CRV (venture capital firm)

Last updated
CRV
Company type Private
Industry Venture capital
Founded1970
Headquarters Palo Alto, California, United States
Products Investments
Total assets $4.3 billion
Number of employees
20+
Website www.crv.com

CRV is a venture capital firm focused on early-stage investments in technology. The firm was founded in 1970 to commercialize research that came out of MIT. Its name comes from the Boston area Charles River.

Contents

History

The firm has raised over $4.3 billion since inception across 18 funds. Upon closing of the 16th fund, the firm rebranded to CRV. [1] Prior to that, CRV's 15th fund closed in February 2012 with $375 million of investor commitments. [2] CRV's 14th fund raised $320 million of commitments. [3]

In 2013, it purchased a large portion of Pebble Technology for $15 million and is credited as the primary reason why Pebble was sold to Fitbit in December 2016. This netted CRV nearly $40 million. [4]

In 2024, CRV returned 275 million dollars from the 500 million it had raised in its current fund back to investors, stating that their focus would shift away from late-stage investments and toward the early stage. [5]

Among CRV's portfolio companies are Aveksa, [6] mabl, [7] OneLogin, [8] Stella, [9] Sybase, [10] Yammer, [11] and Zendesk. [12]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Draper Fisher Jurvetson</span> American venture capital firm

Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ) is an American venture capital firm. In January 2019, DFJ Venture, the early-stage team, spun out and formed Threshold Ventures. DFJ Growth continues to be managed by co-founder John Fisher and co-founders Mark Bailey, Randy Glein, and Barry Schuler.

Sequoia Capital Operations, LLC is an American venture capital firm headquartered in Menlo Park, California which specializes in seed stage, early stage, and growth stage investments in private companies across technology sectors. As of 2022, the firm had approximately US$85 billion in assets under management.

Benchmark is a venture capital firm founded in 1995 by Bob Kagle, Bruce Dunlevie, Andy Rachleff, Kevin Harvey, and Val Vaden.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David O. Sacks</span> South African American entrepreneur (born 1972)

David Oliver Sacks is a South African-American entrepreneur, author, and investor in internet technology firms. He is a general partner of Craft Ventures, a venture capital fund he co-founded in late 2017. Additionally, he is a co-host of the All In podcast, alongside Chamath Palihapitiya, Jason Calacanis and David Friedberg. Previously, Sacks was the COO and product leader of PayPal, and founder and CEO of Yammer. In 2016, he became interim CEO of Zenefits for ten months. In 2017, Sacks co-founded Craft Ventures, an early-stage venture fund. His angel investments include Facebook, Uber, SpaceX, Palantir Technologies, and Airbnb.

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Index Ventures</span> European worldwide venture capital firm


Index Ventures is a European venture capital firm with headquarters in both San Francisco and London. It invests primarily in tech companies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Accel (company)</span> Venture capital firm

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.

Norwest Venture Partners (Norwest) is an American venture and growth equity investment firm. The firm targets early to late-stage venture and growth equity investments across several sectors, including cloud computing and information technology, Internet, SaaS, business and financial services, and healthcare. Headquartered in Menlo Park, California, Norwest has offices in San Francisco and subsidiaries in Mumbai, India and Tel Aviv, Israel. The firm has funded more than 700 companies since inception.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Insight Partners</span> American investment manager

Insight Venture Management, LLC is a global venture capital and private equity firm that invests in high-growth technology, software, and Internet businesses. The company is headquartered in New York City, with offices in London, Tel Aviv, and Palo Alto.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Matt Cohler</span> American venture capitalist

Matt Cohler is an American venture capitalist. He worked as Vice President of Product Management for Facebook until June 2008 and was formerly a general partner at Benchmark. Cohler has been named to the Forbes Midas List of top technology investors and in 2019 was named to the New York Times and CB Insights list of top 10 venture capital investors. Cohler made the Forbes 'America's 40 Richest Entrepreneurs Under 40' list in 2015.

Lightspeed Venture Partners is a global venture capital firm focusing on seed stage, early stage investments and growth stage investments in the enterprise, fintech, consumer and healthcare sectors. Lightspeed has eleven offices globally and as of 2023 had approximately US$25 billion in assets under management.

Redpoint Ventures is an American venture capital firm focused on investments in seed, early and growth-stage companies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">First Round Capital</span> Venture capital firm

First Round Capital is a US-based venture capital firm that specializes in providing seed-stage funding to technology companies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Institutional Venture Partners</span> American investment firm

Institutional Venture Partners (IVP) is a US-based venture capital investment firm focusing on fast-growing technology companies. IVP was founded in 1980, making it one of the first venture capital firms in Silicon Valley.

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.

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. As of April 2023, Andreessen Horowitz ranks first on the list of venture capital firms by assets under management, with $42 billion as of May 2024.

FirstMark is a Venture capital firm based in New York City. FirstMark invests in early-stage technology companies, frequently as the first institutional investor and leading the rounds it participates in. Notable investments include Airbnb, Pinterest, Shopify, DraftKings, Stubhub, Upwork, and Ro.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">New Enterprise Associates</span> American Venture Capital firm

New Enterprise Associates (NEA) is an American-based venture capital firm. NEA focuses investment stages ranging from seed stage through growth stage across an array of industry sectors. With over $25 billion in committed capital, NEA is one of the world's largest venture capital firms.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zendesk</span> American customer service software company

Zendesk, Inc. is a Danish-American company headquartered in San Francisco, California. It provides software-as-a-service products related to customer support, sales, and other customer communications. The company was founded in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 2007. Zendesk raised about $86 million in venture capital investments before going public in 2014.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aileen Lee</span> American investor

Aileen Lee is a U.S. venture capital angel investor and co-founder of Cowboy Ventures.

References

  1. Lawler, Ryan (14 July 2014). "Now That Charles River Ventures Has Closed Its 16th Fund, It Wants To Be Called CRV". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2016-07-15.
  2. Charles River Raises A $375M Fifteenth Fund For Early Stage Investing. peHUB, February 28, 2012
  3. Charles River Ventures Raises $320 Million For Its Fourteenth Fund. TechCrunch, March 30, 2009
  4. Orlowski, Andrew. "Who killed Pebble? Easy: The vulture capitalists". www.theregister.co.uk.
  5. Griffith, Erin (Oct 2, 2024). "A Venture Capital Firm Does Something Rare: Give Money Back". New York Times . Archived from the original on Oct 2, 2024. Retrieved Oct 2, 2024.
  6. McBride, Ryan. "Investors Back Growing Bay State Software Firms Aveksa and Apparent Networks in Pair of Series C Financings". xconomy. Retrieved 5 April 2013.
  7. Lardinois, Frederic (February 21, 2018). "With $10M in funding, Mabl brings machine learning to software testing". TechCrunch.
  8. Gage, Deborah (October 3, 2013). "OneLogin Picks Up $13 Million to Manage Online Corporate Identities". Wall Street Journal.
  9. "This week in N.Y.C. funding news: Ellevest, Ripple, KeyMe - New York Business Journal" . Retrieved 2016-09-16.
  10. Sybase President Gains The Confidence of Apple. The New York Times, August 25, 1987
  11. Geron, Tomio. "Before $1.2 Billion Deal, Yammer Was Side Project: Largest Investor George Zachary". www.forbes.com.
  12. Konrad, Alex. "Charles River Ventures Wins Big On Zendesk's IPO, But For Boston Venture It's Bittersweet". www.forbes.com.