Finally, SOSV Gets Noticed
SOSV, the fund behind HAX was until recently a “B2B brand”. It creates and funds its own accelerators but rarely invests directly.
As a result, it wasn’t showing up clearly in rankings and databases and was flying under the radar… until recently. Our team worked on getting our 600+ investments listed, and finally (drumroll) SOSV came out of nowhere and became the №3 most active seed fund in the world. Ah! Databases.
There is no public ranking by category yet, but SOSV is likely the №1 global seed investor for both Life Sciences (IndieBio) and Hardware (HAX).
On top of being active, it’s also ranked №1 for seed investment in female-led startups (note: MassChallenge, while a great program, is non-profit and does not take equity).
Our data people also reported that our newest fund has over 300 founders from 55 countries:
- 45% from USA, 55% from outside (33% from emerging markets).
- Top 6 countries: USA, China, Canada, India, France and the UK
- Top 10 countries (out of 55) represented 76% of founders so there is quite a long tail.
It is probably fair to call SOSV a global investor.
Of course the real deal is cash-on-cash IRR, but we’ll need a bit more time since exits often take 7–8 years… Let’s say that our LPs seem pretty happy with the early IRR and that HAX just scored its 7th million-dollar Kickstarter (note: less than 100 happened since 2009 for technology projects — 2017 edit: we now have 11 out of 100 globally!). We’re looking into possible early IPOs — we’ll see.
For the rest, only time — with luck and effort — will tell!
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Originally published at sosv.com on September 28, 2016.
