The Power Law in VC Land
Of the 7,808 investors with a Power Law outcome in EMEA, 815 have backed a company at Seed that went on to $100M or more in annual revenue. 684 of them did it once. Five have done it more than ten times: Phoenix Court Group, Point Nine, HV Capital, Index Ventures and Y Combinator.
It was nice to see our work referenced by Saul Klein in Why do Power Laws seem so hard to internalise?, and it prompted me to look at the same question for EMEA.
Seed → $100M+ revenue outcomes per investor
Seed → $100M+ revenue outcomes in EMEA
Hover a bar to see the investors in it.
Source: Dealroom.co
Seed-stage Power Law outcomes are rare
About 1.5% of VC-backed startups ever reach $100M in annual revenue, so backing even one of them at Seed is rare. Of the 7,808 investors with a Power Law outcome in EMEA, 815 have seeded a company that reached $100M in revenue, about one in ten. 684 of those stopped at one. Five have done it more than ten times.
Worldwide, 28 investors have seeded more than ten $100M-revenue companies, and the five EMEA investors are all among them. For Y Combinator the EMEA count is a small share of a much larger total, 11 of 103. For Phoenix Court Group and Point Nine it is most of the total, 17 of 21 and 17 of 19. The counts come from the Power Law Investor Ranking, which scores investors on outcomes like these.
The chart below shows when each of the five reached its count, by the year the company crossed $100M in revenue. Phoenix Court Group had six by 2020 and has added eleven since. Y Combinator's EMEA count went from four to eleven over the same period.
Seed → $100M+ revenue outcomes over time, the five investors with 11 or more
EMEA · cumulative, by the year the company reached $100M+ revenue
Source: Dealroom.co · 2026 year to date
A selection of the companies behind the counts.
The companies behind the five
EMEA · a selection
Source: Dealroom.co
How steep is the drop from the top?
Each curve takes the top 100 of a field and plots what every rank captured as a share of its leader. In EMEA seed investing the top is shared: Phoenix Court Group and Point Nine have 17 outcomes each, HV Capital, third, has 12, and the tenth investor has 7. Formula One is steeper at the top: Lewis Hamilton has 105 race wins to Michael Schumacher’s 91, and the tenth driver, Jim Clark, has 25. Tennis is closer: Margaret Court has as many Grand Slam titles as Novak Djokovic.
Top 100 in each field, relative to the #1
#1 = 100%. Each rank shows what it captured as a share of the leader. Hover a curve for the names.
Source: Dealroom.co · other fields as on the Power Law Investor Ranking
The leader and the runner-up in each field, with the runner-up’s share of the leader. Where two share the top, both are shown and the third is the runner-up.
The leader and the runner-up in each field
EMEA seed investing against six other fields
Source: Dealroom.co · portraits from Wikimedia Commons, hover one for its credit
What this means
Seeding a company that reaches $100M of revenue is rare enough that most investors in EMEA have never done it, and doing it more than ten times puts an investor in a group of five. The gap between those five and the other 7,803 is why the Power Law ranking scores investors on outcomes like these rather than on fund size or brand.