As startup experts will tell you, choosing among VC firms should be as much about you liking them as them liking you. So how do you decide?
Many factors might cross your mind, including:
- Is there a culture fit? Do our personalities and values clash?
- Can they provide expertise and connections, beyond the mere dollars?
- Are our expectations for an exit in alignment?
But one criteria that should kick off the investigation is: is this VC firm still active? It’s obviously a waste of time to pitch “zombie” VC firms, which are either inactive or in the process of shutting down.
The most active VC firms in 2014 were recently ranked by a MoneyTree Report (by the National Venture Capital Association and PricewaterhouseCoopers, based on data from Thomson Reuters). They measured the most active VC firms based on number of deals done in 2014. You can find them below, along with information about what sectors and stages they invest in:
1. Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (110 deals)
Location: Menlo Park, CA
Notable investments: Google, Zynga, Amazon, Twitter, Snapchat
Specialties: consumer digital, enterprise digital, life science, sustainability
Stage: seed, early, growth
2. New Enterprise Associates (105 deals)
Location: Menlo Park, CA
Notable investments: 23andMe, BuzzFeed, Coursera, Groupon, Evernote
Specialties: technology (software and services, systems, consumer and Internet, energy), health care (biopharma, devices, services)
Stage: seed, early, growth
3. Andreessen Horowitz (86 deals)
Location: Menlo Park, CA
Notable investments: Airbnb, Facebook, Foursquare, Twitter, Pinterest
Specialties: software (consumer, enterprise)
Stage: seed, early, growth
4. First Round Capital (81 deals)
Location: Philadelphia, PA
Notable investments: GroupMe, Mint, Path, StumbleUpon, Uber
Specialties: ecommerce/consumer web, enterprise, financial tech, ad tech, hardware
Stage: seed
5. Google Ventures (66 deals)
Location: Mountain View, CA
Notable investments: Medium, About.me, Ub
via tech.co