Coming soon: 2019 edition of the Most Prominent Venture Capital Investors. Here’s all you need to know.

Each year Dealroom releases its ranking of Europe’s most prominent venture capital investors. We’re excited to announce that end of this summer, the 2019 edition will be released!

Check your investor profile now

Here’s what you need to know now:

Where can I find the ranking?

The current ranking (released June 2018) can be freely accesses in the Dealroom platform’s investor database. The page is sorted by prominence ranking by default. You can simply add filters to see the most prominent Paris-based investors, for example.

Is there a report?

Yes, there’s also a report about the ranking. And we’ll make one for 2019 too.

Report - Europe’s most prominent Venture Capital investors – 2018

What does Most Prominent mean?

Most Prominent means not just who’s the best investor. It’s about which investors are the most relevant for founders today. Therefore we also look at how active an investor is. The ranking was born out of pure necessity: Dealroom’s investor database is so large that some logical ranking needed to be implemented to improve usability.

How does the ranking work?

Last year’s ranking was based on the following eight criteria:

  1. Portfolio size in Europe
    Number of portfolio companies in Europe (incl. Israel), all time.
  2. Number of rounds in last 12 months
    Number of rounds which investor participated in during the last 12 months.
  3. Amount raised via participated rounds in the last 12 months (€ millions)
    This measures the total amount raised in each round that the investor participated in. For example, if the investor
    invested €1M in a €20M round, the full €20M is counted. However if a portfolio company raised €20M in a round where the
    investor did not participate, then this is not counted.
  4. Number of exits > €100 million (total firm value, all time)
  5. Number of exits > €500 millions (total firm value, all time)
  6. Number of exits > €800 million (i.e. unicorn exits total firm value, all time)
  7. Number of portfolio companies valued > €500 million (i.e. potential unicorns)
  8. Number of portfolio companies valued > €800 million (i.e. current unicorns)

This year’s approach will be similar, with some tweaks and upgrades that we will tell you more about soon.

We very much welcome feedback on the methodology.

How can I improve my ranking?

Firstly, we need to make sure all data is up to date. Lookup your investor profile to see what info we have on you. Especially look for your rounds and exits.

We will gladly support you with making sure everything is up to date. Two options:

  1. Contact support
  2. Create a free account to claim your investor profile and add data directly to it

Why are corporate funds, family offices and angels included?

We made the ranking as inclusive as possible, so that founders can consider different options available to them in a single search. The user can filter by investor type (e.g. only venture capital funds).

What about first-time funds? Are they ranked?

We will add a separate ranking for first-time funds.

Our fund is top performing. Why are we not ranked higher?

The ranking is not a purely performance-based. Performance is just one criteria, as it’s not the only thing that matters for founders. It’s possible the fund has been less active.

If you have any questions, or suspect we’re missing your data, please do contact us. You can also contact us via the customer contact tool in the bottom right of this screen.