Each school is a disc of companies that do the same kind of thing, floating off the part of the whale it belongs to. Inside a disc, position means something:
- Slice is HQ region, west to east around the rim.
- Centre to rim is last round size, biggest in the middle.
- Height above the disc is funding stage: Seed lowest, Series C highest. Series Unknown floats between A and B.
- Neighbours share a niche, such as voice agents or contract review.
- Size is popularity: CB Rank and web-traffic percentiles.
The whale is the frontier labs and big tech. Small whales swimming alongside train their own models.
Predators are groups of acquirers, sized by how many startups they ate. Eaten startups travel inside them.
A notched ring marks a startup that has bought others. The ones we know about swim inside it.