From The Editor’s Desk: How We’re Covering The Head-Spinning, Record-Smashing Startup World in 2021

Global venture investment halfway through 2021? A record-breaking $288 billion.

IPO deal volume this year? Also a record, at $80 billion. 

Startup acquisitions? Yep, they’re on a tear, too.

Unicorn startups? Now valued at $3 trillion globally — another record.

Funding to cybersecurity startups? All-time high. 

Ditto for venture funding to HR startups, autotech startups, proptech startups, spacetech startups — you name it, if it’s a remotely promising sector that benefits from tech innovation, odds are VCs are throwing piles of money at it.

Unopened story pitches in my inbox? Somewhere north of a trillion.

OK, that last one may be a little hyperbolic. But like many journalists covering private companies, I have found myself struggling lately to keep up with the dizzying pace of dealmaking in the startup world. There are simply too many deals and dollars to write about.

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While it’s exciting to see investors competing to fund promising ideas at an unprecedented rate — especially since that funding is starting to be distributed more equitably, as we’ve reported in our Something Ventured project — these head-spinning sums of money also require more clarity and focus from those of us covering this industry in a serious way. 

That’s why, as journalists reporting and writing on the booming startup economy, we’re recommitting ourselves at Crunchbase News to doing unique, valuable reporting that best serves our readers. 

You’ll see that focus come through in a few ways.

Fewer funding stories

We believe quality trumps quantity. We write fewer stories than most of our competitors because we prefer to put our limited reporting resources into deeply reported and researched articles that are backed up by data and sourcing. 

In practical terms, that means you’ll see that we’ve largely moved away from writing about individual funding rounds. It’s not valuable — for you or for us — when we write about the same funding deal as every other tech publication or when that story is essentially a regurgitation of a press release.

Of course, Crunchbase itself is a comprehensive and ever-growing repository of information on millions of private companies, funding deals, investors and the like, and it’s largely built out by the very community of entrepreneurs and investors who read our news coverage. The best and easiest way to make sure a funding deal is known to the Crunchbase community is to add it to the company’s profile. (You can read about how to do that here.)

More data reporting and analyses

As we’ve moved away from writing one-off funding deal stories, we have more resources to do the kind of data-driven analyses that best serve our readers. 

Much of our reporting is built around the rich Crunchbase dataset that we’re fortunate enough to have front-row access to. 

It’s through analysis of that data that we’ve been able to identify trends such as renewed investor interest in automation startups amid national labor shortages, a surge in funding to startups serving older adults, or VC money starting to trickle into startups that address menopause issues, an estimated $600 billion market.

Likewise, we’ve also found that Tiger Global Management — the most active startup investor in the world over the past year — is increasing its already furious dealmaking pace 10x this year.

Crunchbase data showed us that funding to Black startup entrepreneurs in the U.S. is at an all-time high this year, although it remains a tiny fraction of the record VC funding invested in 2021. 

And our analysis of Crunchbase data has shown us that states like Michigan, North Carolina and Georgia have seen the fastest increases in venture capital in the past five years.

Deeper sourcing and subject-matter expertise

When they’re not doing data analysis, Crunchbase News reporters spend much of their time talking to investors, founders and others in the startup world to gain further insight into emerging trends and sectors. 

Each reporter on staff covers a handful of industries in-depth and aims to be a subject-matter expert on those beats. You can see who covers what here, and find contact information for each of us if you’d like to pitch a story idea, offer feedback on our coverage, or simply just set up a time to chat about what’s interesting.

While we can’t cover every deal that comes through, we remain intensely interested in how entrepreneurs are building their companies and how investors are choosing their next bets. We’re also committed to highlighting underrepresented founders and funders and bringing more of their stories to light. 

As always, feel free to reach out to me directly with thoughts, ideas or questions about Crunchbase News — what we should be covering more of, less of, or anything in between. You can reach me at mvanromburgh@crunchbase.com or on Twitter at @marlizevr.

Marlize van Romburgh is Crunchbase News’ editor in chief. 

Illustration: Dom Guzman