Top Cities For Venture Capital In The US and Internationally?
Bit curious as to what you all view as the top VC markets in the US/Internationally currently? In the US, I'd assume that the San Francisco Bay Area is the top but what other major cities do you see as hotbeds for lots of activity right now? Also looking on towards the future, what are some up and coming areas and do you see any areas in decline anytime soon? Same questions apply for international markets.
EDIT: Someone brought up a great point about the quality of startups in a lot of these major cities. Where do you see startups actually being successful and undergoing meaningful exits?
SF / Bay Area is the clear #1. I'd say LA and NY are #2 and #3 - a ton of activity right now. Austin is a great up and coming tech town as well.
Any knowledge on what's industries the majority of startups are in, in Austin? Slightly surprised, wouldn't have thought of it as much of a tech town.
Austin is a huge tech town, it's the biggest private industry there at this point. I'm actually surprised ledger123 put LA above it. I would've thought Seattle would be somewhere up there as well.
From what I've witnessed (just my perspective):
SF Bay Area
(gap)
NYC Boston Austin Los Angeles Seattle A few others...
The ventrue capital industry is more prominent in the US than abroad, but internationally big players include:
London, Shanghai, Beijing, etc.. India, Israel, and Germany also have significant activity.
Scranton, PA
According to Ryan Howard, the next Silicon Valley is the "Silicon Prairie" of Southwestern Ohio. Hence why he moved to Miami, OH a "big university town"
the only thing big in that town is his nose.
The Bay Area leads by a mile. Boston (really) follows, then New York, LA, and Seattle in that order.
Check CBI or Pitchbook if you need to confirm.
Here are a couple articles (same author) with no paywall with pretty fresh data: CityLab (2014) and The Atlantic (2016).
Boston is the sleeper people forget about. It's the cluster for hard sciences: aeronautics, robotics, a ton of machine learning, and life sciences.
It's hard to build proprietary dealflow up there, too. It's a mafia, especially in life sciences. They take care of their own. The same set of guys start a series of companies across a decade out of the same lab research they were doing as a group. They show them to the same set of investors, and as they get liquidity from their first exits, become LPs in those same investors' funds and also angels for the younger staff in their labs who want to try their own hand as founders.
Larry Bock, before he passed, is a fantastic example. The man was prolific and a genius (started 50 companies with a combined market cap of over $70bn just from those that were public exits), and nobody outside of the life sciences community knew about him. See:
Re Larry Bock: You forgot to add that he was actually blind from the age 29.
5 million I've learned (from a friend with a major disability) that pointing out someone's accomplishments despite their disability may seem well-intentioned ("wow, look at how hard he worked to overcome") but is actually a slap in the face to someone who views themselves as normal and wants to be treated as such.
Good point. I remember the first time I read about Route 128. I don't think most people know how instrumental Boston was and is to technology. If you haven't read it already, you'll like this post.
Also, thanks for sharing re: Larry Bock. Seems like an incredible guy.
This. I have been able to see this firsthand through a personal relationship of mine (don't want to go into detail as this is a public forum). So far I have not observed this trend anywhere else in major VC hubs. It's quite unique and just goes to show how you do not have to start out in finance or anything and still can still make the transition over to VC. However, in order to break into the Boston VC scene at the moment, it seems that you need a somewhat heavy science background.
What metric are you using in your assessment that Boston is 2 and NYC is 3? The New England region trails NYC in both deal value and number of deals.
In the very post you replied to, I included two links to publicly available articles and also mentioned two paid resources you could use as well if you had access.
Outside US, it would be London, Beijing, Shanghai, Mumbai, Germany (not sure if they are in Berlin or Frankfurt), Paris, Singapore, Hong Kong.
If you only speak English you work in London & Singapore but other markets would be harder.
Can confirm a majority of the German startups are in Berlin, and it is easy for an English speaker to find work here.
From what I've seen, if you look at the scale of the startups, obviously SV, LA and NY top the list.
But the game changes once you account for the QUALITY of startups. If you take that parameter into account, and look at the places where such tangible value is actually being generated, the list shifts.
SF still takes the top position. Boston and Austin are other places where innovation is happening. London, Paris, Berlin and Stockholm are some of the European cities. Dubai is a very small, yet rising center in the Middle East, and seems to be popular with a lot of Russians for some reason (maybe because Moscow faltered). Tel Aviv is a huge place for startups. In Asia, there's Singapore, Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen, and Bangalore to some extent. Bangkok, like Dubai, is increasingly becoming popular, but small. Australia has a very small ecosystem in Sydney, and I think Auckland will become increasingly popular too. Santiago in Chile would be one to watch out for too.
If you are looking at joining a VC firm though, best to stick with those in traditional financial centres such as NY, SF, LA, London, etc. because most of these startups in smaller cities flock to these cities anyways for funding.
All of the cities mentioned before me are definitely relevant, but from what I've seen Israel needs more love. There are definitely some exciting startups coming from there that have gone unnoticed.
What startups are currently being founded in Israel? Industry wise?
Speaking from professional experience, I worked on the technology desk at my old bank, and there was a plethora of tech (health tech specifically) startups out of Israel.
Always been a hot bed for Med Tech innovation.
US: SF area of course, then Boston, NYC and the other that you have just read. EU: London for first, then Paris (growing VC economy with Macron) and Frankfurt/Berlin. China: Shanghai, Singapore and Japan
Zero startups in Japan. Macron's going to do shit for the VC economy - his pushing forward with a dumb austerity agenda.
zero startups in Japan is a fake news, less than Shanghai and that area but zero is totally fake. About Macron another fake news. His pushing hard for VC and this kind of stuff. His austerity agenda is simply amazing, the biggest the spending the lower the growth. And I'm living in France, actually
In China, it's absolutely Beijing and Shenzhen (hardware focus) over Shanghai.
Also, a week ago in the FT: "Investments in private tech companies in Asia have topped those in the US for the first time" (can't seem to post link yet). Granted, this is Asia overall but gives you a sense of the dynamics. Think people outside of China still somewhat underestimate the scale/growth of the venture/tech space here.
Agreed. Shanghai is never a place for startups. Beijing and Shenzhen top the pe market in Asia.
Not sure why you guys are talking about foreign talent in Paris, there is plenty of skilled domestic supply and it's orders of magnitude cheaper than what you have in the Bay.
Also, Macron won't help much unless he gets rid of the CDD/CDI distinction (fat chance).
Europe needs a European VC hub. That means a VC hub which operates in English not in German/French/Spanish . Domestic talent , however good it is (which is never better than pooling people from a bigger population) it will make at best a local hub, not a regional one. Foreign talent is essential
Why does Europe need a VC hub?
Together San Francisco and San Jose (Bay Area) account for 26% of global VC funding.
Hmm, some of these comments seem quite outdated. Things are changing very quickly in this industry and I'd say in 2017,
SF Bay Area #1 of course Then Boston, NYC, LA (growing fast!) Then Chicago, Seattle, Austin
Internationally,
London, Beijing, Shanghai Then Shenzhen, Tel Aviv, Mumbai, Seoul, Frankfurt Then Jakarta, Toronto, Paris, Bangalore, Moscow
Singapore and Hong Kong aren't doing too well in the VC space actually. Singapore is on a down trend except in the fintech space and Hong Kong was never a startup/VC hub.
Whoever mentioned Tokyo or any other Japanese cities may be 50 years too early. Japanese are the most risk-averse people I know and this makes it very hard for the country to develop any startup/VC hub.
Some mentioned how Shanghai is not a big startup hub, but it really is in many, many sectors.
Boston seems to be where it is at for VC on the East Coast. The only issue I see with Boston is that it is too focused in one niche: biotech, whereas in the SF Bay Area, there's a multitude of different industries to invest in. Call me crazy but it may actually be easier to break into VC in the SF Bay Area because from what I've seen so far in Boston, the majority of GP's, prinicapls, etc, were former scientists themselves.
European VC here:
London, Berlin & Stockholm are the most important European ones.
I agree with what many people mentioned but I'll elaborate a few things.
SF Bay Area is by far the best place for any startup.
[Major gap - why? because it's really hard to find really GREAT product folks outside Silicon Valley... Mark Suster on carpool.vc talks about this this]
NYC LA (this is higher if you are looking at consumer/media...) Boston (this is higher if you are looking at biotech) Seattle Chicago (Groupon is still king but new ones are emerging such as Uptake and Tempus) Austin
A major one a lot of folks is forgetting is Pittsburgh especially with autonomous driving (ATC, Argo AI, Aurora.tech), robotics (Astrobotics, Carnegie Robots), CMU, AlphaLab and other examples such as Helomics, Schell Games, Duolingo.
Other areas I've seen that are interesting : Detroit/Ann Arbor (FarmLogs, Benzinga, Millendo Therapeutics, Duo Security... and several autonomous driving) Atlanta (MailChimp, Namely) Chattanooga (SupplyHog, Bellhop) Boise/Idaho (Cradlepoint, Clearwater Analytics, TSheets, Meal Ticket, Rohinni) Las Vegas (OrderWithMe)
International China is probably the largest VC outside the US, then Japan (SoftBank)... in terms of companies Israel (lot's of really great cyber especially with 8200). And lastly, LATAM has a lot of interesting startup activities especially Brazil and Colombia.
Is this in order of what you think is the best? And personally I am very interested in working in Boston VC but as far as I can tell, the majority of startups in the area are in biotech. I feel like NYC would be a little more diverse in terms of sector.
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