There has a lot of chatter recently about the number of juiced and jumbo Series A rounds. Inspired by these discussions and armed with some publicly available data from our friends at CrunchBase, I broke down the 10 largest Series A rounds of all time in the US. I have included some additional information as well, such as year of funding, industry, original Series A investors, and current status of the company, to further the analysis. In order to maintain a focus on conventional tech startups, pharmaceutical and biotech companies were removed from the data. It also seemed prudent to remove Elon Musk’s SpaceX venture, as it’s difficult to categorize capital intensive space travel in the same bucket as other early stage ventures.
Quick Findings:
- 3 of these 10 rounds took place in 2007.
- There is no specific industry bias.
- No VC firm was involved in more than one of these rounds.
- The most recently-funded company was acquired in less than a year after the funding. This company also happens to be the recipient of the largest Series A round.
- 3 of these companies were acquired. One IPO’ed and another has an IPO pending.
- The one company that went public in this lot is not performing particularly well, with a market cap now 1/3 of IPO value.
- All of the companies are still operational in some capacity.
Click here to see the 10 companies
Image credit: CC by Tax Credits
10. Affinity $60M (1999)
Industry:
Advertising
Series A Investors:
Columbia Capital
Pamlico Capital
Total Venture Capital raised:
$85M
Current status:
Affinity was acquired by Hostway in 2008 and still operates under the Affinity name.
9. Brand Networks $68M (2013)
Industry:
Software
Series A Investors:
AEA Investors
Total Venture Capital raised:
$68M
Current status:
Given the recent funding, it is good to see that the company is still operational. Of note, the company has 1651 Facebook likes.
8. Vantage Media $70M (2007)
Industry:
Advertising
Series A Investors:
Montgomery & Co
Scale Venture Partners
Tudor Investments
Integral Capital Partners
Total Venture Capital raised:
$70M
Current status:
Vantage Media is currently operational, focused on real time biding, and specializing in the education, insurance, and home verticals.
7. Bill Me Later $72.6M (2007)
Industry:
Ecommerce
Series A Investors:
Azure Capital Partners
Crosspoint Venture Partners
Upfront Ventures
Kingdon Capital
Total Venture Capital raised:
$200M
Current status:
Bill Me Later was acquired by eBay in 2008 for $945M and still operates under the same name as a Paypal company.
6. hulu $100M (2007)
Industry:
Video
Series A Investors:
Providence Equity Partners
Total Venture Capital raised:
Undisclosed
Current status:
Hulu is presently operational and often rumored to be a takeover target at a valuation north of $1B. This valuation was prior to the current owners injecting an additional $750M into the company in 2013.
5. GitHub $100M (2012)
Industry:
Software
Series A Investors:
Andreessen Horowitz
SV Angel
Total Venture Capital raised:
$100M
Current status:
The go-to-management tool for the developer community is thriving. This round was raised on a $750M valuation.
4. Webroot $108M (2005)
Industry:
Security
Series A Investors:
Technology Crossover Partners
Accel Partners
Mayfield Fund
Total Venture Capital raised:
$109M
Current status:
I must admit, I had not heard a thing about this company prior to conducting the research for this piece but apparently the company is thriving with a steady track record of acquisitions under its belt and multinational expansion.
3. Demand Media $123M (2006)
Industry:
News
Series A Investors:
Undisclosed
Total Venture Capital raised:
$375.4M
Current status:
Often considered one of the original “content farms”, Demand Media IPO’ed in 2011 and is presently trading near an all time low. The current market cap is $511M.
2. Wayfair $165M (2011)
Industry:
Ecommerce
Series A Investors:
Battery Ventures
Spark Capital
HarbourVest Partners
Great Hill Partners
Total Venture Capital raised:
$201M
Current status:
Wayfair is the largest online retailer focused on home goods and is still private. The company was expected to have sales in excess of $1B in 2013. The company is expected to go public in the first half of 2014.
1. Airwatch $200M (2013)
Industry:
Enterprise
Series A Investors:
Insight Venture Partners
Total Venture Capital raised:
$225M
Current status:
Airwatch was acquired by VMware in January of 2014 for $1.4B.
For your tweeting convenience:
The largest Series A round in history was $200M and was in the enterprise space Tweet this
Only 1/10 of the largest Series A rounds resulted in an IPO Tweet this
3/10 of the largest Series A rounds resulted in acquisitions Tweet this
