Venture Capital Intelligence

An organization is confirmed when its own SEC Form ADV claims the venture capital fund adviser exemption (Item 2.B(1) or (3)) and reports at least one private fund of type Venture Capital Fund on Schedule D 7.B.(1). It is probable on one of those facts, or when it is a registered adviser reporting venture funds. It is a candidate on a name, a Form D fund stem or a mention in a round, and candidates are never counted as coverage. The class (institutional, micro, seed, multi-stage, growth, corporate, accelerator, studio, angel, syndicate, university, government, PE with venture activity) comes from scale and shape: reported gross asset value, the vehicle families, a corporate owner on Schedule A, the site’s own words. Never from fame.

A firm is not a fund. Every vehicle the SEC has seen is its own node with its own reporting tape: the adviser’s Form ADV names it with a stable fund id and reports its gross asset value and owner count on every annual filing since 2011, and its Form D file number (Schedule D 7.B.(1).A.22) is the join to the Form D vehicle, so the two records are one fund when the SEC says they are. People are nodes with roles that start and end. Companies are nodes that investors, rounds and directors attach to.

Five numbers, kept apart: target (what the manager set out to raise), first and final close (committed capital, only from an announcement or an LP disclosure), Form D offering (what may be sold; “indefinite” is printed as such), Form D sold (what had been sold at the filing), and GAV (what the fund held when the adviser last filed). A target is never a close. GAV is never dry powder. Each prints with its basis and unknown where the record is silent.

The fundraising state is read from evidence, first match wins: final close or first close when an announcement said so, with its date and amount; raise announced for a stated target or launch within 24 months and no close; evergreen or indefinite when the latest Form D states an indefinite offering and was filed or amended within 15 months; active offering evidence when a Form D filed or amended within 15 months states an offering amount and less than all of it sold (the vehicle is permitted to sell; this is not a claim that it is in market); closed to new capital when the latest Form D reports the whole stated offering sold; unknown otherwise, including a Form D older than 15 months. The basis prints on the fund page with its numbers named. The “raising” filter means first close, raise announced or active offering evidence, never the lifecycle state alone. An adviser’s vehicles carry their whole Form D history from the file number the adviser reports on Schedule D 7.B.(1), back to 2015.

From evidence only: FUNDRAISING when a Form D was filed within 18 months and the offering is not sold out; NEWLY_CLOSED when the first sale was within 24 months and the Form D is sold out or quiet; then EARLY, ACTIVE, MATURE and HARVEST by vintage (2, 4 and 7 years); WOUND_DOWN when the fund stops appearing on the adviser’s ADV while the adviser keeps filing; UNKNOWN when there is no vintage and no recent Form D. The factors are printed on the fund page.

An edge is one investor on one company: from a round (an announcement naming the investor), from a portfolio listing (the firm’s own page, undated until a dated source says when), from a Form D board seat (a director who resolves to exactly one investment professional on the graph, labelled an inference), or from a related-person filing. The round size is the whole round and is never divided among participants. An investor’s own amount is printed only when a source disclosed it for that investor. Check-size ranges appear only when the firm states them on its site.

Only when a source names the person on that deal: confirmed for a quote or a board appointment in the announcement or a credit on the firm’s own portfolio page; strongly supported for a Form D director who resolves to one investment professional, or a firm-level sponsor statement; unknown otherwise. A firm’s investments are never spread across all its partners.

Form ADV Schedule A lists every owner, officer, general partner and control person with the month the role began and a stable owner id, on every filing; a person on one filing and absent on a later one has left, and the graph says when. Team pages add titles the filing does not carry. A person absent from a team page they were on before is an inference, and printed as one.

Two different investors on the same round, or on the same company via portfolio listings. Counted from deals the graph has seen both on, never from a website’s prose about “the firms we invest with”. Strength bands are visible thresholds: 2 shared deals is recurring, 4 is strong, 8 is very strong.

Stated is what the firm’s site says: sectors, stages, geography, check range, each with the sentence. Observed is what the deals on record show: stage at participation, stage at first entry, sectors, lead rate, follow-on rate, cadence. When they diverge the profile says so. Observed needs a sample; a firm with three deals on record is not summarised as if it had three hundred.

SEC Form ADV (the monthly roster, the 2011 to 2024 filing extract, per-firm PDFs) and SEC Form D are public domain. Firm websites and press releases are read for facts with a short quote as evidence and a link back; robots.txt is honoured and the page is never republished. Competitor databases are benchmarks only and are registered as prohibited sources. The coverage page lists every source with its determination.

No fund size from a Form D offering amount. No dry powder from GAV or RAUM. No check size from a round size. No partner attribution by spreading a firm’s deals across its team. No LP relationship without a public disclosure and a quote. No email guessed from a domain pattern. No merge of two entities on a similar name; only a shared identifier, an official other-name list or a citation. No return, IRR or multiple, ever.