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Great news & I have more hope for the community. However, many people outside of the startup scene have misconceptions, as they see survivor bias/success bias

Great news & I have more hope for the community. However, many people outside of the startup scene have misconceptions, as they see survivor bias/success bias in the reporting. One item in the report feeds this misconception: "The average company got $1.9 million in funding." The median raised would be far more revealing of the actual experience that a startup faces than the average.

cj 12y ago
Techstars is incredibly transparent with their stats. Full funding data available here: http://www.techstars.com/companies/stats/ http://www.techstars.com/companies/stats/ I just pulled some numbers quickly... In the last 3 Techstars NYC batches (not including the most recent), there were 37 companies with median funding of just over $1.6 million. 28 are still active, 6 have been acquired and 3 have failed.
- johnvschmitt 12y ago
  Thanks. That is indeed an incredible level of transparency. I didn't see a CSV download but just scanning, it looks like it's more like a $200k median, with 1.6M average. Medians just make far more sense in letting someone outside the system know what to expect. Just like, "The average actress in Hollywood makes $250k, when in fact the median is $30k and a few make $100M).
  - cj 12y ago
    They don't have a CSV export, but here's a quick Javascript script that pulls the fundings and calculates the median and average. Total companies: 486 Median funding: $450,000 Average funding: $2,039,918 Total funding: $991,400,000 var fundings = $('.batch .parent .right').map(function(){ return +this.innerHTML.replace(/(\$|,| )/g, '') || 0; }).toArray(); fundings = fundings.sort(function(a, b) { return a - b; }); var totalFunding = fundings.reduce(function(a, b) { return a + b; }); console.log('Total companies: ', fundings.length); console.log('Median funding: ', fundings[Math.round(fundings.length / 2)]); console.log('Average funding: ', Math.round(totalFunding / fundings.length));

cj 12y ago

Techstars is incredibly transparent with their stats. Full funding data available here: http://www.techstars.com/companies/stats/ http://www.techstars.com/companies/stats/ I just pulled some numbers quickly... In the last 3 Techstars NYC batches (not including the most recent), there were 37 companies with median funding of just over $1.6 million. 28 are still active, 6 have been acquired and 3 have failed.

johnvschmitt 12y ago
Thanks. That is indeed an incredible level of transparency. I didn't see a CSV download but just scanning, it looks like it's more like a $200k median, with 1.6M average. Medians just make far more sense in letting someone outside the system know what to expect. Just like, "The average actress in Hollywood makes $250k, when in fact the median is $30k and a few make $100M).
- cj 12y ago
  They don't have a CSV export, but here's a quick Javascript script that pulls the fundings and calculates the median and average. Total companies: 486 Median funding: $450,000 Average funding: $2,039,918 Total funding: $991,400,000 var fundings = $('.batch .parent .right').map(function(){ return +this.innerHTML.replace(/(\$|,| )/g, '') || 0; }).toArray(); fundings = fundings.sort(function(a, b) { return a - b; }); var totalFunding = fundings.reduce(function(a, b) { return a + b; }); console.log('Total companies: ', fundings.length); console.log('Median funding: ', fundings[Math.round(fundings.length / 2)]); console.log('Average funding: ', Math.round(totalFunding / fundings.length));