Database methodology
How the database is built.
Every row in the Institute’s database can be traced to the document it came from. This page explains where the records come from, how filings become firms, what each evidence label means, and the limits to keep in mind when you use it.
Colibrí Institute VC Database, counts as of September 21, 2026. The database updates every hour, so the live figures will differ.
What the database is
The database is an open record of the United States venture capital market, built from documents anyone can check. It is organized around five questions people ask when they raise or deploy capital: which firms back companies like mine, how a firm compares with its peers, what a firm has invested in, who sits on a company’s board, and which limited partners back funds like mine.
Each of those questions is a view in the database. Every row can be opened to show the evidence behind it and a link to the filing, report or page it was read from. You can search, filter and sort any view, and export exactly what is on screen.
The database is separate from the research behind our white papers. Those papers analyze a fund-level performance sample licensed from PitchBook as part of doctoral research. The database is collected independently from regulatory filings and public statements, and it stores no licensed vendor data. Figures from one should not be read as figures from the other.
Sources
SEC filings, limited partners’ own published reports, and what firms and allocators publish on their own websites. Each is labelled wherever it appears.
Updates
New filings are collected daily and the public views refresh every hour.
Reuse
The database is free to use. Please cite it with the date you accessed it.
Sources
Where the records come from
Most of the database comes from two filings that private funds and companies make with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The rest comes from limited partners’ own reports and from what firms and allocators say about themselves on their own sites.
- SEC Form D
- The notice a fund or company files when it sells securities privately. A fund’s Form D gives its size, how much it has sold, how many investors it has admitted, its minimum investment and the people who sign it. A company’s Form D describes a financing round and names its directors. We read every Form D filed since January 2009, with every amendment.
- SEC Form ADV
- The adviser registration filed by investment advisers, including the exempt reporting advisers most emerging venture managers file as. It gives assets under management, fund counts and, uniquely among filings, the firm’s own website. We read the full monthly roster.
- Limited partners’ reports
- Public pensions are required by law to publish their private markets holdings. We read these reports directly for the commitments they record: which fund, how much and which vintage.
- Firms’ own websites
- What a venture firm publishes about itself: the companies it names in its portfolio, its team and partners. Kept word for word with the page and the date we read it, and always labelled as the firm’s own statement.
- Limited partners’ own websites
- What an allocator says it invests in, how it defines an emerging manager, how it asks to be approached, and the managers it names as ones it backs, quoted with the page it came from.
- Press coverage
- News headlines about limited partners’ fund commitments. Press is listed separately as a headline and a link. It helps us find allocators to read, and it never adds to a count.
- Public rosters
- Lists published by organizations that name women and underrepresented general partners. A roster entry is that organization’s statement. It reaches a firm only when the person it names appears on the firm’s own filings, and only after a person on our team confirms the match.
From filings to firms
Filings arrive one legal entity at a time, and a single manager may file dozens of vehicles under different names. Before the database can say anything about a firm, it has to decide which filings belong together and which ones describe a fund at all.
- Funds, not deal vehicles
- Every issuer is classified once as a fund, a special purpose vehicle, an operating company or another kind of entity. Special purpose vehicles, which raise money for a single deal, are left out of every fund figure: vehicle counts, filing counts and capital raised count pooled funds only.
- Families
- A manager’s vehicles are grouped into one family by a consistent rule applied to their names, and a parent’s vehicles are grouped under it only when the same small group of people signs them. Records are never merged because they look alike; a possible match waits for a person to confirm it.
- Venture firms
- The Firms view lists families whose filings identify them as venture managers, or whose own site does where the filings do not say. Wealth managers running a venture vehicle for clients are left out.
Emerging
The Firms view applies the Institute’s published definition. A firm is emerging if it meets any one of four criteria: less than $100 million in assets under management; a current fund that is Fund I, II or III; a management firm less than five years old; or a founding team that includes women or otherwise underrepresented general partners.
How each criterion is read
Assets come from Form ADV where the manager files one. Fund sequence is not counted for a side vehicle raised inside an established firm, while a true spin-out keeps it. Firm age is dated from the first sale of the firm’s first fund. The fourth criterion comes only from a partner’s own public statement or a confirmed roster entry. A blank means the evidence has not been found, not that it is absent.
Activity
Raising: a fund is on file that has not yet reported a first sale. Deploying: a fund filed within two years. Quiet: the last fund filing is two to five years old. Dormant: no fund filing in five years.
Definitions
The emerging manager definition is explained in full with the research.
Read data and methodsEvidence
Two kinds of evidence, never blended
A company tied to a firm by a filing and a company a firm names on its own website are different kinds of fact. Both are useful, so the database keeps both, labels every row with the kind it is, and never adds them together into one count.
Filed
Read from a document filed with a regulator or published by a limited partner as required by law. A filed row carries the figures that document gives, such as dates, amounts and investor counts.
Examples: a company’s own Form D; a pension’s published commitments.
Stated
What a firm or an allocator says about itself on its own website, quoted with the page it came from. A stated row has no filing behind it, so the filing columns stay empty.
Examples: a firm’s portfolio page; an allocator’s emerging manager programme page.
Evidence labels · What each one means
| Label | Where you see it | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Filed with the SEC | Companies | Every figure comes from the company’s own Form D filings. |
| Named by a firm | Companies | A venture firm names the company on its own site. No filing ties them. |
| City and state match | Deals, Board seats | The director on the company’s filing matches the manager’s signatory on city and state, and is a director rather than an executive. |
| State matches | Deals, Board seats | The same match, on state only. Weaker than a city and state match. |
| Firm’s site confirms | Deals, Board seats | The filing match holds, and the firm’s own page also names the company. |
| Firm site, company found in filings | Deals | The firm names a company that has filed a Form D of its own. |
| Firm site, links the company | Deals | The firm’s page links to the company’s own website. |
| Firm site, company page | Deals | The firm’s site has a page about the company. |
| Firm site, named on its portfolio page | Deals | The firm names the company on a portfolio listing. |
| The limited partner’s own published report | Limited partners | Commitments with amounts and dates, read from the allocator’s report. |
| The limited partner’s own site | Limited partners | What the allocator says about itself and the managers it names. |
| The manager’s own site | Limited partners | A manager names this allocator as a backer. |
| Named in press coverage | Limited partners | A news headline names this allocator. Its own site has not been read yet. |
Portfolios and board seats
No filing lists a venture fund’s portfolio. The database reconstructs one in two ways and shows both.
- From filings
- When a person who signs a manager’s fund filing is also named as a director on a company’s Form D, we record a board seat. A deal is one firm, one company and one board member. Its entry date is the company raise closest to the seat, and follow-on figures count only raises filed after it.
- From the firm’s own site
- Firms publish far more of their portfolio than filings reveal. A name on a firm’s site counts only with evidence beyond the words themselves: it links to the company’s own site, has a page of its own, appears in the filings, is named by other firms as a company, or sits on a genuine portfolio listing. Menu items, section headings, legal pages and link text are set aside.
- How companies are named
- A company is shown by its name, taken from the firm’s page when it reads as one and otherwise from the company’s own site. When several vehicles of one firm carry the same page, the company appears once, under the firm.
Counts are floors
Filings tie only about two companies to each firm on average, because most portfolio companies never file a Form D naming a partner as director. The firm-site count fills much of that gap, but the rule that removes menu words also misses some real names. Both counts are floors.
No dates on stated rows
A website rarely says when an investment was made or how large it was, so firm-site rows carry no dates or amounts.
Limited partners
The Limited partners view is built for a manager raising a fund. One row is one allocator. Opening a row shows who else it has backed, with a link to each manager’s site, what it says it invests in, how it defines an emerging manager and how it asks to be approached, each in its own words.
- Amounts and dates
- These come only from a limited partner’s own published report. Public pensions publish commitments by law, which is why they carry the most detail.
- Recent activity
- An allocator that has not committed to a fund in three years is flagged, because it is unlikely to be a prospect for a fund raising now.
- Allocators only
- Placement agents, accelerators and industry networks are listed because managers meet capital through them. They do not commit capital themselves, so they are hidden until you turn off the Allocators only filter.
- New allocators
- The list grows as allocators are found in reports, on managers’ sites and in press coverage. An allocator found only in press is labelled that way until its own site is read, and a name that may duplicate one already listed waits for a person to review it.
What the database leaves out, on purpose
- Licensed vendor data
- No data from PitchBook, Crunchbase, Dealroom, Tracxn, CB Insights or LinkedIn is stored. The block is enforced in the database itself.
- Returns reported by managers
- No return, multiple or valuation that a manager reports about itself appears anywhere in the database.
- Inferred demographics
- Nothing about a person’s gender, race or ethnicity is ever inferred from a name or a photograph. It is recorded only from that person’s own public statement or a confirmed public roster.
- Automatic merges
- Two records are not combined into one firm or one allocator without a person confirming it. The one exception is fund families that share a website of their own, which are treated as one firm. We would rather show a firm twice than merge two firms that are different.
- Rankings
- The database describes firms and allocators. It does not rank or rate them.
- Guesses
- A figure we cannot trace to a source is left empty rather than estimated or filled with an average.
Limitations
Keep these in mind when you use a figure, and quote them with it.
- Form D is a notice
- Amounts are as filed and may change by amendment. Many issuers never file a closing amendment, and some offerings never require a Form D at all.
- Coverage is uneven
- About half of venture firms have a website on file, and some managers are missing from the Firms view because their filings do not identify them as venture managers.
- Deal vehicles and small funds
- The line between a special purpose vehicle and a small pooled fund still relies partly on offering size. Some small funds may be classed as deal vehicles, and the reverse.
- The fourth criterion
- Evidence on women and underrepresented general partners covers a minority of firms so far. Most firms’ status on that criterion is unknown rather than negative.
- Limited partner coverage
- Only a small number of public institutions publish reports detailed enough to read commitments from them. Most allocators never publish who they back.
- United States funds
- Firms and companies are drawn from U.S. filings. Allocators outside the United States appear only where they back U.S. managers or appear in coverage of them.
Names
Some firm rows carry the name of a fund vehicle rather than the firm, and some companies appear under their web address when their site gives no usable name.
Websites on file
A small number of firms have a website on file that we believe belongs to another organization. These are held for review, and their stated figures should be read with care.
Corrections and citation
Corrections
If a row is wrong, tell us and send the source. We correct it, date the correction, and keep the record of what changed, following the Institute’s corrections policy. A firm’s place in the database is not open to negotiation, only to evidence.
Citing the database
The database changes every hour, so name the view, any filters you used and the date you accessed it. Suggested citation: Colibrí Institute. Colibrí Institute VC Database. Accessed [date]. www.colibri.institute/database.
Version
Methodology version 1.0, September 21, 2026. Material changes to a rule will be published here with a note of what changed.
Questions about method
hello@colibri.institute