TC50: The Funded Startups

This morning at the CenterNetworks brunch, we discussed startups and the venture capital business. We also discussed what defines a startup. Back in January I took a look at the specific question, "How do you define ‘startup’?" There seems to be no absolute concrete definition of "startup" — everyone has their own view and definition.

Over my days at the Techcrunch50 conference, several people noted to me that the startups on stage had major funding and the demo pit companies were the real startups. At the brunch I mentioned putting together a chart of the presenting startups and how much funding they have taken. It looks like Jeff Wang heard me as he has created charts and graphs of the presenting companies and their respective funding.

Jeff found 42 companies of the 52 released their funding amounts and he charted the figures.

• 4 companies over $5 million
• 16 companies over $1 million
• 10 companies didn’t report their funding
• Techcrunch50 winner Yammer has funding for parent company Geni over $10 million including $1.5 million from TC50 sponsor Founders Fund (they have spun Yammer into a separate company but it was built under the Geni umbrella)
• the total funding amount of the 42 reporting companies is over $62 million

So nine months after my initial post I will ask again, how do you define "startup"? Here’s the raw data: