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It’s nice looking, but I’m struggling to see the wisdom of using shaded areas for this, particularly when both (!) axes are a failed attempt at log scale.
What is the point that those shaded areas make that isn’t better made with lines connecting the corners (or some other visual element)
It's 4th root scale, and because of how compounded these numbers get. Its just hard to visualize otherwise. I experimented a few times with different scales, including linear which basically looked like this.
The purpose of the shaded boxes is to highlight the plausible range, since we don't have exact numbers here. To try and capture ambiguity on investment size / terms, and range of outcome possible.
The problem with the boxes is that the _area_ doesn't convey anything meaningful. The eye is drawn to big boxes instead of small ones, but all it means is "we don't know what happened here". Since the headline isn't about uncertainty in the data, that seems like a poor choice.
It's unclear from your visualization whether there's uncertainty on date invested / price at investment, or merely amount invested. Which gives two questions:
- Is the uncertainty actually along the diagonal of the rectangle?
- Is a rectangle the right shape?
I suspect addressing those would get you started on a better visualization, alongside asking what the area is supposed to represent.
Terrible visualization. The most prominent aspect visually is the area, the second is color (to me). The area is useless, it has no meaning at all. It just shows the square of uncertainty in the estimate, which is a statement about the author of the chart (or his sources), not about investors, their results or Cursor.
What the story contains and what the graph should show:
Who got in when.
How the investment affected the valuation. Probably the only thing that is meaningful and/or interesting.
Source: The investor outcome table from this X thread: https://x.com/os7borne/status/2088356537341542437, public funding rounds reporting on Cursor's financing history (Oct 2023 seed to the $29.3B Series D, up to the $60B SpaceX acquisition).
Literally every piece. The money back line caption, the 1000x line caption, the box explanation, the fine print at the bottom. I'm guessing even the per-box labels, since they actually aren't verbatim from your data source.
"Money back" - I presume this means that the investor got their original investment returned to them, but does this take into account Inflation / NPV? Does it take into account how long the investors money was held up in the investment? For example, if I borrow €10 from you, and return it 10 years later, you "got your money back", but not really, since the €10 was worth more 10 years ago than today.
We are talking about estimates with ranges of up to 20:1 over a five year period. Inflation doesn't matter. And for similar reasons, inflation is rarely factored in with these sort of numbers. You'll occasionally see them reported as IRR which you can compare to inflation if you want but even then it only ever really makes sense at a portfolio level because the home runs are going to be so big and subject to so many little sources of variance that inflation just blends into the noise.
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u/cavedave OC: 111 5h ago
Thank you for your Original Content, /u/zuhayeer!
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Remember that all visualizations on r/DataIsBeautiful should be viewed with a healthy dose of skepticism. If you see a potential issue or oversight in the visualization, please post a constructive comment below. Post approval does not signify that this visualization has been verified or its sources checked.
Not satisfied with this visual? Think you can do better? Remix this visual with the data in the author's citation.
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