Firm Selection

The Future List includes firms that met these criteria.

1. Based in United States
2. Early-Stage Technology Focus
   We selected firms making Series A and Series B stage investments, but did not exclude any investors that extend to growth stage products.
3. Active Firms
   Active was defined as any firm that has raised a new fund in the past five years or that are building their portfolio with new investments. We used publicly available material and Pitchbook.
4. Largest Firms
   We set $275 million in assets under management (AUM) as the minimum for inclusion, using data from Pitchbook and Mattermark.
5. High Mindshare
   We recognize that a number of firms may not meet the minimum threshold of AUM but may still command a lot of influence in the industry. Therefore, using Mattermark's Mindshare Score as a barometer, we included firms that ranked highly in Mindshare even if they ranked below $275M AUM.

The above criteria resulted in a list of 72 firms representing over $170B in AUM.

People Selection

While a great many people work in the venture capital industry, a much smaller number of people are involved in making investment decisions.

General Partner or Managing Director who make investment decisions and/or represents the firm on the board of portfolio companies. We also include venture partners and board partners to the extent they are listed on the firm's website and are active in making investment decisions. We excluded team members based internationally to focus on team diversity within the U.S.

This process yielded a list of 581 investment team leaders across the 72 firms selected.

Gender & Ethnicity Scoring

We used a diversity index based on probability: the chance that any two people from one firm will be the same gender or ethnic background. The lower the score, the lower the diversity. This approach uses the same principle as the Simpson Index (ecology) and the Herfindahl Index (economics).

The ethnicity categories use the same definitions as the 2010 U.S. Census. While we acknowledge that there are many different gender options, for this study, participants identified as either male or female.

Age Scoring

We based the score on how the age of individual team members compares to the “power alley,” the age range of 35 to 46 where our analysis shows VC investment team managers are most effective. We calculated that by looking at a list of the VC-backed companies that had gone public or been sold at big profits to the VC firm owners, as compiled by VentureSource. We then identified the partner involved in each of these companies’ original Series A or Series B rounds. It turned out that 60% of the top Series A and B rounds with the largest exits were led by partners between the ages of 35 and 46 years old at the time of the investment.

Furthermore, from the results we can glean that approximately 80% of these deals were done by individuals under the age of 46.

For scoring purposes, anyone in the 35 to 46 age range received a perfect score of 10. Before 35 (to a minimum of 22) and after 46 (to a maximum of 65) a decreased score was given. In order to account for the greater future potential of those below the age of 35 (as they have not yet reached the primary age grouping), we decreased the value of scores allotted below 35 linearly and the scores above 46 exponentially. The firm-wide age score is the simple average of the individual age scores of its members.

Overall Score

We believe that Gender, Ethnicity, and Age are equally relevant variables in evaluating a firm's future relevance. Therefore, the Overall Score is calculated through a simple average of each of the above scores.

Other Definitions & Notes

We gathered data from publicly available sources, such as LinkedIn and firms’ web sites. We share each firm’s data with the firm and welcomed updates, corrections and comments. Many firms corrected our data. Some did not respond.

The Top Tech Company comparable is an average of publicly available diversity data regarding leadership teams for seven of today’s top technology firms: Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, and Yahoo.