Peter Thiel reminded the TechCrunch audience this week how unique and impactful Silicon Valley is. He predicted it will continue to lead the world in innovation and disruption for at least the next two decades. He said he’d be “long on Silicon Valley” and “short on New York.” New York is developing a fantastic startup culture; but data shows that no one is close to Silicon Valley in attracting the best talent, churning out the best startups and attracting the most funding year after year.
Besides being the home of Y Combinator, the world’s most successful startup accelerator, there are many other websites and tools that originated in Silicon Valley/San Francisco which continue to make this the epicenter of entrepreneurship and venture capital in the world. Here are three really important ones, two of which got significant airtime at TechCrunch this year:
Crunchbase – What has been funded
Angelist – What is being funded
Product Hunt – What will get funded next
Crunchbase now has 2 million monthly users. They announced that 1,000 “Crunchbase Venture Partners” which include VC funds, accelerators, and incubators have agreed to keep their portfolio companies up-to-date on Crunchbase. It has the potential to be the broadest database of deal flow tracking as well as the most accurate. Spot checking it today I found several errors. But it is still the first source I check when looking up a tech company I haven’t heard of. Crunchbase then Wikipedia.
Angelist is now providing about $10 million per month in trackable funding. It has introduced a syndication model allowing groups of angels to pool capital into a “popup venture fund” that can provide significant funding comparable to a Series A round. The two largest deals so far have been close to $1 million, but it appears that Angelist has significant momentum and deal sizes will grow.
Product Hunt is a new San Francisco-based company which just raised close to $1 million in August. It provides an early warning radar system to identify on a daily basis new products that are being spotted which have potential.
