LA's biggest year for startups. Y Combinator's $35B startups. Germany tech hits $1.1B.

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California love

Hello there,

We're excited to launch our first-ever LA Venture Capital Report with our friends and customers at Upfront Ventures today. Mark Suster described it on his blog as "The best data you'll find on the LA Tech Market". Couldn't have said it better.

BTW, you should read the last paragraph of his post. As they used to say back in my day, "it is money".

Of course, do that right after you download the LA report.

Andreessen Horowitz's Chris Dixon predicts NYC unicorns

Chris Dixon highlighted some of the companies he thinks are future NYC unicorns. Unicorns, for the newbies on our newsletter, are private companies with a valuation at or above $1 billion. We used our Mosaic private company ratings to highlight 15 companies that look to be trending in the right direction to be future NYC unicorns.

Let us know in the comments who else you think should be on the list (or not on the list).

Certain lines should not be crossed

I have an insane week of demos with prospective clients next week. If you are a doing a demo with me and must be distracted, the only thing I ask is that you not be doing #4 on the list below.

Thank you.

If you want to schedule a demo of CB Insights and promise not to be doing #4 when we talk, please email me.

I got 99 unicorns

You've got no idea how long I've waited to type that.

Earlier this week, at the Collision Conference, KPMG and CB Insights issued a list of all 99 unicorn companies. Since publishing, the list has already grown by two. Check it out.

Truth

Thanks,
Anand
@asanwal

The most valuable Y Combinator startups
Yesterday, Zenefits raised a huge new round at a $4.5B valuation. Together, Y Combinator's most valuable companies are worth over $35B. See the list.

New billion-dollar startups for Union Square Ventures
In the last month, Funding Circle and Twilio reportedly raised funding at billion-dollar valuations. Both are portfolio startups of USV, which has notched a billion-dollar exit in each of the last five years.

CB Insights Top Deal Searches

CB Insights users can query our database in powerful ways. See a few below or sign up free:

Germany's tech scene had its biggest quarter in 4 years

VC-backed German tech companies raised over $1.1B in Q1'15, as both deals and total funding reached multi-year highs. See the data.

Completing Chris Dixon's list of future unicorns

Andreessen Horowitz's Chris Dixon made headlines at TC Disrupt that there will be at least 10 NY companies valued at $1B+ in five years. Here are 15 possible future unicorns in NY.

Why 2014 was the best year for yet for LA startups and VCs

LA tech is seeing more late-stage deals and a rapid rise in mobile as a key sector. Produced with Upfront Ventures, get the full 37-slide 2014 LA Tech Venture Capital Report.

The Blurb

A curated mix of articles on tech, media, what's next and recent news.

The price of nice nails. Extremely detailed investigative piece into why the cheap prices of manicures in NYC isn't market efficiency...it's worker exploitation.

New York Times

The dawn of artificial intelligence. The Economist on how to ensure the promise of AI outweighs the perils.

The Economist

The data science revolution. Google's Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen on the broad societal impact of data analysis.
Huffington Post

A teenager's view on life and virality. In January, college student Andrew Watts published a teenager's view on social media. Here's how the blog post changed his life.
Medium

The post-70 generation. Jack Ma's employee memo on Alibaba's new generation of leaders and grand ambitions in the next 5-10 years.
WSJ

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