The companies investors want
VP50 answers one question: which private companies do investors want to own right now? Size and growth count only as far as they bear on that.
Interest shows up as demand: investors looking to buy shares from employees, early investors and funds. Valuation is one factor among several, and even the most valuable company on the market can draw fewer buyers than a smaller one.
Demand comes first
Each edition starts from demand. In this first version of the method, we measure it with an outside ranking of the private companies most sought after on the secondary market, where existing shares change hands. Companies on that ranking take the first places, in its order.1
If we change how demand is measured, the method gets a new version number.
The rest by analogy
The outside ranking does not cover fifty companies. The remaining places go to companies that resemble the ones buyers want: they have been on the demand ranking before, raised money recently and are large. Each gets an analogy score made of those three parts.
A company enters this pool only with a valuation of at least $1 billion and a round in the past three years, both as of the edition's date. Any company on the demand ranking places above every company added by analogy. A score orders companies within its own edition, so scores from different quarters can't be compared.
No company pays for a place, and no investor can buy one.
What keeps a company out
- It had already listed or been sold when the quarter began. A company that lists or is sold during the quarter keeps its place in that edition: it was private when the quarter opened.
- For the places filled by analogy: no dated post-money valuation of $1 billion or more, or no round in the past three years.
- A valuation we would have to work out ourselves. We take the post-money valuation of the latest announced round and never derive one from earlier rounds.
What the method does not see yet
Supply is not measured directly: we have no count of holders ready to sell. Tender offers and secondary trades are rarely disclosed, so they are left out too. Reports of IPO preparations are not scored yet. And the method cannot tell when a company is in trouble, so one close to shutting down can still hold a place filled by analogy.
How often it changes
We publish a new edition every quarter. Signals keep arriving between editions, and you can see them on each company page, but places change only on publication day. Once an edition is published, no one edits it.
Past editions are reconstructed
The first live edition is Q4 2026, yet the charts go back to Q3 2020. We reconstructed the 25 earlier editions with the same method, using only what was public by the end of each quarter. A valuation counts from the day its round was announced, and a company drops out once it has listed or been sold. Hindsight would fit any comparison with the market to the result, so we keep it out wherever we can.2
- Q3 and Q4 2020 are built by analogy alone, because there was no demand ranking to start from yet.
- A quarter without a new ranking reuses the latest one, at most two quarters old.
- The pool of candidates was put together in 2026, so early editions choose from fewer companies than the market really had. Requiring a $1 billion valuation and a recent round as of each edition's date limits this hindsight but does not remove it.