The 25 Largest Startup Funding Events in America
Ben TaylorOctober 9, 2015
For many aspiring entrepreneurs, raising money is the single biggest challenge they’ll face. Sure, they might have the best ideas since the steam engine, the work ethic of Kobe Bryant and the marketing instincts of Steve Jobs, but ask them to close an actual funding round, and they’ll be lucky to secure a $ 10,000 loan.
It’s this fundraising futility that makes America’s largest funding events all the more astonishing. At FindTheCompany, we partnered with VentureDeal to determine the 25 largest funding events since the turn of the millennium.
In the table below, note the difference between debt (where the company must pay back a loan, with interest) and venture equity (where the investor receives a piece of the company in exchange for putting in money).
The clear fundraiser in chief is Uber Technologies, which closed six of the top 10 funding events since 2000, including the No. 1 spot overall. Founded in March 2009, Uber’s first three years were promising, but its next three were meteoric — a parade of billion-dollar funding events culminating in a $ 1.6 billion investment from private Goldman Sachs clients.
Airbnb snags the second spot with its June 2015 venture round, led by General Atlantic Inc., Hillhouse Capital Group of China and Tiger Global Management, an investment firm. According to a Wall Street Journal report, the company is on pace for $ 900 million in revenue this year, and projects to hit $ 20 billion by 2020 — figures that helped the company secure such a high valuation.
Facebook also deserves mention for a two-part deal in January 2011. The funding event came a little over a year before the company went public, with the majority of the investment coming from Goldman Sach’s overseas investors. The massive round helped pave the way for Facebook’s historic, $ 100 billion valuation during its May 2012 IPO.
After Uber and Facebook, a series of consumer brands follow, including Groupon, Snapchat and Lyft. Unsurprisingly, brands with household names seem to go hand in hand with record-breaking funding events (though it’s debatable whether one causes the other).
Enterprise software hotshots like Zenefits (human resources and insurance) and SurveyMonkey (polling and analytics) also break into the top 25, each boasting rounds in the hundreds of millions.
If there’s an odd pairing on the list, it’s SoFi and SpaceX, two companies that share the distinction of a $ 1 billion funding event. The former helps students refinance their loans, while the latter wants to make space travel far more affordable and convenient — an ambitious company founded by Elon Musk, the same man attempting to revolutionize the car industry with Tesla.
Whether you want to tackle educational finance or colonize Mars, there seems to be a path toward huge funding rounds, however remote the chances. But if there’s one consistency here, it’s technology. Nearly every company on this list comes straight from the world of tech, an industry famous for its blockbuster venture capital deals and outsized valuations. Anyone can start a business, but if the goal is a billion dollars in funding, the data says to head for Silicon Valley.
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