FirstMark Capital Success Story

Key Results:

• Comprehensive and complete view of markets and companies by geography and industry

• Improved efficiency and collaboration across the team

Founded in 2008, FirstMark is a leading early-stage venture firm based in New York City. The firm is known not just for its remarkable investment track record, but its community and ecosystem-building efforts. FirstMark is focused on early-stage investments, with more than 60 active portfolio companies and $1.5B under management.

FirstMark has made a commitment to building a deeply engaged support network for its portfolio companies. The firm has developed in-house software, hosts more than 100 annual events and maintains a suite of resources to help accelerate the success of their portfolio, connecting companies with talent, customers and expertise.

In an effort to stoke the tech ecosystem at large, the firm also organizes four flagship monthly events (Data Driven, Design Driven, Hardwired, and Code Driven). These public events reach a fast-growing community of 30,000+ members and feature some of the most prominent technologists and industry leaders.

A way to take their market analysis to the next level

FirstMark’s robust community efforts, coupled with the firm’s track record and network, provide access to quality deal flow, but the firm wanted a way to continuously and programmatically monitor emerging companies and categories.

They wanted a software solution to accelerate these activities because, as early-stage investors in the ever-evolving tech space, a scalable data-driven solution was the only way to keep a holistic pulse on emerging categories and market trends.

With this in mind, they were looking for a platform that could provide them with the ability to:

• Discover and track emerging companies
• See funding events in real-time
• Get insight into nascent industry trends and markets

“We were looking for comprehensive data to ensure we could break down and analyze the segments that matter to FirstMark. We needed the ability to quickly query and interpret the data. CB Insights was the right choice as a result.”

– Dan Kozikowski

CB Insights drives their evaluation of market trends

FirstMark now uses CB Insights to support these activities. They use the Deal Search capability, filtering by investment stage, to understand the financing landscape for potential investments and their competition. And they use Industry Analytics to keep an eye on the industries most relevant to their interests. Using filters, they are able to get a comprehensive view of activity in specific spaces, based on geography and industry — and to set up feeds to make ongoing analysis simple and entirely automated.

Over time, CB Insights has become a crucial part of FirstMark’s market research and deal diligence processes, giving the firm a data-driven understanding of the many industries they track. With so much activity in the world of early-stage investing, they look to CB Insights as the go-to resource to understand macro-level trends.

“CB Insights is an important part of our process. It advances our ability to evaluate opportunities and stay ahead of the game in our knowledge of the startup and tech landscape.”

– Amish Jani