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Emerging Companies Group Closes More Than $7.9 Billion in Client Financings and Exits in 2013


March.01.2014

With 300 VC-backed deals worldwide raising $2.6 billion and $5.3 billion in M&A exits and sales, 2013 was a big year for Orrick's Emerging Companies Group and 1,400+ start-up company clients. 

Our global team helped our company clients raise more than $2 billion.

U.S. highlighted clients & deals

  • Asana, BrightSource Energy, DataSift, DrugDev, Fulcrum BioEnergy, Quora, Nest Labs, Optimizely, Pinterest, Stripe and TOA Technologies
  • Largest financings included Pinterest ($425 million), TOA Technologies ($72 million) and DrugDev ($50 million)

European highlighted clients & deals

  • Brainient, Conversocial, Emerging Travel, Erply, Made.com, Moogsoft, Squawka, Travelata and XMOS
  • Largest financings included Emerging Travel ($25 million), XMOS ($20 million), Moogsoft ($8 million) and Made.com ($4.1 million)

On the investor side, we helped clients make investments of $600 million in emerging companies.

U.S. highlighted clients

  • Bessemer Venture Partners, Charles River Ventures, Coatue Management, Fidelity Investments, Al Gore's Generation Investment Management, IA Ventures, Intel Capital, Kleiner Perkins and Morgenthaler Ventures

European highlighted clients

  • Atomico, EC1 Capital, Frontier Ventures and TVM Capital GmbH

Working side by side with our technology M&A team, we advised on 40 sell-side exits and sales, including a few announced early in 2014, with an aggregate value of $5.3 billion.

U.S. highlighted deals

  • Elance's merger with oDesk, Xobni's sale to Yahoo!, Orchestra's sale to Dropbox, Cue's sale to a Leading Tech Company (U.S.) and Nest Labs' sale to Google

European highlighted deals

  • Neolane's sale to Adobe, Lanyrd's sale to Eventbrite, MarketMaker4's sale to Xchanging plc, Mendeley's sale to Elsevier, shareholders of PHW Group's sale of Lohmann Animal Health Business to an American Pharmaceutical Company and Shutl's sale to eBay

Orrick's Emerging Companies Group focuses on work with leading entrepreneurs and start-ups and are thrilled by the recognition our clients earned in 2013-2014:

  • Forbes 30 Under 30 list of the most influential start-ups featured 10 Orrick clients: Bessemer Venture Partners, Brit + Co., a Digital Currency Exchange (U.S.), Clever, Humble Bundle, iCracked, Meta, Optimizely, Pinterest, Stripe and Quora.
  • At the Crunchies, our client Cloud Tiger Media's Upworthy won the category of "Fastest Rising Startup," and Zopim Technologies' Zendesk won "Sexiest Enterprise Startup." Runners-up included a Digital Currency Exchange (U.S.) ("Best New Startup of 2013") and Visual Supply Company's VSCO Cam ("Best Mobile Application"). Several other clients made the list of finalists, including Crowdtilt, Huddle, Mailbox, Nest Protect, Optimizely and Sequoia Capital.
  • The Europas, Europe's most prestigious tech awards, also picked several Orrick clients in 2013: Atomico, LYST, Mendeley, Seedcamp and Shutl.