Were some companies acquired multiple times the same year, or is there a bug somewhere? (RazorFish is listed 3 times in 2002, DoubleClick and Skype twice in 2005, Getty Images twice in 2008, Sterling Commerce twice in 2009.)
It's crazy that there are so many huge companies that I've never heard of. Instagram's acquisition was huge news at $1B, but I didn't hear a peep about Ariba at $4.3B or Genzyme at $20B.
It's easy to think that consumer oriented web startups are what's hot, but this data proves otherwise.
I wonder if a lot of the "there's no innovation any more" talk is a result of the fact that things like biotech just doesn't get the same coverage as the web startups?
There's a lot of biotech/pharmacutecal companies in those lists. Something is happening in that industry, even if we don't hear much about it here and elsewhere.
> It's easy to think that consumer oriented web startups are what's hot, but this data proves otherwise.
I think what it proves: Crunchbase serves the PR segment of consumer oriented web companies, and fails to serve other segments well. Let's face it, it's not so much a database as it is part of the techcrunch PR machine.
One thing to consider is how long each of these companies hd been in existence before getting acquired. One thing with consumer web is that the time between conception and exit is comparatively short compared to other industries.
Hey Miguel! I am currently writing a thesis on venture capital and I have similar data from a database called VentureXpert. I will share it with you via twitter once I finish in a couple of weeks. I am curious to see how different our data looks. Thanks for posting.
Crunchbase is pretty incomplete before 2004 it seems.
Several of the comm companies I checked were missing.
Edit: Upon further testing, it seems that many of the communications wipeouts ($40+M) from that era are missing. It's almost as if the people who funded them don't want the magnitude of the mistakes in the record.
Here's an example: Photonex, raised $170M [1] over the course of their lifetime and not a trace on crunchbase of who the culprits were.
Another quick example: Solinet [2] raised a pile of dough (they later renamed themselves Ceyba).
(I run SeedTable which also does analytics on Crunchbase data)
The problem with ranking by funding/acquisition amounts is the data is pretty dirty, and outliers are disproportionately likely to be incorrect data (because someone fat fingered a number to be an order of magnitude larger, or put a foreign currency amount in as USD). Although the acq data is better than the funding data.
You might also want to extract stuff like biotech from the data because it's fundamentally a completely separate market from software tech.
For funding categories by year, I really think it would be nicer/more-useful if we could look at a time-series line graph by sector over a longer time period (5+ years) to see trends.
cool stuff. how are you grouping data startups within the funding categories section?
i'd be interested to see the breakdown in recent years of startups that offer a data product, i.e. data infrastructure, ad optimization, user tracking, etc
T-Mobile is listed as the top acquisition of 2011, but that deal was blocked by the DoJ and later dropped by AT&T. In other words, the charts are based on announcements, not necessarily consummated transactions.
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[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 94.2 ms ] threadIt's easy to think that consumer oriented web startups are what's hot, but this data proves otherwise.
There's a lot of biotech/pharmacutecal companies in those lists. Something is happening in that industry, even if we don't hear much about it here and elsewhere.
I think what it proves: Crunchbase serves the PR segment of consumer oriented web companies, and fails to serve other segments well. Let's face it, it's not so much a database as it is part of the techcrunch PR machine.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/pzhqhtk4g23temz/crunchbase.sql.zip
Thanks!
Twitter: @wguaraca
Several of the comm companies I checked were missing.
Edit: Upon further testing, it seems that many of the communications wipeouts ($40+M) from that era are missing. It's almost as if the people who funded them don't want the magnitude of the mistakes in the record.
Here's an example: Photonex, raised $170M [1] over the course of their lifetime and not a trace on crunchbase of who the culprits were.
Another quick example: Solinet [2] raised a pile of dough (they later renamed themselves Ceyba).
[1] http://www.lightreading.com/ip-convergence/photonex-scores-h...
[2] http://www.lightreading.com/ip-convergence/solinet-systems-s...
The problem with ranking by funding/acquisition amounts is the data is pretty dirty, and outliers are disproportionately likely to be incorrect data (because someone fat fingered a number to be an order of magnitude larger, or put a foreign currency amount in as USD). Although the acq data is better than the funding data.
You might also want to extract stuff like biotech from the data because it's fundamentally a completely separate market from software tech.
Will be interesting to see what happens during 2013 but it seems that there's not as much money as on 2010/2011
It's much harder for TC to misenter an acquisition/funding round then it is for them accidentally add an extra zero to a number.
i'd be interested to see the breakdown in recent years of startups that offer a data product, i.e. data infrastructure, ad optimization, user tracking, etc
Example: http://www.crunchbase.com/company/rent-com
If you want, you can download the database and check the companies table https://www.dropbox.com/s/pzhqhtk4g23temz/crunchbase.sql.zip
Acquisitions http://db.tt/h6PoPnCn
Companies http://db.tt/UNYulmJD
Funding http://db.tt/SHa45HHc
Words http://db.tt/mJMCIREX