In today’s dynamic, fast-evolving business landscape, new gaps in the market are opening up on a daily basis. In recent years, much of the innovation in the business world has stemmed from startup companies, capitalizing on the opportunities presented to them by the emergence of disruptive technologies such as the internet, social media, and mobile telecommunications.
You can tell a lot about the state of play in a technological society by looking at the types of companies that are being formed to cater for it. These are a reflection both of the opportunities that are being created for new enterprise, and the way that entrepreneurs are reacting to these opportunities.
New businesses do not exist in a vacuum, however. In many cases, they need significant investment in order to establish themselves, and this is contingent upon finding people to back them financially. This brings with it a dynamic of its own – the influence of venture capital on the types of business that are emerging, evidenced by the flow of funds from VC into startups at various stages of development.
This complex web of relationships between startups, venture capital, and founders may have been difficult, if not technically impossible, to discern just a few years ago. But with the advent of big data and online resources such as Crunchbase, an offshoot of top technology and business website TechCrunch that makes information about technology firms publicly available, this information is now available to everyone.
Recently, online infographics and data visualization platform visual.ly has produced an interactive visual guide to the startup universe that displays all of this information in an easily accessible, interactive format. The many thousands of startups are divided into sub-sectors, with the numbers of startups giving an indication of the areas of tech that are seeing the greatest growth and innovation at the present time.
Source: Visual.ly
Clicking on any of the sub-sectors provides a drop-down menu of the startups in that sector, although with many of the categories running into the thousands, it’s probably easier to search for the company you are interested in via the search box. Once you have selected a company, you will be presented with a visualisation the company’s history of funding, with lines pointing off to the founders and venture capital companies and the point at which they entered the picture.
From here, you can click on any of the founders or venture capital firms to see what else they are involved in. The guide can also be searched by VC company or founder to reveal the same information. By using this guide, you can see how the worlds of startups, VC, and founders are connected, revealing a universe of business stories – and perhaps discovering potential sources of funding for your own business.
I am a writer based in London, specialising in finance, trading, investment, and forex. Aside from the articles and content I write for IntelligentHQ, I also write for euroinvestor.com, and I have also written educational trading and investment guides for various websites including tradingquarter.com. Before specialising in finance, I worked as a writer for various digital marketing firms, specialising in online SEO-friendly content. I grew up in Aberdeen, Scotland, and I have an MA in English Literature from the University of Glasgow and I am a lead musician in a band. You can find me on twitter @pmilne100.
