Venture capital (VC) is a form of private equity financing provided by firms or funds to startup, early-stage, and emerging companies, that have been deemed to have high growth potential or that have demonstrated high growth in terms of number of employees, annual revenue, scale of operations, etc. Venture capital firms or funds invest in these early-stage companies in exchange for equity, or an ownership stake. Venture capitalists take on the risk of financing start-ups in the hopes that some of the companies they support will become successful. Because startups face high uncertainty, VC investments have high rates of failure. Start-ups are usually based on an innovative technology or business model and they are often from high technology industries, such as information technology (IT), clean technology or biotechnology.
Brent Shawzin Hoberman is a British entrepreneur and investor. During the dot-com boom, he co-founded lastminute.com with Martha Lane Fox in 1998, where he was CEO from its inception, before selling the business to Sabre in 2005 for $1.1bn.
Khosla Ventures is a private American venture capital firm based in Menlo Park, California. It was founded by entrepreneur Vinod Khosla in 2004. The firm focused on early-stage companies in the Internet, computing, mobile, financial services, agriculture, healthcare and clean technology sectors. Some of its most successful investments include Affirm, DoorDash, Square, Impossible Foods, Instacart, and OpenAI.
Techstars is a pre-seed investor that provides access to capital, mentorship, and other support for early-stage entrepreneurs. It was founded in 2006 in Boulder, Colorado. As of January 2024, the company had accepted over 4,100 companies into its accelerator programs with a combined market capitalization of $106bn USD. Techstars operates accelerator programs in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and Oceania.
Corporate venture capital (CVC) is the investment of corporate funds directly in external startup companies. CVC is defined by the Business Dictionary as the "practice where a large firm takes an equity stake in a small but innovative or specialist firm, to which it may also provide management and marketing expertise; the objective is to gain a specific competitive advantage." Examples of CVCs include GV and Intel Capital.
William Klippgen is a Singapore-based Norwegian entrepreneur and technology venture capitalist who co-founded the price comparison portal Zoomit.com. He served as one of the judges on the television series Angel's Gate, which was broadcast on Channel NewsAsia in 2012. Klippgen is a co-founder and serves as the Managing Partner at Cocoon Capital. He holds an MBA from INSEAD where he is an Entrepreneur in Residence.
Greycroft LP is an American venture capital firm. It manages over $2 billion in capital with investments in companies such as Bird, Bumble, HuffPost, Goop, Scopely, The RealReal, and Venmo. Greycroft was founded in 2006 by Alan Patricof, Dana Settle, and Ian Sigalow. The firm is headquartered in New York City and Los Angeles.
Jørn Lyseggen is a Norwegian serial entrepreneur, patent inventor and the founder and Executive Chairman of Meltwater and the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST).
AngelList is an American software company for fundraising and connecting startups, angel investors, and limited partners. Founded in 2010, it started as an online introduction board for tech startups that needed seed funding. Since 2015, the site allows startups to raise money from angel investors free of charge. Created by serial entrepreneur Naval Ravikant and Babak Nivi in 2010, Avlok Kohli has been leading AngelList as its CEO since 2019.
Sandbox Industries is a venture capital firm located in Chicago. The firm focuses on connecting established corporations with disruptive startups via strategic corporate investment funds.
Uncork Capital is a venture capital firm based in San Francisco, California, founded by Jeff Clavier. Considered one of the most active established seed funds in Silicon Valley, it has invested in companies such as Postmates, Eventbrite, Fitbit, and SendGrid.
Rothenberg Ventures, known briefly as Frontier Technology Venture Capital, was an American venture capital firm based in San Francisco, California, and founded in 2012 by Mike Rothenberg. It invested in more than 100 companies, including Bustle, Robinhood, Revel Systems, and SpaceX, and focused its investments on virtual reality and other frontier technologies. As of January 2021, the firm's status with the California Franchise Tax Board is "forfeited".
Adeo Ressi is the founder and CEO of Decile Group and Executive Chairman of Founder Institute. Decile Group is a full-stack venture capital platform for emerging managers worldwide and helped launch nearly 50% of all VC firms in 2023 with the VC Lab accelerator. Founder Institute, a pre-seed accelerator, operates chapters in over 250 cities and supports more than 7,000 portfolio companies. Ressi’s previous startups, including Methodfive, Game Trust, and Total New York, resulted in nearly $2 billion in exits by the age of 30. He has also launched 14 venture capital funds, served on the board of the X Prize Foundation, and created TheFunded.
Aileen Lee is a U.S. venture capital angel investor and co-founder of Cowboy Ventures.
Comcast Ventures is a corporate venture capital firm headquartered in New York, NY.
Jonathan Lacoste is a venture capitalist and software entrepreneur based in Austin, TX. He is the Founder & General Partner at Space.VC, an early-stage venture capital fund specialized on space, defense, and frontier tech investments. Notable investments have included SpaceX, True Anomaly, and Loft Orbital. Previously, Jonathan was the Co-Founder of Jebbit, an enterprise software company he co-founded in 2011 with university classmates. He and co-founder Tom Coburn ran the company for 12 years before being acquired by Vista Equity Partners.
Jennifer Fonstad is an American venture capital investor and entrepreneur. She is the managing partner and a co-founder of the Owl Capital Group, a venture firm based in Silicon Valley. Fonstad was Managing Director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ) for 17 years. She is also co-founder of angel investing network Broadway Angels. Fonstad has been recognized as a top 100 tech investor on Forbes’ Midas List twice and was named 2016 Venture Capitalist of the Year by Deloitte. She is also a Founding Member of All Raise.
Venture capital in Poland is a segment of the private equity market that finances early-stage high-risk companies based in Poland, with the potential for fast growth. As of March 2019, there is a total of 130 active VC firms in Poland, including local offices of international VC firms, and VC firms with mainly Polish management teams. Between 2009–2019, these entities have invested locally in over 750 companies, which gives an average of around 9 companies per portfolio. The Polish venture market accounts for 3% of the entire European ecosystem of VC investments, mainly in the digital space.
Contrary is a San Francisco-based venture capital firm. Formed in 2016, the firm invests across early stage companies in North America and India. Select investments from the firm include DoorDash, Anduril, Ramp, and Zepto.
Eric Paley is an American entrepreneur and venture capitalist. He is the co-founder and managing partner of Founder Collective, a seed-stage venture capital fund based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
