Australia’s largest venture capital fund, Blackbird Ventures, is the favorite among startup founders according to a new ranking charting how “founder-friendly” VCs are.
Like the Hottest 100, Eurovision and GOAT rankings in any sport, the list is bound to spark controversy due to the notable absence of some leading names in the top 25, while two of the “big three” – Square Peg and Airtree – didn’t make it. the top 10. Paul Bassett’s fund comes in at 11, with Airtree just coming in at 25
The “VC rankingcovers Australia and New Zealand and was developed by Joe Patrick and Albert Patajo of challenger fund Astral Enterprises in an effort to be “a source of truth that showcases the best VCs in the eyes of founders”, to address the “rumors and rumors” they hear about VCs.
They plan to provide more detailed qualitative insights ahead of quantitative rankings in the future, but promised not to release raw data.
Prior to its overnight release, over 700 submissions were received ranking 150 funds across Australia and New Zealand.
They asked, “Who would you rather have as an investor?”
To vote, founders must have raised with VC funds on the list, and they have been verified using LinkedIn and Crunchbase before their data was pulled from the vote.
To compare apples to oranges so that highly active funds like Blackbird didn’t dominate, an Elo-based algorithm was used to rank the funds in a way that removes bias towards larger, more active VCs.
An Elo rating system is normally used to calculate the relative skill levels of players in zero-sum games.
Placing the top 25 list Overnight, the Astral site said they were “democratizing this information so founders are better able to make decisions related to their investors.”
New Zealand fund Global made the top 5 from day one, with EVP, OIF and Gen X newcomer Afterwork filling the 2-4 slots.
Jessy Wu, director and head of community at Afterwork said: “We are very pleased with our ranking and are very happy to come behind Blackbird, EVP and OIF – funds that we greatly admire”.
The Symington family’s family office in Melbourne, which supports early-stage companies with a focus on expansion in the US, was the silent executor coming in at No. 6.
Commonsense has backed startups including car subscription software Loopit, video monitor Atomos, carbon emissions management platform Arvani, and also Sherlok, customer management for mortgage brokers.
Two California funds – Paul Graham’s legendary Y Combinator and Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund – made the top 10.
Despite being very active in the local market in recent years, leading US funds such as Tiger Global and Sequoia have fallen short.
NAB Ventures was the only one of the four major banking VC funds to make the top 25 at number 20.
Startup Daily reached out to more than a dozen of the top 25 funds for comment. We’ll update this story if and when we hear from them.
Joe Patrick and Albert Patajo will appear on the Startup Daily show at 2 p.m. Monday to talk about the VC standings.
The full list, including the other overweight VC funds, is available here.
The top 11 on the VC Leaderboard developed by Astral Ventures
