These Two Charts Explain Why Kleiner Perkins Wanted To Buy This Four-Year-Old VC Firm

Flickr/TechcrunchSocial+Capital Partnership founder Chamath PalihapitiyaOn Monday, Fortune reported that Kleiner Perkins' attempt to acquire the four year old upstart VC firm, Social+Capital Partnership, had fallen through in recent weeks.

The report said the deal would have made Social+Capital's founder Chamath Palihapitiya and its general partners Ted Maidenberg and Mamoon Hamid into partners at Kleiner, putting them in new leadership positions at the 43-year-old VC firm.

But for some reason the talks have ceased, and Fortune says the deal is "now considered dead." Sources confirmed to Business Insider that the talks happened and are currently off.

These sorts of deals between VC firms rarely happen.

But when you take a closer look at the growth of Social+Capital, it's easy to see why Kleiner Perkins might have wanted to outright buy the whole firm.

Although it was founded only four years ago, Social+Capital seems to be involved in almost every hot deal in the Valley. Some of its investments include SurveyMonkey, Slack, Box, Yammer, and Remind.

This data from Mattermark, a company that tracks the performance of startups and VC firms, better illustrates Social+Capital's growing influence:

Social+Capital's portfolio has a 68% growth rate. Kleiner Perkins, on the other hand, has a 40% growth rate.

Mattermark

Social+Capital also has one of the highest "Median Mindshare" measurements among Silicon Valley VC firms, trailing Andreessen Horowitz by four points. Kleiner Perkins ranks much lower. Mindshare is a metric that Mattermark puts together to gauge the firms' overall influence.

Mattermark

Mattermark's measurements are a little bit subjective, but the company is taken seriously by a lot of people in the Silicon Valley VC community. So if nothing else, these graphs show that Social+Capital is making a lot of waves in venture circles - not bad for such a young firm.