Since launching the CrunchBase Venture Program at TechCrunch Disrupt NYC last week, we’ve added more than 100 venture firms, angel groups, and incubators to the program including Google Ventures. Together our partners have taken part in over 3,900 funding rounds, funded 2,700 companies, and helped guide investment of over $35B. Beyond the numbers, each firm we’ve spoken to has given us incredible feedback about the platform and offered their support in building out an open, timely, and accurate dataset.
Author Archives: Matt Kaufman
Announcing the CrunchBase Venture Program
Editors note: This is a repost of an article we did for TechCrunch article.
We knew CrunchBase was big. We knew because there are 2 million people using the startup database each month. We knew because more than 120k people have contributed 1.6MM data points on companies, entrepreneurs, fundings, exits and more. What we didn’t know, however, was what the investment community thinks about CrunchBase. To answer that question, we spent many weeks visiting venture and angel firms and talking about data and CrunchBase. We learned that most are investing a lot in data and analytics in order to find good companies, ideas, and people. Everyone agreed that CrunchBase is an important source of that information, but we also heard something else: CrunchBase needs to evolve fast to keep pace with these new demands. In particular, Crunchbase needs to be more timely, accurate, and detailed.
NYC Angels Grab Market Share
Editor’s note: This is a repost of an article we did for TechCrunch.
Looking forward to this week’s Disrupt NY 2013, we used the CrunchBase dataset to surface regional trends in US angel funding. Not surprisingly, we found relatively few metros with a substantial number of angel funded companies and the San Francisco Bay Area continues to be a formidable presence. But take a look at NYC (in red) – they’ve gone from 12% of the angel deals in 2008 to 20% in 2013. In fact, NYC appears to the only region with growing market share.
CrunchBase Meets Excel, Discover Your Own Insights
CrunchBase is committed to providing the startup community an open, up-to-date, and accurate database of companies, venture fundings, and entrepreneurs. In the spirit of this commitment, we’ve decided to publish the raw data behind articles like NYC Angels Grab Market Share and Mining the Series A Crunch. Of course the data has always been available through the CrunchBase API, but not everyone is up for REST APIs. So today we’re going to try something different – an Excel Spreadsheet which contains a significant portion of our dataset.
By releasing CrunchBase data in a simple, easy to consume format, we hope that the community will produce and share valuable insights on technology startups. In fact, if you share those insights with us we’ll do our best to publish them for everyone to see. Please let us know what you discover.
Mining the Series A Crunch
Editor’s note: This is a repost of an article we did for TechCrunch.
Back in November, rumblings of a Series A Crunch took hold and speculation began about the number of seed funded companies destined to close. Fast forward a few months and we are now seeing lists of companies that may be imminent victims of the crunch. While these are purely speculative, the information can prove valuable for corporate development teams, recruiters, and those in search of interesting IP. One list announced last week has gone on sale for nearly $5,000!
Onavo Ranks the VCs of Mobile
Our friends at Onavo recently combined data from their mobile insights platform with the CrunchBase API to rank the VCs of mobile. Using application market share as a proxy for success, Onavo identified Union Square Ventures as the most successful Series A investor with Sequoia Capital, Accel Partners, Felicis Ventures and Bessemer Venture Partners rounding out the top five. Visit the Onavo Insights Blog to read the full analysis.
Continue reading
Introducing the Research Spotlight Program
Today we are introducing the CrunchBase Research Spotlight Program, the companion to the Developer Spotlight Program. This is our way of featuring great research that’s been done using CrunchBase data.
Researchers, academics, and whomever else has a love for CrunchBase data can take part in the Spotlight Program. If we choose your research, we’ll write about your work on the CrunchBase blog and share it through our regular newsletters. Of course we’ll also let our friends at TechCrunch know about your work. Continue reading
Introducing the Developer Spotlight Program
Today we are introducing the CrunchBase Developer Spotlight Program, our way of highlighting great applications built with the CrunchBase API. The CrunchBase API was launched in July 2008 and is now used by over one thousand developers to power investment analysis, academic studies, market research, recruiting and more.
Developers who take part in the Spotlight Program will have their application featured on the CrunchBase blog, linked from the CrunchBase homepage, and shared through our regular email newsletters. We’ll also share great uses of the API with the writers at TechCrunch. To be a part of the CrunchBase Developer Spotlight program, please ensure that your application meets the following basic guidelines:
- Your application is publicly accessible
- Your application attributes CrunchBase according to the CrunchBase API TOS
- Your application directs users to CrunchBase to update missing or out-dated information
To submit your application, send us an email at send us an email. We look forward to hearing from you! You can follow us on Twitter, Facebook, or right here.
Looking for a great Designer!
CrunchBase is used by millions of consumers, analysts, and investors every month to track what’s happening in the fast-paced world of tech startups, and right now we have the unique opportunity to completely re-imagine the CrunchBase user experience. We know that an exceptional UX is critical to our success. We’re looking for the passionate User Experience Designer who can reflect our technical transformation in a compelling, engaging, innovative, and enjoyable UX. Sound exciting? It does to us.
Welcome to the CrunchBase blog!
About six years ago, the TechCrunch team launched CrunchBase to make information about technology startups available to everyone. Since then, a community of over 90k contributors has profiled 105k companies and 140k people. With the help of this community, CrunchBase is now a tremendously valuable resource for entrepreneurs, investors, journalists, recruiters, job seekers, and everyone in-between. We host over 1.5MM monthly visitors, and this audience continues to grow.
Today, we are launching (or, as long-time fans may point out, re-launching), the CrunchBase Blog to highlight both interesting discoveries pulled from the data and developers who are building great things using the CrunchBase API. We also want to use this blog as a place to talk about our ideas for making CrunchBase an even more valuable resource for the technology community.
Please stay tuned for more in the coming weeks. You can follow us on Twitter, Facebook, or right here.
-The CrunchBase team
