This post uses publicly available data on Crunchbase and has elicited a strong response from the tech community in general. I am making corrections as I receive them and you can scroll to the bottom of the post to see a full list of my changes. The list has been updated to read in alphabetical order, and I have posted a follow up bug report on the data and methodology.

I am going to say what most investors and many savvy entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley know but aren’t saying: just as there are zombie startups, there are zombie VCs out there and they walk among us. These are partners at venture firms who are 3-5 years into investing their fund, don’t have very strong results so far, and are struggling to raise new funds. These investors are not doing new deals, opting instead to use their remaining capital to double-down in follow on rounds with their existing portfolio, but in some cases they’re taking meetings anyway.

How to Spot a Zombie VC When Raising Your Series A

In the same way at a VC will often send you to an associate because they’re “too nice” to say no, zombies will meet with you and make you feel like you’re making progress on the fundraising path, but can ultimately wind up being a huge waste of time. Since you don’t have your own associate to pass them off on, you need to watch for the warning signs yourself and ruthlessly protect your precious time. You’re here to raise money and get back to work, not make friends.

• They haven’t made any series A investments in the past 6 months
• They haven’t invested outside their existing portfolio in the past 3 months
• They haven’t made ANY investment in the past 3 months (after a more regular pace in the past)
• They tell you they’re re-focusing on later stage deals, or raising a new fund

Once you have identified that you may be meeting with a zombie it can be frustrating, but what you need to understand is that just like Bruce Willis in the 6th Sense zombies usually don’t realize they’re dead. Politely complete the meeting and update your spreadsheet accordingly when you get home. If they contact you to set up another meeting or request that you send over your deck it is appropriate to ask them how serious they are about doing new deals before you provide more information (decks get emailed around) or offer up more of your time.

If the investor seems angry with you for asking about their (lack of) recent Series A this is a red flag.

You have every right to do your due diligence on them. On to the next one.

Doing the Diligence

In my previous post, I listed the most active Series A investors, and my advice to entrepreneurs was to start by pitching investors you know are actually doing Series A.

This is a list of funds who may be doing deals, have participated in Series A in the past, but have not publicly done a Series A in 6 months or more. The data is sourced from Crunchbase and includes investors who have previously participated in a Series A investment which was publicly announced, but not in the past 6 months. It includes active institutional investors as far back as January 1, 2012 who have participating in lifetime total deals of $20,000,000 or more (to reduce inclusion of angel funds). The list is sorted by total deal participation size, to show the most well-known investors first. Some of these investors are late stage in general, so they’re probably not great to pitch for your first round of venture funding but that doesn’t mean they’re not doing well overall.

Investors, have you been included in this list in error? Please let me know about a Series A deal you’ve done in the past 6 months (I don’t need the details, just your word) so I can get you off this list and onto the active Series A investors list. My email is morrilldanielle (at) gmail.com

Editor’s Notes: Updated to clarify that the Crunchbase data set only includes publicly announced investments.

I’m updating the list as I learn more from the community, and many investors below have been moved to the active Series A investor list.

I would like to express my appreciation to O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, MMC Ventures, Lightbank, Kepha Partners, Paladin Capital Group, Mercury Fund, Neu Venture Capital, Shasta Ventures, Genesis Partners, Magma Venture Partners, Kima Ventures, Greylock Ventures Israel, Softbank Capital, Carmel Ventures and Emergence Capital Partners for reaching out to provide data and help me confirm they are currently actively doing Series A deals in recent months. I have also removed late stage investors who do not typically do Series A deals, seed funds that do not do Series A, and biotech focused investors as I identify them.

Big thank you also goes to Shira Abel, who has been reaching out to Israeli VCs to get them updated and on the active list.

According to investments reported in the Crunchbase database, this winter investment dollars flowing to startup companies reached low point not seen since May 2009.

Even more concerning, on Monday the National Venture Capital Association reported that venture-backed IPO exits fell to a 3 year low in the first quarter of 2013, while M&A was at its lowest point since 1995.

According to the article:

The number of venture-backed IPO exits during the first quarter of 2013 fell 58 percent compared to the first quarter of last year. For the first quarter of 2013, 77 venture-backed M&A deals were reported, 10 of which had an aggregate deal value of $984.3 million, a 73 percent decrease from the first quarter of 2012. This marks the slowest quarter for number of disclosed deals since the first quarter of 1995*, when eight disclosed deals were completed.

“First quarter IPO and acquisitions activity is often subdued as year-end reporting and forward planning take priority, but this year political, taxation, and sequestration concerns weighed even more heavily on the exit market for emerging growth companies. Therefore, activity was especially slow,” said John Taylor, head of research for NVCA. “That said, public market valuations have been up recently, 2012 financial statements are being finalized now, and quality companies tell us they are starting the process toward an exit later in the year. Despite having waited for the right opportunity to move forward, the 2013 class of companies that goes public or gets acquired will have to be solid. Barring significantly adverse events, we expect stronger volume in the second and third quarters.”

*emphasis added

I’m unclear why the tech press did not report on this, and can only speculate they were too busy curating lists of April Fools Day pranks to notice. Or maybe they thought this was a bad joke from the NVCA?

Over the past few weeks I’ve been indexing groups of startups, starting with the Y Combinator index and 500 Startups index. I’ve received a lot of requests for other indexes, and the company whose portfolio everyone wanted to look at was that of the Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.

Portfolio Overview

Andreessen Horowitz has an impressive list of exited companies in 3 IPOs (Facebook, Groupon, Zynga) and 3 acquisition from high profile companies: Nicira (acquired by VMWare), Instagram (acquired by Facebook), and Skype (acquired by Microsoft).

For this post my research covers companies that have not yet exited.

Andreessen Horowitz Consumer Startup Index

Andreessen Horowitz Enterprise Startup Index

The enterprise index is entirely based on traffic at this point, since Facebook MAUs aren’t useful for this segment of companies. We are working on collecting more useful revenue / unit economics data for ranking these companies and know this does not accurately reflect their progress. For example Apptio is in the #31 spot but is preparing for a possible IPO.

Methodology

The index takes into account website traffic ranking globally, as provided by Alexa, along with a weighted average of Facebook monthly active users (MAUs). While traffic is only one part of the story, how it changes over time can provide a useful proxy for evaluating how the company’s reach and attention received from others. There are many other indicators of a companies health that I will take into consideration in future indexes, but for now this is presented as a very simple overview of the companies. I split apart the consumer vs. enterprise companies to make it more of an apples to apples comparison.

I have also included Quantcast rankings, as many people seem to think they are more credible. Overall I found their data set had too many gaps to be useful, although we may weigh it into the average in the future.

Editor’s Note: This is the first index of this portfolio so it does not show each company’s change in rankings over time. I will show that in the next index of this portfolio, one month from now.

Missing Companies

These companies are taken from the AH website, Crunchbase, AngelList and other public announcements. If I missed something please let me know in the comments or email me at danielle (at) refer.ly