500 Global
500 Global (formerly 500 Startups) is a global venture capital firm and startup accelerator founded in 2010 by Dave McClure and Christine Tsai and headquartered in Palo Alto / Silicon Valley, California. The firm invests from pre-seed to pre-IPO in globally ambitious technology founders, built on the belief that "talent lives everywhere, but capital and opportunity does not." 500 Global pioneered a "lots of little bets" seed strategy, backing hundreds of companies per fund with smaller initial checks, and has grown one of the industry's largest truly global seed portfolios: 3,000+ companies across 80+ countries with $300B+ in cumulative portfolio valuation, including 35+ companies valued at $1B+ and 160+ valued at more than $100M. It runs regional and thematic practices spanning Southeast Asia, Latin America, MENA, Africa, Japan, Korea, Thailand, and Eurasia, plus a Sustainable Growth strategy (health, climate, agriculture, gender, education), flagship accelerator programs, and the VC Unlocked investor-education program that has trained 1,400+ investors. As of April 30, 2025 the firm reported approximately $2.3B in assets under management. Notable investments include Canva, Grab, Talkdesk, Credit Karma, Twilio, and Bukalapak.
Every 500 Global company that ships an API, scored the way a machine reads it — a global seed book that is agent-native at the edges and governance-empty at the core, with five borrowed exemplars standing in for a thesis its own companies have not yet proven.
500 Global has 2,108 portfolio companies tracked on the APIs.io network, of which 2,107 (100%) publish APIs indexed here.
Its highest-rated API providers on the network are DrChrono, Stripe, SendGrid, Flexpa, Twilio.
Portfolio on the Network
Portfolio companies that publish APIs indexed on APIs.io, grouped by their API Evangelist rating. Exemplar and Strong are expanded by default.
Exemplar 11 Complete, well-documented, and agent-ready
Strong 28 Solid coverage with minor gaps
Developing 139 Usable, with meaningful gaps to close
Thin 171 Limited public surface area
Emerging 500 Early or largely undocumented
Minimal 1250 Almost no public developer surface
Unrated 8 Not yet scored
Rest of Portfolio
1 further portfolio companies that don’t yet have a provider page on the network.
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Properties
Portfolio
Where the firm publishes its investments
Firm
The firm itself
Cohort brief
Auto-generatedThe 2099 portfolio companies with APIs in the catalog, backed by 500 Global, scored on the Kin Score. Every figure below is computed from the catalog — nothing here is written.
| Facet | This cohort | Catalog | Difference | Scored |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Contract Governance | 3.3 | 6.4 | -3.1 | 2099 |
| Access Clarity | 17.5 | 22.3 | -4.8 | 2099 |
| Discoverability | 54.6 | 60.4 | -5.8 | 2099 |
| Developer Ergonomics | 11.9 | 17.9 | -6 | 2099 |
| Operational Transparency | 4.8 | 11.3 | -6.5 | 2099 |
| Contract Quality | 7.6 | 17.5 | -9.9 | 2099 |
A facet is averaged over the members that carry it, not over the whole cohort — the “Scored” column is that count. Averaging an absent facet as zero would score our own coverage gaps as the providers’ posture.
| Artifact | This cohort | Catalog | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| MCP server (any) | 14% | 16% | -2 |
| MCP server (first-party) | 6% | 7% | -1 |
| Agent Skills | 0% | 0% | 0 |
| OAuth scopes | 5% | 9% | -4 |
| Security | 85% | 88% | -3 |
| Arazzo workflows | 1% | 2% | -1 |
| Governance rules | 2% | 13% | -11 |
mcp_pct counts any mcp/ artifact including ones API Evangelist derived from the provider OpenAPI; mcp_first_party_pct counts only servers the provider publishes. Prefer the latter.
- 1 Unbounce 59.6
- 2 Talkable 59.5
- 3 Improvado 58.8
- 4 Sendspark 57.3
- 5 Curlec 56.7
- 6 Prezent 53.3
- 7 Evermuse 52
- 8 Ripple Labs 51.8
- 9 Sadq Holding Limited 50.3
- 10 Boxc 50.1
Source (apis.yml)
Work with this as data
Every firm here is available over the APIs.io API and to AI agents over MCP.