Earlier this week, I noted with a bit of disappointment how no Seattle-area companies made the recent Wall Street Journal/Dow Jones Venture Source list of privately-held tech companies with values topping $1 billion. In the post, I noted how the Seattle region exhausted its bench a bit in 2013 when Tableau Software and Zulily went public at multi-billion dollar valuations. (Yes, a good problem to have, I know).
Now, here’s some evidence of just how big those IPOs were.
According to an analysis by CB Insights, Zulily and Tableau were two of the five biggest venture-backed exits of the year. Zulily, with a market value now topping $5 billion, ranked second just behind Twitter. Meanwhile, Tableau, the data visualization company with a market value of more than $4 billion, came in fifth behind Veeva Systems and FireEye.
In fact, Washington state performed relatively well in terms of venture-backed exits in 2013, counting 25. That was almost double the total in 2012, and pushed the state into the fourth spot ahead of Texas.
Interestingly, Washington was the only state in the top five to see an increase in exits compared to 2012. In fact, nationally M&A levels dropped five percent for venture-backed companies.
Of course, exits — acquisitions or IPOs — are a good measure of the strength of a startup community since it indicates that entrepreneurs are building something of value that someone else wants.
While there might not be as deep of a bench coming up behind Tableau and Zulily, there are still some big things happening, including the sale earlier this moth of EagleView Technology Corp. for $650 million. And there could be some other IPOs in the cards, perhaps Apptio, Redfin or Trupanion.
Here’s a look at the exit breakdown by state.
