While new investment in the social media sector has been relatively low in early 2019, the highest number of startups is in the Seed category. Explore global trends here http://bit.ly/sm_sector

1. A Comprehensive Report
on the Social Media
Sector
- Global trends
- Geographic trends
- 2019 Outlook

2. World’s leading startup insights provider

3. Introduction
● This Social Media Insights Report covers global and geographic trends in the startup investment
activity in the social media sector over the past year. Along with recent trends, Oddup offers a sector-
forecast for the rest of 2019.
● Social Media companies continue to grow larger with passing months, benefiting from the network
effects of their massive existing user-base.
● Along with the steady growth, ad-spending on social networks is rising rapidly. It has almost touched
$100 billion in 2019 and is expected to grow in high double-digits in the next four years.
● With innovations including social chatbots, a resurgent importance of privacy, rise of ephemeral
content with popular features like Instagram Stories, and ever-more intelligent algorithms, the social
media sector has opened the market to significant investment and return potential.
● Oddup keeps track of the entrepreneurial and investment activity in the social media sector across
major startup-hubs of the world and shares proprietary data metrics, including the startup-health
barometer - Oddup Score, and the Benchmark Valuation (BV).

5. Quarterly Change in Benchmark Valuation
 Over the last five quarters, the global social media sector has undergone a
steady growth as is evident from the continuous increase in the cumulative
Benchmark Valuation of the industry, tracked from Q1 2018 to end of Q1 2019.
 The absolute value of BV for the global social media domain has shown a
significant increase of $4.7 billion over the past five quarters, reaching $251.4
billion at the beginning of Q2 2019.
 The two most active quarters across this time period were Q3 2018 and Q1
2019, both of which boosted the sector valuation by around $1.5 billion.

7. Count of Startups by Quarter
 Along with a promising growth in cumulative sector valuation, the social media
industry has witnessed a steady expansion in terms of new startups joining the
sector cohort.
 The sector witnessed the sharpest increase in the number of startups being
funded in the second quarter of 2018 with 27 new startups being funded.
 It has seen a relatively steadier growth since then with only 15 new startups
receiving funding in the second half of 2018 and the first quarter of 2019
combined.
 With a higher growth-rate of sector valuation compared to that of startup-count,
an underlying trend of growth-stage startups dominating the pie of total sector
valuation has been clearly emerging.

9. New Investment in Each Quarter
 The most active phase for new investment in the social media sector in the
last five quarters, Q1 2018 to end-Q1 2019, was the first quarter of 2018.
 It attracted more than $2.5 billion and makes up more than 59% of new
startup investments in these fifteen months.
 New investment appears to have been muted recently with less than $26.5
million invested in the beginning quarter of 2019.

11. Distribution of Startups by Investment Stage
 The sector is dominated by early-stage startups with 89% of the tracked
organisations being in Seed to Series B.
 Seed-funded startups themselves make up 78% of the total cohort of
tracked startups in the sector.
 As these startups use the raised capital and leverage technology,
including machine learning and personalised interfaces to improve
consumer social media experience, the sector is poised to mature and
evolve over the next few years.

14. Benchmark Valuation
 Silicon Valley maintains a big lead and tops the world with a total Benchmark Valuation
for the social media sector more than $78 billion.
 The closest rival to Silicon Valley is Beijing, which is still at a distance in terms of current
Benchmark Valuation at just over $60 billion.
 The dominance of the United States startup ecosystem in the sector is reflected by the
presence of two American startup-hubs in the top three. New York currently holds almost
$50 billion worth of social media startups, and that’s not far from Beijing.
 The other two startup hubs on the list are far from what we can call rivals to these three.
London comes fourth with a cumulative Benchmark Valuation of $16 billion and Los
Angeles is much further at only slightly higher than $9 billion.

16. Geographic Distribution by Investment Stage
 A multi-sector trend, early-stage startups vastly dominate the cumulative valuation in the
social media sector in four out of the five startup-hubs featured in this report. The only
exception to this trend is Beijing.
 Seed-stage investments make up the significant majority of the startup cohort particularly
in London and New York, with the share of Seed-stage startups in the past year being
85% in London and 80% in New York.
 Los Angeles and Silicon Valley also adhere to this trend but at a relatively lesser degree,
with their Seed-stage proportion being 75% and 66% respectively.
 Beijing has a distribution that is more balanced between early-stage startups and late-
stage ones. The share of Seed-stage startups amounts to only 37% in Beijing, in a
contrast to other locations on this list.

18. Highest Valued Startups by Location
 Silicon Valley’s highest valued startup in the sector is the popular Q&A platform Quora where
users can ask questions or opinions from other users and take part in knowledge discussions.
 The highest-valued social media startup located in Beijing is Toutiao, the recommendation-
based news and information content platform, underpinned by machine learning techniques.
 Despite recent financial-difficulties leading to layoffs, Vice Media manages to stay the top-
valued startup of New York in the sector. It caters primarily to youth and young adult–focused
digital media.
 London’s top-valued social media startup is the messaging app Telegram Messenger, the
popular app that provides cloud-based instant messaging and voice over IP service.
 AwesomenessTV started as a YouTube channel and a multi-channel network and now
represents the Hollywood city Los Angeles, as its highest valued startup in the sector.

20. Companies Prime-for-Investment
 Oddup’s proprietary startup rating platform picks the top social media startups that
are prime for investment.
 Princeton Growth Ventures from New York is the prime-for-investment pick in the
Seed-stage category.
 Oddup’s picks for the next two categories are both Chinese startups, Shenzhen-
based Huya.com in Series-A and iQiyi in Series-B, which is based in Beijing.
 Kuala Lumpur is represented by Iflix, the video-on-demand service focused on
emerging markets, which is our prime pick in Series-C stage.
 The second entry from New York is in Series-D by Vice Media being the prime
startup for investment in this stage.

22. Top 10 Companies to Watch Out for in 2019
 Oddup recommends the top ten healthiest startups to keep a close watch on, for the rest
of 2019.
 Six out of ten startups in the list are American startups and the remaining four are based
in Asian hubs. Hong-Kong based 9GAG is the only Seed-stage startup on the list.
 DayDayCook, the other entry from Hong Kong, and Austin-based Bloomfire, both Series-
B startups, round out the only three early-stage startups featuring on this list.
 Two popular New-York based digital-media startups, Vice Media and BuzzFeed, make it
to the list despite going through recent layoffs in early 2019.
 Sprout Social is Chicago’s entry on the list joining the other two American startups from
Silicon Valley, SoundHound Inc. and Planet.
 The only Chinese entry is Beijing-based 36Kr and the video-on-demand service Iflix from
Kuala Lumpur completes the list.

23. Contact Us
 By providing an in-depth analysis of data and actionable insights on the startup ecosystem across
sectors and regions, Oddup has become the leading global platform for due-diligence and research
on startups, sectors, regions, investments, ICOs, and cryptocurrencies.
 Are you a venture capitalist firm or an accelerator looking for your next Unicorn startup?
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 Are you a part of a transaction or deal advisory team watching out for the next disruptive technology?
 If your answers to any of the above three questions is a yes, then Oddup is the advantage-tool that
you might want to add to your arsenal.
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