Show HN: Startup data 2000-2012 from CrunchBase

http://betabeers.com/uploads/estudios/crunchbase-startup-data/?

by miquelcamps • 13 years ago

60 26 13 years ago

ronnix• 13 years ago

Were some companies acquired multiple times the same year, or is there a bug somewhere? (RazorFish is listed 3 times in 2002, DoubleClick and Skype twice in 2005, Getty Images twice in 2008, Sterling Commerce twice in 2009.)

miquelcamps5• 13 years ago

ouch! fixed, thanks :)

aaasen• 13 years ago

It's crazy that there are so many huge companies that I've never heard of. Instagram's acquisition was huge news at $1B, but I didn't hear a peep about Ariba at $4.3B or Genzyme at $20B.

It's easy to think that consumer oriented web startups are what's hot, but this data proves otherwise.

waterlesscloud• 13 years ago

I wonder if a lot of the "there's no innovation any more" talk is a result of the fact that things like biotech just doesn't get the same coverage as the web startups?

There's a lot of biotech/pharmacutecal companies in those lists. Something is happening in that industry, even if we don't hear much about it here and elsewhere.

jpdoctor2• 13 years ago

> It's easy to think that consumer oriented web startups are what's hot, but this data proves otherwise.

I think what it proves: Crunchbase serves the PR segment of consumer oriented web companies, and fails to serve other segments well. Let's face it, it's not so much a database as it is part of the techcrunch PR machine.

hkmurakami2• 13 years ago

One thing to consider is how long each of these companies hd been in existence before getting acquired. One thing with consumer web is that the time between conception and exit is comparatively short compared to other industries.

minimaxir2• 13 years ago

Which endpoint(s) of the CrunchBase API are you using? I'm planning on doing something similar graphically.

miquelcamps5• 13 years ago

honestly I have not used the API, i've done some web scraping, if you want you can download the database here ;)

https://www.dropbox.com/s/pzhqhtk4g23temz/crunchbase.sql.zip

minimaxir2• 13 years ago

That works too. :P

Thanks!

skhamkar2• 13 years ago

Thanks! This is pretty cool data.

wilson_guaraca• 13 years ago

Hey Miguel! I am currently writing a thesis on venture capital and I have similar data from a database called VentureXpert. I will share it with you via twitter once I finish in a couple of weeks. I am curious to see how different our data looks. Thanks for posting.

Twitter: @wguaraca

jpdoctor2• 13 years ago

Crunchbase is pretty incomplete before 2004 it seems.

Several of the comm companies I checked were missing.

Edit: Upon further testing, it seems that many of the communications wipeouts ($40+M) from that era are missing. It's almost as if the people who funded them don't want the magnitude of the mistakes in the record.

Here's an example: Photonex, raised $170M [1] over the course of their lifetime and not a trace on crunchbase of who the culprits were.

Another quick example: Solinet [2] raised a pile of dough (they later renamed themselves Ceyba).

[1] http://www.lightreading.com/ip-convergence/photonex-scores-h...

[2] http://www.lightreading.com/ip-convergence/solinet-systems-s...

ig12• 13 years ago

(I run SeedTable which also does analytics on Crunchbase data)

The problem with ranking by funding/acquisition amounts is the data is pretty dirty, and outliers are disproportionately likely to be incorrect data (because someone fat fingered a number to be an order of magnitude larger, or put a foreign currency amount in as USD). Although the acq data is better than the funding data.

You might also want to extract stuff like biotech from the data because it's fundamentally a completely separate market from software tech.

ipedrazas• 13 years ago

Still, on that table we can see that on 2012 there was less funding and less acquisition.

Will be interesting to see what happens during 2013 but it seems that there's not as much money as on 2010/2011

ig12• 13 years ago

Yes the counted metrics are much more reliable.

It's much harder for TC to misenter an acquisition/funding round then it is for them accidentally add an extra zero to a number.

hkmurakami2• 13 years ago

For funding categories by year, I really think it would be nicer/more-useful if we could look at a time-series line graph by sector over a longer time period (5+ years) to see trends.

sylvinus• 13 years ago

Funny that the 3 "top paying" acquirers are telcos and not Googles :)

ejfox• 13 years ago

Hello I'd like your data please.

miquelcamps5• 13 years ago

You can download it here ;) https://www.dropbox.com/s/pzhqhtk4g23temz/crunchbase.sql.zip

kevin_morrill• 13 years ago

Is your list of companies in this db everything in their entity list of companies, or just ones that got acquired?

ev_ancasey• 13 years ago

cool stuff. how are you grouping data startups within the funding categories section?

i'd be interested to see the breakdown in recent years of startups that offer a data product, i.e. data infrastructure, ad optimization, user tracking, etc

miquelcamps5• 13 years ago

I would like to be more specific with the categories, but crunchbase for the most of internet based startups the main category is "Consumer Web".

Example: http://www.crunchbase.com/company/rent-com

If you want, you can download the database and check the companies table https://www.dropbox.com/s/pzhqhtk4g23temz/crunchbase.sql.zip

bdcravens• 13 years ago

T-Mobile is listed as the top acquisition of 2011, but that deal was blocked by the DoJ and later dropped by AT&T. In other words, the charts are based on announcements, not necessarily consummated transactions.

samspenc• 13 years ago

Exactly what I was thinking.

skhamkar2• 13 years ago

Here are some links to CSV files based on miquelcamps's sql file.

Acquisitions http://db.tt/h6PoPnCn

Companies http://db.tt/UNYulmJD

Funding http://db.tt/SHa45HHc

Words http://db.tt/mJMCIREX

Show HN: Startup data 2000-2012 from CrunchBase

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