Dealroom.co: Mapping the World's Startup Economies
Before "data-driven VC" was a buzzword, and before governments or corporates had any idea how many startups lived within their own borders, there was a gap. A void. Crunchbase was there, but mostly U.S.-centric. PitchBook had private equity roots. Europe was invisible in the data. That’s the problem Yoram Wijngaarde set out to solve.
Yoram wasn’t your typical startup founder. He started his career doing M&A at Lehman Brothers in New York and London. He had a front-row seat to the financial crisis. By the time he returned to Amsterdam in the early 2010s, the startup ecosystem in Europe was starting to sprout—but the data to support it? Practically nonexistent.
So in 2013, Yoram started Dealroom.co. Initially, it was a scrappy database built from manual research, news scraping, and an Excel-powered backend. But the mission was big: to create the most complete and accurate data source on startups, scaleups, and venture capital globally—with a focus on Europe.
The big break came not from VCs, but from governments. Amsterdam became Dealroom’s first public sector client. Suddenly, economic development agencies realized that understanding their tech ecosystems wasn’t just useful—it was necessary. Soon after, Dealroom expanded to work with Paris, Berlin, and eventually the European Commission itself.
Meanwhile, investment firms from around the world began paying attention. Index Ventures, Insight, KKR, Atomico, Accel, Lakestar—these names didn’t just want data; they wanted insights. Dealroom began building structured taxonomies, predictive analytics, and ranking systems that didn’t just say who raised how much, but why it mattered. They introduced the concept of “signal rounds”—early indicators of breakout companies—and built an engine that tracked every layer of the stack: founders, funding, sectors, and valuations.
By 2021, Dealroom wasn’t just a data platform—it was a global intelligence layer. When COVID hit, governments used Dealroom to monitor which startups were at risk and which were booming. When VCs looked to understand AI, climate tech, or femtech, Dealroom was quietly powering the maps, slides, and decisions.
Funding came from credible names: Knight Capital, Shoe Investments, and early-stage Dutch angels who believed in building Europe’s Bloomberg for startups. But unlike many peers, Dealroom stayed lean. No hypergrowth at all costs. ARR grew steadily into the mid-8 figures. The company remained founder-led, with a team of ~70 spread across Europe.
Today, Dealroom powers not just VC dashboards and city reports, but also the startup ecosystem mapping of entire countries. From Riyadh to Paris, from Lisbon to Helsinki, it's the infrastructure layer for anyone trying to understand the next Stripe or UiPath before they become household names.
If CB Insights is a newsy database, and PitchBook is a financial terminal, Dealroom is something different: a bottom-up ecosystem cartographer—charting where innovation happens and who’s behind it.
