TheStartup100

TheStartup100 is now tracking growth signals for a list of 61 US on-demand services startups. One of the best publicly available growth signals for these mobile-centric companies is app reviews, which serve as a good proxy for app installs - not perfect, but good. Here are the top 12

Data is based on funding rounds >$500K for US venture-backed companies. Source data is available on TheStartup100 [http://www.thestartup100.com/]. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SaaS had the most funding rounds in January. Website Services, a SaaS-like segment targeted at websites and mobile apps, moved ahead of software with 21 fundings.

The data below is limited to US-based companies and equity investments by the top 500 venture capital firms (as measured by number of investments). All source data in the charts below is available on TheStartup100 [http://www.thestartup100.com].</font size="3"> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- There were 46

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- TheStartup100 [http://www.thestartup100.com/] Investor Heat Map summarizes the investments of the top 500 VCs in one interactive chart. This view shows the number of investments by segment for the top 25 VCs1 in 2014. For example, Sequoia Capital made 14 Mobile investments in 2014. 2014 Investor Heat Map

The data below is for US-based companies with over $500K in funding, and is limited to investments by the top 500 venture capital firms (as measured by number of investments). All source data in the charts below is available on TheStartup100 [http://www.thestartup100.com].</font size="

The data below is for US-based companies with over $500K in funding, and is limited to investments by the top 500 venture capital firms (as measured by number of investments). SaaS is defined as software accessed via the internet with a subscription pricing model, regardless of the device used

Attended a very quote-worthy talk by A16Z partners Ben Horowitz and Lars Dalgaard at GLIDE [http://www.glide.org/]. Here are my favorites (paraphrasing some since I didn't take notes). For those that don't know Lars Dalgaard, he is an uber passionate guy who founded

Great interview with Ben Horowitz by the Economist where he shares the A16Z investment themes and one area they're avoiding. See my summary below. See the full eight minute interview here [http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2014/06/babbage-june-18th-2014#]. A16Z's investing themes

Some quick thoughts on Uber's valuation and bubbles... Some writers are crying "bubble" again, mostly because they don't understand Uber, "bubbles," or why venture and tech investors invest at seemingly crazy valuations. Or maybe it's just sour grapes. To be

Disclosure: I wasn't in the room when Travis Kalanick negotiated Uber's $17B pre-money valuation, so this is all just educated speculation. Having said that, I've been in the room before as a Corporate Development Manager with CFOs and CEOs negotiating multi-billion dollar

Uber is rumoured to be working on its next round of financing at a $17 billion valuation. 60x forward revenues (Uber's run rate is reportedly $300MM in net revenue) is reasonable for a hypergrowth technology company with a multi-billion dollar global market, right? The problem is that

News of note for the most important startups and trends. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Note: the number next to each company is the rank of the company on TheStartup100 [http://www.thestartup100.com] 4. Square * Announced shutdown of Square Wallet (Chart per CB Insights) * CTO Bob Lee is leaving the company. He was the

The Eagles [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eagles_(band)] are, sort of surprisingly, the highest-selling American band in US history. I finally got around to watching "The History of the Eagles" [http://www.sho.com/sho/reality-docs/titles/3378379/history-of-the-eagles] this weekend and

Last May some of Automattic's early shareholders sold some shares to Tiger Global at a valuation of about $1B according to Fortune [http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2013/05/24/automattic-nears-tumblr-valuation/]: > The San Francisco-based company declined to discuss valuation, but a source familiar

Secret has shown it's value as a source of breaking tech news over the past couple weeks: First with the Nike FuelBand news: And then with the departure of Google+ chief Vic Gundotra: I've been trying the app out this week. It's a beautiful

> fa•mous found•er: a widely known startup founder When I started this post I thought I could do a roundup in a couple hours. It turns out that there are so many interesting companies with famous founders that I'm going to need a series. The series

A daily digest of career opportunities at the best new and emerging companies. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Pinterest announced some big metrics: * 30 billion pins * 750 million boards * 100,000 retailers with boards Pinterest is #8 on TheStartup100 [http://www.thestartup100.com] with a valuation of $3.8B and has raised about $600MM. I’

A daily digest of career opportunities at the best new and emerging companies. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Wish raised $19 million for its mobile personalized shopping app, and announced it has 25 million users across 50 countries. The Wish app is targeted at value shoppers (i.e., just about everybody) and is expanding internationally.

A couple years ago I read this quote in a blog post [https://blog.wealthfront.com/hot-mid-size-silicon-valley-companies/] by Andy Rachleff (former Benchmark Capital partner and Wealthfront [http://www.wealthfront.com] founder): All our advice on Silicon Valley careers is based on a simple idea: that

We're now tracking 43 startups with a valuation of $1 billion or more at TheStartup100 [http://www.thestartup100.com]. Andreessen Horowitz is the leader in the number of investments in billion dollar startups (investments in private startups currently valued at $1B+), which is pretty remarkable for a firm

With today's announcement [http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303847804579481870807094740?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702303847804579481870807094740.html] of Airbnb's $10B valuation, San Francisco startups now account for about 1/2 of the total value of the billion dollar startups.

There are 14 startups in San Francisco with a valuation of $1 billion or more led by Dropbox with a $10 billion valuation. [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/oimg?key=0Av5gzni8Q3LXdEdTdWd6dmZwaEpmYUJZbEN2Tl80X2c&oid=2&zx=otod6t9hdc1y] A few thoughts: * The list is dominated by several "on-their-way-