Slideshow: Top 10 Largest First Rounds for Internet Companies this Year

[slideshow]
[slide title=”No. 10 (tie): Qwiki”]

Qwiki Inc.
Amount: $8.00M
Location: Palo Alto, Calif.
Description: Operates an online media platform.
Backers: Contour Venture Partners, Lerer Ventures, Tugboat Ventures, Undisclosed Investor

[slide title=”No. 10 (tie): Group Commerce”]

Group Commerce Inc.
Amount: $8.00M
Location: New York
Description: Operates as a group-buying and social commerce platform.
Backers: Carmel Ventures, Lerer Ventures, Spark Capital, Undisclosed Investor

[slide title=”No. 9: Plum District”]

Plum District Inc.
Amount: $8.50M
Location: San Francisco
Description: Operates as a daily deal Web site for moms.
Backers: General Catalyst Partners, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers

[slide title=”No. 8: Path”]

Path
Amount: $8.65M
Location: San Francisco
Description: Operates an online personal network.
Backers: Index Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Undisclosed Investor

[slide title=”No. 6 (tie): Sprout Social”]

Sprout Social
Amount: $10.00M
Location: Chicago
Description: Develops web application that integrates with social networking sites.
Backers: New Enterprise Associates

[slide title=”No. 6 (tie): uya100.com”]

uya100.com
Amount: $10.00M
Location: Beijing
Description: Operates as an online retailer of bedding & bathing products.
Backers: DCM, IDG Capital Partners

[slide title=”No. 5: Doximity”]

Doximity Inc.
Amount: $10.80M
Location: San Mateo, Calif.
Description: Operates a social networking site for healthcare professionals.
Backers: Emergence Capital Partners, InterWest Partners

[slide title=”No. 4: Rdio”]

Rdio Inc.
Amount: $17.50M
Location: San Francisco
Description: Provides streaming music services.
Backers: Atomico Ventures, Mangrove Capital Partners SA, 2 Undisclosed Investors

[slide title=”No. 3: TinyCo.com”]

TinyCo.com
Amount: $18.11M
Location: San Francisco
Description: Develops games that can be played on mobile devices.
Backers: Andreessen Horowitz, Undisclosed Investor

[slide title=”No. 2: Pet Holdings”]

Pet Holdings Inc.
Amount: $30M
Location: Seattle
Description: Operates as an online humor publisher. Runs sites like http://icanhascheezburger.com/, where people post funny photos of their cats.
Backers: Avalon Ventures, Foundry Group, Madrona Venture Group, SoftBank Capital

[slide title=”No. 1: Color”]

Color
Amount: $41.00M
Location: Palo Alto, Calif.
Description: Has created a social networking application that lets people share photos with their smartphones.
Backers: Bain Capital Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Silicon Valley Bank

[/slideshow]

Forty-one million dollars for an Internet company. That’s what Sequoia Capital, Bain Capital Ventures and Silicon Valley Bank invested in Color, which makes a social networking application that lets users share photos with their smartphones.

It’s an astonishing number. Financial blogger Paul Kedrosky tweeted: “Sequoia, et al gives pre-launch photo-sharing startup $41m, or ‘more than money than they gave Google’. That sound? Jaw hitting floor.”

I did some checking in Thomson Reuters’ VC deals database and as far as I can tell, the Color deal is the largest first round for an early stage Internet service, software or content company this year and the third largest in the past 10 years. To be clear, we’re talking about financings for startups, not mature companies.

The only two companies that raised more in the past 10 years were:

• Volera Inc., a San Jose, Calif.-based producer of content acceleration software, which raised $83 million in April 2001 from Accenture Technology Ventures, Nortel Networks and Novell; and
• 51tes.com, a China-based provider of online consumer information through mobile phones, which raised $65 million in May 2010 from Ruidian Capital Group and Zhongding Investment Co. Ltd.

For fun, I put together a slideshow of the 10 largest first rounds for early stage Internet service, software or content companies this year. Even if you don’t recognize all of the names of the companies, you will certainly recognize many of the names of the venture capital firms that did the deals. All of the data are from Thomson Reuters, publisher of this blog.