dmor

USV missed the cutoff by 2 months, they were in the Sift Science Series A in November 2012

As you suggest, another interesting post might be listing the truly inactive firms who have not made any investment at all in 6+ months

To be completely clear, I did not say in my post that founders should not work with these investors. I said it might be a waste of time to pitch them on a Series A, since it doesn't appear from publicly available data that they are doing those sorts of deals lately, and that founders should proceed accordingly.

I understand your frustration, startups used to cringe at mentions in the press but have come to understand that the world is interested in how they work, what they do, who they are and whether or not they create value. Investors have had remarkably less written about them and if they are not publicly sharing the fact they are helping founders get Series A deals done I hardly see why I shouldn't point it out, and create an incentive for greater transparency.

I will work to investigate more deeply and create a more useful data set.

I would be happy to make you another list that has 12 month cutoff, would that help? We were discussing last night whether health/biotech funds have a different cycle than web tech, would love to know your thoughts on that.

Thanks Renee, my email is in my profile and in the post and I'd love to get more updated in on OATV's recent Series A activity

I think that is another valuable thing to measure in terms of overall success and direction the fund is going, and I'd certainly like to. I was hoping this would help founders who are trying to raise Series A right now figure out where to focus first - but I agree taking a longer view would give a more complete picture. It just needs a bit more math and data, but I'm noodling on it.

It's not a shield, it's a sign. I'm working with limited public data trying to create something new and I'm working on improving it but it takes time - making this post alone was a labor of love and I realize this kind of analysis still has a long way to go. One of the best ways to get data to make these lists better has been to publish what is available and get feedback on what is wrong, where to look, who to ask etc.

When I make these posts suddenly people start returning my emails requesting data.

It also occurs to me that we have no problem judging and speculating about startups based on nothing more than a TechCrunch post with extremely limited public data. It's funny that it is so much less socially acceptable to do this with investors. Maybe I can change that.

I wouldn't be so sure. In addition to Ron's stats shown on the list, SV Angel also has not participated in a Series A since January 2013, but was on a regular 1-2 Series A deal a month pattern before that (in addition to tons of angel). http://www.crunchbase.com/financial-organization/sv-angel

With David Lee moving to LA and Ron Conway much more involved in politics, I'll be watching

Warburg Pincus participated in a $26M Series A in CrowdStrike in February 2012. Tiger Global participated in a $10M Series A in BelezanaWeb.com.br in May 2012 and a $8M Series A in Olacabs in April 2012.

Don't you think it is worthwhile for founders to know an investor used to do seed and follow on into the A round, but doesn't appear to be doing so anymore?

Author here. I have presented Crunchbase data as is without any "cleaning" but I assure you I have run a sanity check on the companies involved, and emails are pouring in from founders confirming they have experienced wasted time with investors on this list. I am happy to de-dupe those two items on the list and check for others, and will continue to fix any other errors people report.

All of this data is from Crunchbase, and the column D "Date of Most Recent Series A Investment" indicates they participated in the round though they might not have lead.

Sorry, my choice of "doesn't concern me" language probably came across badly.

Whether there is a series A crunch or not doesn't concern me (no negative tone intended, just want to clarify my intent), and I wasn't trying to validate that it exists with this data set. Raising a venture round is hard, and my hope it that this list helps entrepreneurs focus their efforts on active investors.

Here is the data you requested, starting January 1st (225 active series A investors): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0ApqWF3CqjgjSdFB...

It really pisses me off that they are publishing this - the news of Jody's death devastated a lot of people and I don't see what new information is being reported here.

The Guatemala story is hearsay. This makes me so angry.

This might sound unexpected or unattractive at first but stick with me. A non-entry level job that requires intelligence, high judgement, and a lot of hustle is as an EA of a high level executive or the office manager of a tech startup. You pretty much need to learn to do a little of everything and anything that comes up in either case, and you'll be paid well and report to someone senior who will trust you to make things happen and give your honest opinion while using discretion.

I know a lot of people who have used this role to propel them in a new direction, and in the startup case you can have a huge positive impact on the culture and operations of a young company.

Ah my bad, should have been clear it was the Q1 part about IPOs and M&A that I didn't see reported in tech pubs. Will clarify.

Thanks, I just signed up and I hope I'll be able to use your data to support future blog posts.

While I agree that a single quarter doesn't make a trend, according to this Crunchbase data there has been a steady decline over the past 10-12 months. I'll have to dig into CBinsights to see whether this is similar in your data set as well.

Even if AngelList data were added I don't think it would account for more than 25,000,000 in a month (about 1% of the investment logged in December) which is a comparably small amount. The bulk of the money comes from Series A, B, C and later stage deals from VCs and I think TechCrunch keeps those updated themselves.

Awesome, I will remove them from the list

I absolutely agree, and hopefully there is a lag in investment reporting, but I find the fact that the NVCA issued this report to Reuters and it was picked up by the finance press by no one in tech strange as this is certainly of public interest to the startup community. I've attempted to present the information objectively.

Fixed, thanks

Fixed, thank you

Thanks, I will check these out and really appreciate the interest in what I'm doing

I absolutely agree, I am working on this

When you bring up contracts, the small print matters. It's still not clear what the original terms were, and since I wasn't an Instacart Express users I didn't see the company's messaging, but I'd assume they're not out to screw people to the tune of $8. Unlike most people on this thread, I assume the best of startups until they do something truly evil.

I'm pretty sure that, like most sites, they have something in their TOS that says they reserve the right to change the terms of offering their service at their sole discretion. When you sign up for the service you are agreeing to the TOS even if you pay a fee, and this is quite standard.

It sounds like they tried to do the right thing and notify customers of the change, and people could have chosen to unsubscribe if they didn't like the new terms, but there was some kind of bug and they are fixing it.

I learned PR so I'd never have people with this attitude representing my products to the press. It is a great case for working with someone dedicated and in-house as soon as you can afford it, or making it a portion of your community manager or CEO's job description.

Thanks, that's a screenshot of Pinterest when you search marijuana and Love with Weed is a real site (and really are Referly's customer too!)

I just received confirmation from Naval Ravikant, AngelList CEO, with the following statement:

We didn't really announce this since a lot of it seems like behind-the-scenes inside baseball. It lets us know the legal boundaries of what's possible in the space and will inform our future products, but right now we're happy with the SecondMarket partnership - SM vets investors for sophistication, companies for background, and provides Broker-Dealer level protection and compliance.

The /Invest feature on AngelList is working well so far. We do curate the opportunities to those with a high-quality lead investor, and to date we've announced 7 fundings, 14 are closed or in closing, 18 are currently open for Accrediteds, adding about one per day. We've received over $6M in commitments in the last Quarter in 915 separate transactions. We have 12,000 Accrediteds on AngelList, and via our SecondMarket Partnership, can reach another 20,000.

Unlike others in the space, we don't think we can pick the winners - rather, it's a more open approach for any company with a high-quality lead investor. We also don't view it as a money-maker for AngelList - more of a community service. We also think it makes sense to augment it with our base service of introducing high-quality companies to sophisticated investors (VCs, Seed Funds, Professional Angels) - we currently drive 500-700 of those introductions per week, and drive about $10M / month there.

Astute observation and very true, I don't need consulting revenue and my investors would prefer I not get distracted - but I do need to test my next idea on people who are willing to pay. This little call to action is probably the first (explicit) public clue I've given to what we're doing next... although the obvious guesses are unlikely to be the right ones.

It's usually a good bet to assume I have an angle, especially anytime I reveal a bunch of data like this.