Instagram later went on to take funding in a round led by a rival top-tier firm, Benchmark Capital.
From small businesses to large enterprises, adopting a hyperconverged data space is slowly becoming the benchmark of top-tier companies, regardless of industry.
While some firms haven't been able to survive in the top-tier, post-Andreessen Horowitz generation, Benchmark has remained consistent in its ability to bet on the right entrepreneurs and founders at an the early stage.
MeVC does share deal flow with Draper Fisher Jurvertson and some other top-tier venture capital firms like Benchmark Capital, Mayfield Fund and Venrock Associates, but none of its 16 tech-related portfolio companies has held an IPO, says meVC's chairman and co-founder Peter Freudenthal Peter Freudenthal.
To deconglomerate, he has created five divisions that will be benchmarked individually against top-tier competitors within each category.
To deconglomerate, he's created five divisions that will be benchmarked individually against top-tier competitors within each category.
Four years ago, a typical first round investment from a top-tier venture capital firm such as Benchmark Capital or Kleiner Perkins would be around $3 million.
"The top-tier Chinese firms are kind of the benchmark now," said Shayle Kann, a managing director of solar power studies at GTM Research, a renewable energy market analysis firm based in Boston.
Top-tier firms such as Sequoia, Accel, Kleiner Perkins, and Benchmark also score highly, as does First Round Capital and angel investor Ron Conway.
Michele Bachmann captured the famed Iowa Straw Poll in Ames Saturday, reaching a high-profile benchmark in her meteoric rise to a top-tier presidential candidate.
He has staked his reputation on the success of "top-tier" investigations, such as a global inquiry into the manipulation of interest rate benchmarks such as Libor, the London interbank offered rate benchmark rate used to price billions of financial instruments around the world.
