I’ve always loved data visualization, as it’s a powerful tool to help generate signal out of all the noise that we’re inundated with. And these days, we might need to get context out of the signals as there is a glut of great content out there. Let’s see how #dataviz can help.

The dataset

The latest @CBInsights newsletter had a great post about VCs and their investment into unicorns, that is startups that are valued at $1 billion or more. @CBInsights provided this chart of 8 Investors with at least 8 portfolio company valued at $1 billion.

While nice, it didn’t go beyond just listing them. Being a pattern guy, I wanted to understand how many of the startups were back by multple big VCs? Were their any big startups I had not heard about and which ones were “exclusive”.

First Pass : Context

To understand the relationship, I went ahead and leverage a chord diagram.

What became apparent quickly was that the majority of the billion dollar startup were in multiple investor portfolios. You could do that by simply glancing at the light gray borders and see where the long ones were.

While the aim was to understand the multiple investor to startup relationship, what stood out to me here, was the exclusive. The startup that was with only a single investor. Snapchat, Stripe are among a few of them. On the other spectrum, the startup Lookout which is with 4 investors came out of left field at least for me.

Second Pass : Color

While useful, I wanted users to have to work less to decipher the patterns and relationships. Enter colors.

This particular visualization was especially useful when looking at the startups to understand which investors had stakes in them as well as help shed some light into the complexity of the network.

What is next

On my list of next steps are:

• Finding ways to incorporate this into my weekly newsletter.
• Uploading the interactive version
• Getting feedback