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Who is New York's best venture capital fund?

on Exits, New York, Seed Financing, SoftBank, venture capital

CB Insights published their Fall 2013 edition of The New York Venture Capital Almanac last week in partnership with our friends at Orrick, Herrington and SVB. There's an enormous amount of data presented in this 112-page report, all centered around figuring out who are the most active and the most successful venture investors supporting New York-based startup businesses. A few observations and takeaways:

New York venture investing is hot. During the 4.5 years ending June 2013, over $8 billion was invested in 1,205 New York-based investment rounds. Based on current run rates, 2013 will set a five year record in venture capital deals and funding activity.

2012 was the best year in recent memory for NY-based exits. There were 53 exits in 2012 and 60 in the two years that preceded it. There were 24 exits in the first half of 2013 and CB Insights projects an additional 48 exits in the second half of the year. I don't know how they are projecting exit activity as that's a very difficult figure to forecast, but I believe the key takeaway here is that New York's technology ecosystem is maturing with more funding events (above) and more exits (below).

East Coast funds dominate New York investing. With the exception of 500 Startups and SV Angel, every one of the 10 most active investors in New York-based startups are east coast investors. Six of the eight have primary offices in New York City. Notably, SoftBank Capital ranks the sixth most active investor in New York-based startups.

Here's where it gets interesting...

SoftBank ranks #1 in follow-on rate among seed investors in New York-based startups. This means that a higher percentage of SoftBank seed investments receive follow-on financing than any other active seed investor in the New York-based ecosystem.

SoftBank also ranks #1, tied with Bessemer, for most exits of New York-based startups over the past five years. In other words, SoftBank has exited more New York-based investments through Acquisition or IPO than any other venture capital fund or seed investor since 2009. Combining data from two of these charts, SoftBank ranks sixth most active investor in New York-based startups, but first most successful as measured by follow-on financing and/or exit activity. This paints a nice story.

Since I joined SoftBank on July 1 of this year, I can't take credit for any of these results, nor will I reap any benefit from the returns. What I can proudly share is that these numbers show that our team committed to New York early and have remained committed to supporting New York-based startups through the past five-year investment cycle. With fresh capital to invest, we will continue supporting New York as we believe it's the most promising and exciting place to launch a technology business in the world right now.

You can view more of this data and/or download the report here.