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.
Hermann Maria Hauser is an Austrian entrepreneur, venture capitalist and inventor who is primarily associated with the Cambridge technology community in England.
Edward Baer Roberts was an American academic who was faculty member at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He became the David Sarnoff Professor of Management of Technology in 1974.
Anne Margaret Glover is CEO and co-founder of Amadeus Capital Partners, a venture capital firm that invests in European high-technology companies.
Doug Richard is an American entrepreneur best known for his television appearances in the United Kingdom. He appeared as a "Dragon" on the first two series of Dragons' Den and was also a government adviser.
Christopher Sacca is an American venture investor, company advisor, entrepreneur, and lawyer. He is the proprietor of Lowercase Capital, a venture capital fund in the United States that has invested in seed and early-stage technology companies such as Twitter, Uber, Instagram, Twilio, and Kickstarter, investments that resulted in his placement as No. 2 on Forbes' Midas List: Top Tech Investors for 2017. Sacca held several positions at Google Inc., where he led the alternative access and wireless divisions and worked on mergers and acquisitions. Between 2015 and 2020, he appeared as a "Guest Shark" on ABC's Shark Tank. In early 2017, Sacca announced that he was retiring from venture investing. In 2021, Sacca announced that he was back into venture investing with a focus on Climate issues.
An angel investor is an individual who provides capital to a business or businesses, including startups, usually in exchange for convertible debt or ownership equity. Angel investors often provide support to startups at a very early stage, once or in a consecutive manner, and when most investors are not prepared to back them. In a survey of 150 founders conducted by Wilbur Labs, about 70% of entrepreneurs will face potential business failure, and nearly 66% will face this potential failure within 25 months of launching their company. A small but increasing number of angel investors invest online through equity crowdfunding or organize themselves into angel groups or angel networks to share investment capital and provide advice to their portfolio companies. The number of angel investors has greatly increased since the mid-20th century.
Arcapita founded in 1997, is an asset management firm. Headquartered in Manama, Bahrain, Arcapita also operates from its offices in the United States, the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, and Singapore. The firm serves a group of investors in the Middle East region including investment firms, family offices, high net-worth individuals, and sovereign wealth funds. Arcapita completed over 100 investments in the United States, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia for a total transaction value exceeding $30 billion. The board of directors contain nine members, mainly from the Gulf Cooperation Council. Members are chairs, previous chairpersons, or current Chief Executive Officers of sovereign wealth funds, regional investment firms or global financial services firms.
U.S. Venture Partners (USVP) is a venture capital investment firm specializing in early-stage ventures in enterprise software, cybersecurity, consumer, e-commerce, healthcare, and IT-enabled healthcare services. The venture capital partnership is headquartered in Menlo Park, California. Since its inception in 1981, USVP has invested over $4.3 billion across a wide range of sectors. Out of the 524 companies financed by USVP, 93 have completed an initial public offering.
David Douglas Cleevely CBE FREng FIET is a British entrepreneur and international telecoms expert who has built and advised many companies, principally in Cambridge, UK.
The Band of Angels was the first high technology specific angel investment group in the United States. Today the group remains very active with more than 160 members who invest their time and money into high tech startup companies. Band members have founded companies such as Cirrus Logic, Symantec, SunPower, National Semiconductor and Logitech, and have been senior executive officers at top Silicon Valley companies including Sun Microsystems, Hewlett Packard, Intel, 3Com and Intuit. Numerous articles have been written about the Band, appearing in periodicals such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Upside, Red Herring, Der Spiegel, U.S. News & World Report, and Forbes. The Band has also been featured in two Harvard Business School case studies.
TCA Venture Group is the leading source of funding to early-stage companies in Southern California. In 2023, TCA had about 400 members. In August 2014, an analysis by CB Insights ranked TCA No.1 out of 370 angel groups on “Network Centrality” and No. 5 overall in “Investor Mosaic.”
Maveron is an American venture capital firm that invests in consumer-only and early-stage companies, with offices in Seattle, Washington and San Francisco, California. The firm was co-founded by Dan Levitan and former Starbucks chief executive Howard Schultz in 1998.
Sherry Coutu CBE is a Canadian-born entrepreneur, angel investor and non-executive director based in Cambridge, UK.
Theresia Gouw is an entrepreneur and venture capital investor in the technology sector. She worked at Bain & Company, Release Software and Accel Partners before co-founding Aspect Ventures, a female-led venture capital firm, in 2014. Gouw was named one of the 40 most influential minds in tech by Time Magazine. and has been recognized seven times on the Forbes Midas List as one of the "world's smartest tech investors". According to Forbes, Gouw is the richest female venture capitalist, with a net worth of approximately $500 million, primarily due to her involvement with Accel (company)'s early investment in Facebook.
Hyde Park Angels (HPA) is an American venture capital firm founded in 2007 and based in Chicago, IL. The company focuseses on angel investments in startup companies in Chicago and the American Midwest.
Peter Cowley is a tech entrepreneur, angel investor and speaker based in Cambridge, United Kingdom. He is co-founder of Cambridge, UK based VC Martlet Capital. and was President of the European Business Angels Network (EBAN).
Hambro Perks is a London-headquartered investment firm. Hambro Perks was founded in 2013 by Rupert Hambro CBE and Dominic Perks. Sir Anthony Salz is the Chairman of Hambro Perks.
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.
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.
