Venture capital (VC) is a type of private equity, a form of financing that is provided by firms or funds to small, early-stage, emerging firms that are deemed to have high growth potential, or which have demonstrated high growth. Venture capital firms or funds invest in these early-stage companies in exchange for equity, or an ownership stake, in the companies they invest in. Venture capitalists take on the risk of financing risky start-ups in the hopes that some of the firms they support will become successful. Because startups face high uncertainty, VC investments do have high rates of failure. The start-ups are usually based on an innovative technology or business model and they are usually from the high technology industries, such as information technology (IT), clean technology or biotechnology.
Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ) is an American venture capital firm focused on early- and growth-stage investments in enterprise, consumer and disruptive technologies.
Benchmark is a venture capital firm based in San Francisco that provides seed money to startups.
Bessemer Venture Partners(Bessemer) is a venture capital firm. The firm has over $5 billion under management and invests globally, with offices in San Francisco, Redwood City, New York City, Boston, Israel, and India.
Fred Wilson is an American businessman, venture capitalist and blogger. Wilson is the co-founder of Union Square Ventures, a New York City-based venture capital firm with investments in Web 2.0 companies such as Twitter, Tumblr, Foursquare, Zynga, Kickstarter, and MongoDB.
Khosla Ventures is an American venture capital firm focused on early stage companies in the Internet, computing, mobile, silicon technology, biotechnology, healthcare and clean technology sectors that were founded by Vinod Khosla.
Index Ventures is an international venture capital firm with dual headquarters in San Francisco and London, investing in technology-enabled companies with a focus on e-commerce, fintech, mobility, gaming, infrastructure/AI, and security. Since its founding in 1996, the firm has invested in a number of companies and raised approximately $5.6 billion.
Accel, formerly known as Accel Partners, is an American venture capital firm. Accel works with startups in seed, early and growth-stage investments. The company has offices in Palo Alto, California and San Francisco, California, with additional operating funds in London, India and China.
Chris Dixon is an American internet entrepreneur and investor. He is a general partner at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, and previously worked at eBay. He is also the co-founder and former CEO of Hunch, a website.
Foundation Capital is a venture capital firm located in Silicon Valley. The firm was founded in 1995, and in 2012 managed more than $2.4 billion in investment capital.
Andreessen Horowitz is a private American venture capital firm, founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. The company is headquartered in Menlo Park, California.
Robinhood Markets Inc, referenced informally as Robinhood, is a U.S.-based financial services company headquartered in Menlo Park, California. The company offers the Robinhood smartphone mobile app, which allows individuals to invest in public companies and exchange-traded funds listed on U.S. stock exchanges without paying a commission. The firm is a FINRA-approved broker-dealer, registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and is a member of the Securities Investor Protection Corporation. The company's main source of revenue comes from interest earned on customers' cash balances and margin lending. Prior to 2019, the company's primary source of revenue was from payment for order flow. However, in a 2018 statement the company announced it was ending this form of revenue generation by developing its own in-house clearing agency. As of its latest funding round in May 2018, the company was valued at $5.6 billion, but in May 2019, reports from Bloomberg and other outlets publicized Robinhood’s pursuit of an additional $200 million in funding, which could value the company in the $7 billion to $10 billion range.
Bloomberg Beta is an early stage venture capital firm with $150M under management, capitalized solely by Bloomberg. The fund exists to expand Bloomberg’s horizons by investing in companies that make business work better, with a focus on machine intelligence. Bloomberg Beta was recognized by VC review site CB Insights as the #2 investor in AI. The firm invests purely for financial return. Led by Roy Bahat, a technology business operator and entrepreneur, Bloomberg Beta has an unconventional investing model where anyone on the team can say yes to a deal. The investing partnership has an equal male-to-female ratio.
John F. Frankel, known as John Frankel, is a British venture capitalist, author and speaker. John is the founding partner at ff Venture Capital, a New York-based, seed stage investment firm.
Madrona Venture Group is an American venture capital firm, founded in 1995 and is based in Seattle, Washington. Madrona specializes in seed, startup, Series A and early stage investments. Madrona has made over 300 investments in 110 companies since its inception.
Naspers is a broad-based multinational internet and media group headquartered in South Africa, offering services in more than 130 countries. Its principal operations are in internet communication, entertainment, gaming and e-commerce. It was founded in 1915 in South Africa by Jannie Marais of Coetsenburg and W.A. Hofmeyr with the support of Jan Christiaan Smuts, Louis Botha and National Party founding president J.B.M. Hertzog.
Sapphire Ventures is a Silicon Valley-based venture capital company that invests in growth-stage technology companies, early-stage venture funds globally.
Social Capital, formerly known as Social+Capital Partnership, is a venture capital firm based in Palo Alto, California. The firm specializes in technology startups, providing seed funding, venture capital and private equity.
Convergence Ventures is an Indonesia based venture capital firm. The firm invests primarily in early stage funding in the emerging markets and start-ups which build technology products and internet services with a primary focus on Indonesia. The firm was founded by Adrian Li and joined by Partner Donald Wihardja in November 2014. The company manages a US$25 million fund with LPs from Indonesia, China and the US.
