Now that Congress has failed to bail out Wall Street, the country (and world, to a lesser extent) has begun bracing itself for nuclear winter. The technology sector is no exception, even if the Silicon Valley tends to fancy itself as immune to broader economic turmoil.
As Fred Wilson points out, startups fortunate enough to enjoy venture capital will fare the best during these hard times. So we compiled a list of all the technology startups that have raised at least $25 million over the past two years, according to CrunchBase. The ~160 startups to stockpile that much capital recently are listed below.
Facebook tops the list with $455 million raised over the last two years (the bulk of its total $496M). Clean tech comes in highly as well with Nanosolar having raised $300 million, eSolar $140 million, and SulfurCell $134 million.
Of course, to know truly how well-prepared these startups are for the next few years, we’d have to see other figures like burn rates, revenue and head counts, not all of which are publicly known. Nevertheless, their recent funding rounds provide a good guideline.
Have we missed any relevant companies or funding rounds? Submit them to CrunchBase and we’ll update this list.
- Facebook - $455M
- ZeniMax - $310M
- Nanosolar - $300M
- OverSee - $210M
- OANDA - $200M
- Kayak - $196M
- GridPoint - $167M
- Plastic Logic - $150M
- eSolar - $140M
- Demand Media - $135M
- SulfurCell - $134M
- Modu - $120M
- United Mobile - $115M
- Zhaopin - $110M
- Ning - $104M
- Glam Media - $104M
- hulu - $100M
- 9You - $100M
- Specificmedia - $100M
- SpinVox - $100M
- Rearden Commerce - $100M
- Ausra - $97.8M
- CDNetworks - $96.5M
- Move Networks - $91.3M
- Spot Runner - $91M
- Tesla Motors - $85M
- Big Fish Games - $83.3M
- Realtime Worlds - $81M
- Adconion Media Group - $80M
- The Active Network - $80M
- HelioVolt - $77M
- Youku - $77M
- Datapipe - $75M
- Trion World Network - $70M
- Arcadian Networks - $70M
- Vantage Media - $70M
- A123Systems - $70M
- Boston Power - $68.6M
- Infinia - $66.5M
- LinkedIn - $65.8M
- Fisker - $65M
- Brightcove - $64.4M
- SilkRoad technology - $64M
- Coremetrics - $60M
- ReachLocal - $55.2M
- Veoh - $55M
- Federated Media - $54.5M
- Slacker - $53.5M
- RockYou - $52.5M
- 51.com - $51M
- HealthCentral - $50M
- ChannelAdvisor - $50M
- Blowtorch - $50M
- GarageGames - $50M
- Revolution Money - $50M
- Slide - $50M
- Strands - $49M
- obopay - $49M
- JumpTap - $48M
- ice - $47M
- Greenplum - $46M
- Internet Mall - $45M
- Clear - $44.4M
- Jingle Networks - $43M
- Avail Media - $42M
- Metaweb Technologies - $42M
- BitTorrent - $42M
- Amobee - $42M
- Enforta - $40M
- Undertone Networks - $40M
- Turbine - $40M
- Pure Digital Technologies - $40M
- Trilliant - $40M
- SiBEAM - $40M
- Teneros - $40M
- SearchMe - $39.6M
- fabrik - $39.2M
- Zynga - $39M
- Turn - $38.5M
- LifeLock - $37.9M
- Digg - $37.2M
- GreatCall - $36.6M
- Segway - $35M
- hi5 - $35M
- Bestofmedia Group - $35M
- Yodlee - $35M
- Angie’s List - $35M
- Lehigh Technologies - $34.5M
- Sermo - $34.5M
- ooma - $34M
- meebo - $34M
- Dailymotion - $34M
- Clearspring - $33.5M
- XunLight - $33M
- Cuil - $33M
- Seatwave - $33M
- Dilithium Networks - $33M
- Waterfront Media - $33M
- Mzinga - $32.5M
- Vanu - $32M
- Vuze - $32M
- PicScout - $32M
- Pando - $31.9M
- Etsy - $31.3M
- BuzzNet - $31M
- Global Roaming - $30.5M
- NebuAd - $30.2M
- MFG - $30M
- Zillow - $30M
- GodTube - $30M
- 56.com - $30M
- Zazzle - $30M
- Metacafe - $30M
- Batanga - $30M
- VideoJug - $30M
- Eyeblaster - $30M
- badoo - $30M
- Viagogo - $30M
- IGA Worldwide - $30M
- Leapfrog on-line - $30M
- MobiTV - $30M
- MOLI - $29.6M
- Automattic - $29.5M
- Intacct - $29M
- Genius - $29M
- Kosmix - $28M
- LiveOps - $28M
- RadioFrame - $28M
- PGP Corporation - $27.3M
- Milestone Systems - $27M
- Palo Alto Networks - $27M
- Tideway - $27M
- BlackArrow - $26.8M
- ChoiceStream - $26.5M
- Ruckus - $26M
- ContextWeb - $26M
- Solarflare - $26M
- Quantcast - $25.7M
- Become - $25.5M
- Mimeo - $25M
- Reunion - $25M
- Gemini - $25M
- PharmaNation - $25M
- InMage Systems - $25M
- Aurora Biofuels - $25M
- Nimbuzz - $25M
- Firefly Energy - $25M
- Yelp - $25M
- Meraki - $25M
- Dash - $25M
- Retail Convergence - $25M
- Trulia - $25M
- SpringSource - $25M
- Zecco - $25M
- Koolanoo Group - $25M
- Verimatrix - $25M
- Optaros - $25M
- Visible World - $25M
- Splunk - $25M
- DeviceVM - $25M
See all
Post
What a clever list. This should help them all recruit too.
what about profits? {seesmic_video:{”url_thumbnail”:{”value”:”http://t.seesmic.com/thumbnail/xWU711×5LQ_th1.jpg”}”title”:{”value”:”what about profits? ”}”videoUri”:{”value”:”http://www.seesmic.com/video/39lCjC93kR”}}}
Any start up will be part of the bubble if it doesn’t have a sound business model. Many of these ‘businesses’ are reliant on outside funding and are missing the point of running a business; to make a profit.
Venture capital funding raises these expectations and making a modest profit is just not good enough…
I hear ya Andrew. The crazy part is that some investors totally overlook companies with revenue/profits because they aren’t in the “it” space. Maybe I’m just crying sour grapes though.
why do 80% of what vc’s invest in fail?
how can FB be considered a startup at 455mill?
you put demandmedia at 135m, site claims 350m. whos right?
this list should be named “The 80% bubblelist.”
look at the crumby domain names.
I would love to put my 1200 channel location based domain portfoilo side by side with this list and ask consumers and business people looking at the list the following questions……………
“which list appears to know what it’s talking about.”
“which list would you be more likely to find useful”
“which list would you find most easy to remember”
“which list would you like to choose for custom location based niche personalized offerings.” (email, subsites, location services)
The Answer is Simple. http://seesmic.com/mylocator
LocationExpert.com
Hey Danny, why don’t you use your real name is you are so into the community?
Do you even believe your own bullshit?
Owning domain names does not constitute a “platform” or “engine” or another such nonsense. Do we have to ignore you in order to make sense?
Will you continue to seek attention on techcrunch by thread-jacking?
You should just say, “My name is Danny and I have domain names for sale”
@son of sam
Maybe if some of these startups had a fundamental “natural language ” footprint foundation on the internet they might go somewhere. These 120 startups cant even fathom taking on any major search engine. I can.
When you dominate a niche location based online and mobile language and have a digital footprint on the internet i would love to see it.
“Your like a “comment crank call.”
What you are doing is called comment “piece mealing”, combined with zero substance.
Hot air goes no where here. Put your money where you mouth is.
http://seesmic.com/videos/QTr4Qavbu5
AdviceLocator.com-if things im sharing here are not making any sense….see a nurse. or visit:
hater.diseaselocator.com-answers for everyone.
NetworkLocator.com- Not for sale or trade.
What about CEO pay?
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008.....w-ceo-pay/
I’d like to see a list of the companies with the lowest paid CEO’s.
lol. Proper language and spelling are /so/ Web 1.0. It’s great if you want to make a site about knitting for grandparents, but the reality is that the new generation and the next generation could care less. I dare say that they prefer made up names like “veoh” or “twitter.” A lot of it is about building a brand from scratch.
Seriously, the fact that you are harping on the domain names of some of these companies only shows how truly out of touch and irrelevant you are. The companies with retarded spellings are like that because that’s what their userbase expects, is used to, and it comfortable with.
Seriously, get with the times. It’s 2008. No one is going to call a Twitter clone, “SMSgateway.com” or “floridaSMSgateway.com”. They’ll call it Flitter or Flippur, or who the hell knows what, it doesn’t even matter anymore.
And if you look through the list, the companies who DO need to have approriate names, because their target demographic is not of the order I just discussed above, have them.
@Aron- thanks for your comment below:
“companies with retarded spellings are like that because that’s what their userbase expects, is used to, and it comfortable with.”
Your a funny guy.
Do you remember geocities?
The power of “My” Location. http://seesmic.com/videos/tTL9aEUkGR
I think youve been stuck on the keyboard too long. You need to get out more. Run a business and learn about consumers and study how the majority of them think. I would love to see the name of your internet presence and how you plan on using it to satisify the masses.
This wack a mole stuff is fun.
PlayLocator.com
I agree with Andrew. If you don’t turn a profit, you are going to be hard pressed to raise future money, let alone stay in business for long. If you have VC money, you may be able to weather the storm for a little, but companies generally stay around because of profits, not VC money.
This list is rubbish. Did you just go and list every company that has gotten over $20mm in the last 18 months? My 1.0 grandmamma could come up with a better list than this.
Tagworld? Cutting edge gentlemen, cutting edge.
Agreed - the amount of capital a startup has in the bank is no guarantee of it’s ability to ‘weather the storm’. Careful management and creative thinking are still a startups best assets - not cash!
Professional bubble pushers. they need to make a living too. there is enough expendible wealth to go around or these vc’s never would have speculated on most of these sites. 80% have a probability that they will fail in 2-4 years. There is alot of success in bubble startups whether they fail or not.
If 80% fail add up how much money will most likely be a lost investment in 2-4 years. Its in the single digit billions. The success of the top 5-10% can be in the 10’s of billions.
FinanceLocator.com
Should I care? I predict 75% of the companies in this list will fail after the downturn.
Being well-funded is not a recipe for success. In fact, I think it often obscures entrepreneurs/developers incentive to innovate and follow their vision.
well said
Spot on. I’ve been running my startup for 3 years now and survived purely on cash flow. When I read a blog entry like this it makes me think these TechCrunch boys are obsessed with how much money a company can raise rather the strength of it’s leadership and execution of its ideas.
Have any of these TechCrunch bloggers ever actually ran a successful startup themselves - I’d be keen to see the similar list of startup achievements that TechCrunch writers have made in their careers - just for interests sake.
Agreed!
Hard to scale any kind of vision without serious financial backing.
Really? Ever heard of SmugMug - they’re very successful and have built a very profitable business with a single cent of investment. The perception that you must raise millions in investment in order to build a scalable business model is just that - a perception. Plenty of entrepreneurs build successful, scalable businesses without external financial support.
I’m not arguing for building a business without outside funding. I simply think these businesses are overvalued and completely reliant on venture funds. Modest seed money is completely viable for starting your business.
These companies need to justify their high valuations or the higher they go the harder they’ll fall.
I’m not sure VMWare can still be classified as a startup - they’re quite large and have been around for many years now. Great product line. Used them as an IT professional and now as a consumer (Fusion).
Love VMware and Fusion too, but yes, I believe that VMware was acquired by EMC in 2003/2004, for $635 million cash.
Good catch, we’re going through to make sure there aren’t any other public companies on the list.
Seriously, this is one of the most worthless lists ever conceived. Mark have you looked at the newspaper in the last week? Where do you think all this VC funding is coming from? It is likely true that in almost every case, the “source” for the funds in each of these “promised” VC deals is the equity markets, which are DRIED UP for the moment.
Better you should have made a list of companies that had ALREADY TAKEN their VC funds in cash, because we are likely to see that many of the companies above go belly-up for failure of the VC firms that promised the money!
Crunchbase lists VMWare as being publicly held, and, in fact, it is:
http://finance.google.com/fina.....q=NYSE:VMW
Yeah, that was my bad on the query.
This list is nice, from a day-to-day operations PoV, but not from an exit strategy PoV. You’re going to see the number of startup acquisitions drop precipitously, and the already-piddly number of IPOs will decline even further, startups are going to have to act like their potential acquirers: batten down the hatches and ride it out. Be wise with their cash reserves and they’ll make it through.
They’re going to have to keep a close watch on burn rate, as further rounds of venture financing are (probably) going to be hard to come by as skittish investors avoid taking any more risk, especially with the quick and easy exit strategy doors that are going to be closing in the near future. It seems likely that Internet startup venture funds may have to change the typical ten year fund lifecycle to something more like 15 years or so.
It’s impossible to say for sure, right now, but it seems likely.
YouSendIt raised $34M! They fired 2 out of 3 founders, but alas they raised $34M! Sure they spend more money then they make and their quantcast traffic is flat at best, but they raised $34M. I created it. Yay!
You created yet another useless startup. I thought Yousendit closed their doors a long time ago.
Well at least you admit to being fired from Yousendit. Good of you to let investors know that they should stay clear of you at all costs. Yay!
Also, freebase.com is produced by Metaweb Technologies - they shouldn’t really be listed separately.
It looks like someone did an Excel-level sort / copy / paste to compile this list…
Yeah, we have the freebase/metaweb as dupes on CB (fixing). And I did the whole query/sorting/filtering from the command-line.
Ooooh, from the command line! look at you!
Surely it doesn’t matter how the data was derived - command line or cut/paste from excel… this isn’t digg or /. so why the need to include that snippit?
What about Loopt and Whrrl? Isn’t the future all about location?
Jeez. is everyone going to jump on the ‘the sky is falling’ bandwagon?
Does total capital really matter? I’d think it has a lot more to do with burn and growth rates relative to capital raised? But maybe you know better…
http://leveragingideas.com
Apocalypse huh?
Lol.. this is nothing like the depression. The answer is simple, it’s called our friend bankruptcy. Just a matter of time before some of these companies switch ownership. The old ownership wasn’t working out anyway, so it will be healthy.
Of course, any business the relies excessively on credit probably doesn’t deserve to be in business for too long. It’s called cash flow people
business 101!
Great start, but you must go further - are they profitable, what’s the business model, what’s the revenue stream, number of employees, burn rate, etc.
Hey folks - these private-held, venture-backed startups are NOT going to tell the public what their revenue and income numbers are. They are NOT going to tell every Jack and Jill what their burn rate is. Anyone who thinks you can get that level of granularity for the majority of this list has never raised money, never run a venture-funded startup, and never had to meet a significant payroll. Would you tell your employees what your burn is? Why would you tell TechCrunch readers?
This is quality journalism - I’ll leave it to the educated reader to determine whether it is good or bad quality
you are so naive.
There are a few of us with $0 in funding who are well-prepared for this, too. I can’t say the same about some of our competitors, though…
Our term for “well-prepared”, btw, is “has a business model that works”.
I agree. I don’t think the “best position” means investment capital. My startup also has $0 funding. In fact, I believe that leaves us in a greater position to “weather the storm”, meaning funding doesn’t control our decisions. Bootstrapping a smart business model can take you right through an economic downturn if you prepare for it.
Good to see SmugMug way in on this thread - your company is exactly the type of business that I use as a model for how to build a successful online business - good business model, simple idea executed really well, chrage your customers for the service!
Don - I love your service. Many of my friends use it and I’m crossing my fingers people will keep buying your service and that you’ll stick around for a long time. Congrats for the good work thus far and keep pushing!
This article gets a grade of F for not demonstrating why these startups are best positioned for weathering a downturn because burnrate wasn’t posted.
I agree, burn rates would be great to know. But alas, most startups aren’t about to divulge theirs.
Haha Mark - nice little link to “tips” - sweet. Now if only we can get employees to do a little spying for the public good. We could guess at burn rates….
What is TechCrunch’s burn rate?
DayJet ceased operations on September 19th.
it’s just a list, people. don’t be so critical and just take it as another set of data to look at. if it’s interesting, good. if you think, “hey, this is just a list of funded companies, it doesn’t prove anything!” then so be it, but that doesn’t mean it’s not something of value and interest to the casual reader.
get a grip, everything doesn’t need to be pure drama…
didn’t Digg just raise $29 Million?
Yeah, Digg’s on the list with $37.2M
we will be fine… relax
hey, wheres twitter?
According to CB, Twitter’s raised less than $25 million.
What about Jobster? I hear they had a TON of money… oh wait, it’s all gone… and they lost it all before the downturn… guess those large rounds don’t guarantee anything.
Hmm… VC’s are not too picky as I see…
I’ve been working very hard on my startup (TRImagination) for a 10 months now and I’m determined to make this eduStartup work! We’ve financed everything out of pocket thus far and we have a solid business plan and talented team. We are pushing ahead with or without capital.
Its interested that with VC and valuations can also be very lofty expectations that will be hard to meet. I suppose the formula is a little bit more complex than how much capital you’ve raised. It all adds up to, can you be profitable and if not then its just how much cash do you have to burn. I know I’m bracing my team for a potentially brutal next 3 years.
Isn’t Yelp at 31m, not 25m? Don’t think it makes that big a difference, but just pointing it out…
Peter
http://www.thewebwar.com
31 total, but only 25 in the last two years.
Touche
Yawn. You TC guys are really chugging the koolaide on this market crash. Yeah - congress failed to print 700 billion fiat notes to bailout a few punk’d greedsters and the world is coming to an end.
Doesn’t anyone realize that by “splurging” we will actually do WAY more harm long term to the dollar?
This is a blessing for the true growth of the market as it drastically cuts out the noise. Those that would succeed would do so anyways and those that are destined to fail will just fail regardless but now quickly instead of dragging it out over a few years and a few million. If ya want to know the end just look at the beggining
“Brightcove - $64.4M”
Brightcove raised far more money than the $64.4 million - You need an update to your database -
“Brightcove was launched by Jeremy Allaire in early 2005 with $5.5 million from General Catalyst Partners and Accel Partners; the other existing investors were part of a $16.2 million round late that year. The company also has $5 million in financing from GE Capital. Then in Jan 2007 Brightcove closed a $59.5 million third round - Total Funding - $82.5 million.” - from paidcontent.org
In the last couple of years
Ok Mark - Thanks for clarifying again - My mistake - I missed the “last couple of years” in your post.
Doesn’t matter how much a startup has raised in comparison to how much they are burning. All these companies can weather the storm if they have sufficient capital in reverse to keep them going for a minimum of 2 years.
Raise VC funding, but dont expand your team massively until you need too. It’s as simple as that. Demand more metrics in advertising, and dont waste money on shit that is pointless. Everyone has to make cuts.
Get rid of people that do nothing and do your finances to ensure you can last 2 years on your burn rate.
Tell it like it is. great work Tcruncher. To include FB as a startup on the list is ridiculous. 400 million plus………..they have made it to another dimension.
Money (much less the amount) is no indicator of likelyhood of success.
Techcrunch, of all blogs, should know this axiom better than anyone - as should Arrington who has personal, VC funded, start-up experience.
I would 80% percent of them will fail. If economy was doing well that percentage would be lower.
http://gatesandjobs.blogspot.com/
It is not how much money you raised to prevent going out of business. It is the “burn rate” that is the most important. You should have two more columns - burn rate and remaining months. In a downturn, most dot coms will not be able to generate incomes, their valuations spiraling down, and full ratchet dilutions will kill incentives. As I observes over last couple of years, there are so many “me too” dot coms, all doing the same thing and still getting funded. I suppose VCs are panicking now. The $700 B bailout is only a temporary measure. With more foreclosures, I will not be surprise Congress will pass another $700 B. There are $55 T of securitized instruments out there.
Read the 20 other replies that point out that private companies DON’T DISCLOSE BURN RATES.
If you want accurate measure, you got to do research. You got to estimate. Of course, private companies do not disclosed this information. I remembered there were many published articles about burn rates in previous Web 1.0 era.
was to invest in real estate
Mark, I am really offended you forgot Seesmic.
I’m loving the pic.
I gather by comments and the numbers that these amounts of funding were just auto-generated from CB data… as many of them are off.
It’s also excluded some CB-listed companies. Ex: InvenSense is not on the list but they received $30M since Jan ‘07 in B and C series, (plus Series A in May 06 was $8M so total’s $38M for past 2.5 years).
Also… gotta agree with comment above about Facebook. It’s hardly in startup mode.
It is just not the infused capital that is going to help. Given the fact the trouble could last long,It is going to be the cash reserves sustained Q to Q, how well it is being spent on the business-the yield/ Returns…
Even,Start ups which has low levels of funding or which just has seed investments ,which needs to sustain and compete in the present stormy ,uncertain environment could do well through a careful strategy and implementation of Global Delivery operations. For instance,A number of start ups,which had moved a part of their operations in their own captive centers or set up Dedicated outsourcing teams in India post the dot.com fall out in 2000-2001,sustained well and emerged back in to business.
The value proposition of Global delivery operations which helps improve sustenance and compete well in especially in troubled times is
* Lowering the operations cost and burn out rate. Save up to 40-50%
* Scalability at a lower cost base.
* Moving the non-core work while focusing on core work in the US
(Marketing,sales,client relationships so on…)
* Doing high end work at low cost in select areas.
* Leverage 12 hr time zone (US-India) to get 24 hr sort of enhanced
productivity. US works-India sleeps and vice versa.
— Be nimble, Provide enhanced customer/partner support
–Slash time-to-market
* Helps start ups to compete well.
Well, I suppose there’s logic in thinking that if you don’t have any sales they can’t go down, and therefore you are less likely to be affected by bad weather.
Why promoting well or over funded startups?
It is not because a company has money to burn, it will actually become profitable: just look at ActivIdentity (nasdaq: ACTI http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=acti ) It has been burning money since their IPO many years ago and never became profitable.
Wouldn’t be just those companies that survive without funding and having revenue will become the best positioned startups?
The well funded will keep on burning money as there is still sufficient cash to sponsor non revenue generating events, whereas companies with revenue will struggle and compete to get more paying customers by any means.
Not to forget: some of these VC’s are going to claim their money faster. Much early than expected as their funds just have disappeared. Thus this list of companies are those that might just evaporate faster than any other. Opportunities ahead for all the non well funded to get into the market/business.
You better rely upon a business model with revenue and customers than relying on a VC.
Just hope we aren’t filed with the retarded spellings ( http://www.LEADSExplorer.com ) as Aaron - (September 30th, 2008 at 9:55 pm PDT) says.
What’s to stop cash-strapped VCs, who usually own a controlling share (since the founders have not vested or exercised) from simply liquidating the startups?
useless post…
@ the locator spammer dude
just checked out your *locator sites. Its a frikkin ning account for gods sake! At least its a $9.99/month *Premium* account. And the UI is ugly as sin, plus no traffic. Average is 1-2 users (And I am reasonably sure thats its u with alias) How can you talk about “my 1200 channel location based domain portfolio ” and “These 120 startups cant even fathom taking on any major search engine. I can.” This is what you have done - Probably got even the domains for free with your shared basic hosting account, threw in a ning account and started calling your shit as a location based niche digital footprint.
Goes to show how far up your ass your head is. U Fucking moron airhead. And if you still have to live in your fantasy world, go ahead but please do NOT spam tc.
My company is well-positioned because we’re actually making money!!
The trouble with TechCrunch is they judge the VC-funding vetting process as a success factor. Like TC, VC firms are often wrong.
So, under-the-radar companies making real money garner no interest.
A startup taking $25MM in VC money is NOT an indicator of being able to weather the economic downturn. This is like saying people who eat a large lunch today will not be hungry for the next week.
My startup, HubSpot, has raised $17MM in VC funding over the last 2 years and is will remain stable. We took the money we needed to succeed, not the largest amount we could swindle, as is the case with many companies on this list.