What's the success rate of startups that have been funded by 500 Startups?
In percentage: Exited / Operating / Dead
(cf What's the success rate of startups that have been funded by Y Combinator?)
(cf What's the success rate of startups that have been funded by Y Combinator?)
1 Answer
I will make a very approximate calculation since I didn't find any reliable sources. Both Crunchbase and SeedDB have incomplete information on this.
Dave McClure's answer to What will happen to 500 Startups after they invest in 500 Startups?
Now, comes counting the dead companies. I don't know of any real way to do it. My Techcrunch search yielded only 2. So, there were no major highprofile collapses. Assuming that their startup page contains only operating companies, there might be about 190 companies that are not yet accounted for. Many of these might be dead. I will take half of this number to account for human errors & errors of omission.
That leaves about 100 companies dead (I could be dead wrong here with my assumptions).
22 exits (4%)
361 operating (66%)
Deadpool (~18%)
By any metric this is a fantastic record.
No. of startups ~550.
According to this answer, it crossed the 500 investments mark earlier this year. Assuming that they made 50 more investments in the past few months, that comes to about 550 startups.Dave McClure's answer to What will happen to 500 Startups after they invest in 500 Startups?
actually, we've now made over 500 investments, probably sometime a few months back.
Exits: 22
According to this answer by Dave McClure, 500 Startups: What are some of 500's biggest exits? - there have been 22 successful exits by 500 startups companies - the biggest ones being Wildfire and Makerbot (both exited in excess of $350M).we've had ~20 other positive exits including:
- Crocodoc (acq Box, 2013)
- BrightNest (acq Angie's List, 2013)
- Lexity/Vurve (acq Yahoo, 2013)
- Behance (acq Adobe, 2012)
- ZenCoder (acq BrightCove, 2012)
- MoonFruit (acq Yell, 2012)
- Rapportive (acq LinkedIn, 2012)
- TeachStreet (acq Amazon, 2012)
- FeeFighters (acq Groupon, 2012)
- Versly/TaskDoc (acq Cisco, 2011)
- Backtype (acq Twitter, 2011)
- Punchd (acq Google, 2011)
Operating Companies: 361
I counted 361 companies in their funding page: Startups test | 500 Startups (32 of them in Series A/B stage and 183 companies in Seed stage and the rest in accelerator stage). I'm fairly confident that they keep the page current with the list of currently operating companies.Now, comes counting the dead companies. I don't know of any real way to do it. My Techcrunch search yielded only 2. So, there were no major highprofile collapses. Assuming that their startup page contains only operating companies, there might be about 190 companies that are not yet accounted for. Many of these might be dead. I will take half of this number to account for human errors & errors of omission.
That leaves about 100 companies dead (I could be dead wrong here with my assumptions).
Based on these assumptions:
550 startups funded.22 exits (4%)
361 operating (66%)
Deadpool (~18%)
By any metric this is a fantastic record.
