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February 13, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Over $1.3 billion in open source venture capital
Robin Vasan and I have been working together to figure out how much money has been invested in open source startups. The (tentative) number?
$1.3 billion in the last five years.
That's an amazing sum of money, and one that is only just now starting to pay off. Yes, we have Red Hat's IPO, and the Sourcefire, Sleepycat, JBoss, and Zend acquisitions, but the real money is yet to be made.
(Btw, this number is not yet comprehensive, as I'm missing VA Linux/Software, Red Hat, early SUSE rounds, as well as some of the rounds of others that are on the list we're compiling. And we've applied a fairly tight definition for "open source company," such that the Web 2.0 companies and their ilk aren't in the list.)
Posted by Matt Asay on February 13, 2006 08:37 AM
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In the spirit of open source, it would be very interesting to see the raw data that you and Robin base your conclusions upon. I'm curious to see how the sums invested vary by time and by round number, for example. It would be especially interesting to see the pre- and post-money valuations for each of the rounds, but that's probably too much to ask!
Posted by: Mike Olson at February 13, 2006 09:47 AMI'd be happy to share that data with you, Mike. I didn't post it because that would make the posting very looooooonnnnnnnngggggggggg. I have some of the pre- and post-money valuation data, but very little. That's usually not reported....
Posted by: Matt Asay at February 13, 2006 09:52 AMI'd also love to see the raw data behind your number. I've been looking into the different business models of open source companies, and I'd be interested to see how they correspond to venture funding.
Posted by: Charles Miller at February 13, 2006 11:02 AM
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