Where is all the Crowdsourcing Investment Money Going?

It’s no secret that crowdsourcing has enjoyed explosive growth over the past several years. Businesses, mainstream media, and consumers alike have all followed developments in the crowdsourcing world with keen interest. It should come as no surprise, then, that investors have pumped a great deal of money into the crowdsourcing economy. In an effort to gain a better understanding of the layout of the crowdsourcing field, Daily Crowdsource has spent some time tracking down the movement of funding dollars – who is getting it, who is giving it, how much, and so on.

The companies are split among 4 categories based on the taxonomy this field’s leaders have proposed: Contests, Microtasks, Macrotasks, and Crowdfunding. We have indicated the total funding dollars per category as well as individual corporations. We also break down the numbers into distinct funding rounds. We looked at 18 companies that received about $232M in total investments:

Contest ($41M)

99designs ($35M)
Series A: $35M on April 28, 2011

crowdSPRING ($3M)
Angel Investors: $3M on May 23, 2o08

Poptent ($3M)
Series A: $3M on October 21, 2010

Macro ($131M)

InnoCentive ($22.8M)
Series A: $9M on February 2, 2006
Series B: $6.5M on May 19, 2008
Series B-2: $7.3M on August 17, 2009

Napkin Labs ($1.3M)
Seed: $200,000 on October 5, 2009
Angel Investors: $1.1M on December 1, 2010

Quirky ($23.6M)
Seed: $1.6M on December 9, 2009
Series A: $6M on April 7, 2010
Series B: $16M on August 4, 2011

TaskRabbit ($6.85M)
Seed:  $1M on January 1, 2009
Seed: $850,000 on August 25, 2010
Series A: $5M on May 4, 2011

TopCoder ($11.3M)
Series A: $11.3M on May 10, 2010

Trada ($7.95M)
Series A: $2.2M on March 17, 2010
Series C: $5.75M on July 21, 2010

uTest ($20.8M)
Seed: $500,000 on January 1, 2006
Series A: $2.3M on October 1, 2007
Series B: $5.0M on December 1, 2008
Series C: $13.0M on September 13, 2010

Waze ($37M)
Series A: $12.0M on March 1, 2008
Series B: $25.0M on December 7, 2010

Micro ($49.4M)

Clickworker ($10.18M)
Series A: $4.27M on July 14, 2010
Series B: $5.91M on March 22, 2011

CloudCrowd ($3M)
Seed: $1.5M
Series B: $5.1M on August 12, 2010

CrowdFlower ($13.2M)
Seed: $1.2M on March 1, 2009
Series A: $5.0M  on January 20, 2010
Series B: $7.0M on March 22, 2011

Lingotek ($3.6M)
Series A: $2.6M on March 1, 2007
Series B: $1M on July 16, 2008

Smartling ($14M)
Series A: $4M on March 18, 2010
Series B: $10M on July 27, 2011

SmartSheet ($5.44M)
Series A: $2.69M on June 1, 2007
Series B: $1.25M on January 15, 2009
Series C: $1.5M on September 16, 2010

Crowdfunding ($10M)

Kickstarter ($10M)
An estimated: $10 million

There you have it – the beginning stages of an answer to the question, “Where is all the crowdsourcing investment money going?” As you can tell, this is clearly a question that is best answered by the crowd, so we turn that question over to you: Know of any crowdsourcing companies that have received funding? Let us know on our forums and help us construct a more comprehensive picture of the crowdsourcing landscape.

This list only includes U.S. based companies, and is not a full, comprehensive list. These numbers should be taken as approximations as SEC filings were not available in every instance.