Are Sequoia, Accel, and Andreessen Horowitz the smartest VCs in the West?

Who are the smartest VCs of them all? One way to judge it is to see who invested early in companies that achieve high valuations, which may lead to IPOs and big exits.

A new analysis by venture capital research firm CBInsights on 588 VC-backed tech companies in the US with valuations of US$100 million or more has some interesting pointers to who may be the savviest investors in the West. (It should be pointed out though that startup valuation is an inexact science.)

Going by the number of companies in their portfolios which may be in the pipeline for IPOs – based on their valuations according to CBInsights – the top three investors are Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Sequoia Capital, and Accel Partners. But here’s the twist: KPCB mostly invested mid-stage, whereas Andreessen Horowitz mostly invested at the seed and series A stages. Sequoia and Accel too had many more Series A investments among the jewels in their bags than KPCB.

Sequoia also tops the list for investors with the most portfolio companies in the billion dollar valuation club. Airbnb, Dropbox, and Eventbrite are among the 11 unicorns in the Sequoia portfolio, five of which it got into at the first or second round of investment. Accel has been the smartest on this score, having invested early in five of the seven unicorns in its portfolio – Cloudera, Dropbox, and Lookout being the most valued ones.

From the Asian point of view, Accel is especially active in India. It was the first institutional investor to pump money into India’s unicorn Flipkart. It put in US$1 million in October 2009. It participated in three more rounds, including the big US$1 billion funding round in July. Myntra, another Accel portfolio company, merged with Flipkart in May at a valuation of US$343.2 million. Accel had participated in all the funding rounds for Myntra starting in 2008. Another Indian startup star in Accel’s portfolio is cloud-based customer support platform Freshdesk. Accel was the only investor in Freshdesk’s series A funding round in 2011. It invested US$1 million then. Accel participated in all funding rounds for Freshdesk since then, including its latest series D round of US$31 million in June.

Asia is a big focus for Sequoia too. In May this year, Sequoia Capital announced a new US$530 million fund focused on investments in India and more broadly, Asia. It has large sums of capital to deploy in Asia from its different funds like Sequoia Capital, Sequoia Capital India, Sequoia Capital China, and Sequoia Capital Israel.

Watch out for Khosla Ventures, Insight Venture Partners, Founders Fund

Andreessen Horowitz also figures prominently in the unicorn club, with nine of its portfolio companies making the cut, including such prominent names as Airbnb, Pinterest, wearable tech startup Jawbone, and sports apparel website Fanatics. Surprisingly, for an investor who likes to get in early, only two of its nine unicorns were early stage investments. Perhaps the hidden value of the Andreessen Horowitz portfolio will emerge stronger next year.

Among the investors to watch out for next year will also be Khosla Ventures, Insight Venture Partners, and the Founders Fund, which have just broken into the CBInsights list of top 20 VCs with most companies in the IPO pipeline.