the early mobile-first startups in the category but today a whole

ecosystem of companies (not listed in Haber’s chart) provide mobile on-

demand services from home cleaning to grocery delivery to dry cleaning

(See: The ‘Uber for X’ Investment Report). In other words, the next set of

Craiglist attackers are not doing it on the desktop first necessarily.

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The chart below highlights the funding trend to Haber’s original list of

marketplace businesses attacking Craigslist.

Of course, several of the companies on Haber’s list have gone on to raise

significantly more than others. Most notably of course is Uber, which has

gone on to raise multiple $1.2B rounds and $1.6B in convertible debt from

Goldman Sachs. Others who have gone on to raise over $100M include Rent

the Runway, Lyft, Quora and 1stdibs.

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Among investors, SV Angel has invested in the highest number of the

companies (14) on the Craigslist unbundlers, followed by Union Square

Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Founder Collective, which all

tie for second. Perhaps not surprisingly, Spark Capital, where Parker works

and Haber used to work, also has invested in a significant amount of the

companies (9) including Stack Exchange, eToro and Work Market, all three of

which raised big follow-on funding rounds in the last two months. Investors

in 7 or more of the companies are below.

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Marketplace Investors

VC Investor Number of Companies

SV Angel 14

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers 11

Union Square Ventures 11

Founder Collective 11

Andreessen Horowitz 10

Spark Capital 9

First Round Capital 9

Benchmark Capital 7

Index Ventures 7

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Disrupting Banking: The FinTech

Startups That Are Unbundling

Wells Fargo, Citi and Bank of

America

Traditional banks are under attack from a number of emerging

specialist startups. Here are the FinTech startups unbundling banking.

(3/22/2015)

In November, Tom Loverro of RRE Ventures wrote that “banks are under

attack” and showed a few of the major players leading this trend. Inspired by

his post and Alexander Pease’s, we wanted to dig in and see how banks are

being unbundled by startups. The graphic below details companies attacking

bank services ranging from robo-advisers wealth management services like

Wealthfront and Betterment to small business loan companies like OnDeck

Capital and Kabbage to small business service providers like Zenefits and

ZenPayroll, and many other areas.

As we detailed in our analysis of the startups disrupting FedEx, these

emerging companies attacking Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Citi and

banking more generally are not attacking them head on across multiple

products. Instead, they’re attacking individual services & products (hence the

term “unbundling”). Said another way, are banks going to be out-innovated

and lose their edge not because of their incumbent, large competitors, but

because emerging startups inflict upon them a death by a thousand cuts?

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(click to enlarge)

While many international players are also unbundling banks, this infographic

focuses on US-based companies. We’ll separately analyze the international

players going after banks.

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Top 5 European Countries for

Tech Venture Capital

The UK and Germany dominated EU Tech deal activity in 2014, each

seeing over 150 investments. Here's how the top 5 fared. (3/17/2015)

The European Tech venture capital landscape continued to be dominated by

its main hubs in 2014 as the UK and Germany were the only European

countries to top 100 deals and $1B in funding during the year.

There were 225 investments made into VC-backed Tech companies in the UK

in 2014, up 80% versus 2011. Germany, anchored by a booming tech

community in Berlin which sports hot startups like Soundcloud and Delivery

Hero also has grown drastically in recent years. There were 154 total deals in

Germany in 2014, up from just 85 in 2011, an 82% increase.

France saw the third highest number of deals in 2014 with the most notable

financing going to BlaBlaCar’s $100M Series C which featured Accel Partners

and Index Ventures, among others.

Russia was fourth, as deals fell slightly YoY despite Ozon.ru’s $150M

financing, while Spain was fifth as GovTech startup SCYTL raised over $100M

total across multiple deals in 2014.

The full deal trends since 2011 below.

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(click to enlarge)

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The Food Tech Startup Boom in

Graphs

Food Tech got hot in 2014 with startups in the space raising over $1B.

We looked at the financing trends, top investors, and press buzz

around Food Tech companies. (3/7/2015)

US VC-backed Food Tech companies raised $1.07B in 2014 up 272% YoY.

Food Tech covers companies across a range of food-related industries,

including food delivery (cos like Instacart or Postmates), food replacements

(Hampton Creek Foods, Soylent), and restaurant tech companies (E La Carte,

Reserve), among others. Q4’14 was the largest quarter in the past two years

driven by Instacart’s $220M Series C, as well as Hampton Creek Foods’ $90M

Series C.

The most active VC in US Food Tech companies in the past two years has

been Khosla Ventures. Khosla has invested in food and grocery Unicorn

Instacart, as well as food brands Hampton Creek Foods and Unreal Brands,

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among others. First Round Capital and 500 Startups both tied for second.

First Round counts investments in subscription cooking experience startup

Blue Apron as well as Reserve while 500 Startups concentrated the bulk of

their investments in the food & grocery space, including Platejoy, Chewse,

and LoveWithFood. The full rankings below.

Most Active VCs in US Food Tech Companies – 2013 – 2014

Rank Investor Rank Investor

1 Khosla Ventures 9 SV Angel

2 First Round Capital 9 Sequoia Capital

2 500 Startups 9 Google Ventures

4 Emil Capital Partners 9 Collaborative Fund

5 BoxGroup 9 Spark Capital

5 Lerer Hippeau Ventures 9 Andreessen Horowitz

5 Index Ventures 9 General Catalyst Partners

5 Great Oaks Venture Capital 9 Bessemer Venture Partners

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To track the media buzz around Food Tech startups, we looked at CB Insights

data around press mentions for all US-based VC-backed Food Tech

companies. As the chart below shows, press mentions peaked around April

2014, the month in which multiple startups including Caviar, Munchery, and

NatureBox all raised funding. This peak of press mentions also correlates

with deal activity, as Q2’14 saw the highest # of Food Tech deals in 2014 and

the second largest funding total in the past two years.