Reconstructed first-round book from the research data, not a scrape of today's website. Public portfolio pages over-report winners, and this graph has the same public-data bias. Investor edges are essentially Crunchbase through late 2015, plus Y Combinator.
Research book · 3-year follow-on
Union Square Ventures vs Kairos
90th percentile
Whole-book follow-on hit rate 77.4% (24 of 31 labeled deals). 95% Wilson interval 60.2%–88.6%. Vintage-weighted base rate 44.8%. This is not a fund return.
Among 233 eligible VC books with at least 15 labeled deals. Published raw-excess percentile in the research file: 86th percentile.
Vs same-vintage base rate
+32.6 pp
77.4% on 31 deals vs 44.8%
Vs median VC book
+20.6 pp
77.4% on 31 deals vs 56.8%
Vs top-quartile VC
+4.8 pp
77.4% on 31 deals vs 72.7%
Vs Y Combinator
+12.7 pp
77.4% on 31 deals vs 64.7%
Ranked when at least 15 labeled deals have a vintage base rate. Rank is the average-rank percentile of shrunk excess (20 pseudo-deals at that book's vintage base rate) among eligible VC books that clear the same minimum. 100 is best. The whole book is never compared to Kairos's top-50 hit rate.
What Kairos would have said
Scores are the model’s percentile at each company’s first observed funding event, not at a later round. That matches this fund’s entry only when the fund was in the first-round syndicate. A deal is flagged when its percentile clears that vintage’s top-50 cutoff. The whole book is not compared to the top-50 hit rate.
Deals with a score
29
Mean model percentile
76
Flagged deals
31/3 followed on
Five-year exit, secondary
Five-year exit labels are observable mainly for 2005–2010. A missing later exit is not counted as a failure. This panel is not the ranking.
Hit rate 30.4% (7 of 23). 95% Wilson interval 15.6%–50.9%.
Vs exit base rate
+17.7 pp
30.4% on 23 deals vs 12.7%
Vs median VC exit book
—
No overlapping vintages
Vs top-quartile exit book
—
No overlapping vintages
Companies
31 labeled follow-on deals, 0 matched without an observable label (dropped, not counted as failures).
| Company | Vintage | Follow-on | Kairos percentile | Flagged |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Foursquarefoursquare.com | 2009 | Yes | 99 | Yes |
| Tasty Labstastylabs.com | 2010 | No | 99 | Yes |
| Indeed | 2005 | No | 99 | Yes |
| Shapewaysshapeways.com | 2010 | Yes | 98 | — |
| Pinch Mediapinchmedia.com | 2008 | Yes | 93 | — |
| MongoDBmongodb.com | 2008 | Yes | 93 | — |
| 2007 | Yes | 91 | — | |
| Edmodoedmodo.com | 2010 | Yes | 91 | — |
| Work Marketworkmarket.com | 2011 | Yes | 89 | — |
| Bug Labsbuglabs.net | 2006 | Yes | 89 | — |
| Boxeeboxee.tv | 2008 | Yes | 88 | — |
| TargetSpot, Inc.targetspot.com | 2007 | Yes | 88 | — |
| Duolingoduolingo.com | 2011 | Yes | 85 | — |
| Kickstarter | 2011 | Yes | 85 | — |
| AMEEamee.com | 2008 | Yes | 83 | — |
| Tracked.comtracked.com | 2008 | Yes | 81 | — |
| Stack Exchangestackexchange.com | 2010 | Yes | 80 | — |
| AdaptiveBluetvtag.com | 2007 | Yes | 78 | — |
| DuckDuckGoduckduckgo.com | 2011 | No | 75 | — |
| SigFigsigfig.com | 2013 | Yes | 72 | — |
| Simulmediasimulmedia.com | 2009 | Yes | 68 | — |
| Outside.inoutside.in | 2007 | Yes | 61 | — |
| Behancebehance.net | 2012 | No | 58 | — |
| deliciousdelicious.com | 2005 | No | 55 | — |
| Tumblrtumblr.com | 2007 | Yes | 53 | — |
| UpCompanyrakedin.com | 2009 | No | 50 | — |
| Return Pathreturnpath.com | 2008 | Yes | 44 | — |
| Oddcastoddcast.com | 2006 | No | 33 | — |
| Tacodatacoda.com | 2006 | Yes | 33 | — |
| Splicesplice.com | 2013 | Yes | — | — |
| Auxmoneyauxmoney.com | 2013 | Yes | — | — |