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.
Sequoia Capital is an American venture capital firm. The firm is located in Menlo Park, California and mainly focuses on the technology industry. It has backed companies that now control $1.4 trillion of the combined stock market value. Sequoia manages multiple investment funds including funds specific to India, Israel, and China.
Stephen T. Jurvetson is an American businessman and venture capitalist. He is a cofounder of Future Ventures with Maryanna Saenko, who worked with him at Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ). Current board seats include Synthetic Genomics, Planet Labs, Nervana Systems, Flux, D-Wave, SpaceX, and Tesla. He was a venture capitalist investor in Hotmail. He also led the firm's investments in Tradex and Cyras.
Venture capital financing is a type of funding by venture capital. It is private equity capital that can be provided at various stages or funding rounds. Common funding rounds include early-stage seed funding in high-potential, growth companies and growth funding. Funding is provided in the interest of generating a return on investment or ROI through an eventual exit such as a merger and acquisition,, or Initial public offering, of the company.
Timothy Cook Draper is an American venture capital investor, and in 1985, the founder of the firm that would become Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ). He also founded Draper Associates and Draper University. In July 2014, Draper received wide coverage for his purchase at a US Marshals Service auction of seized bitcoins from the Silk Road marketplace website. He also spent in excess of $5 million to push a ballot initiative to divide California into three smaller states, which has met the signature threshold but was removed from the ballot by a decision in the Supreme Court of California.
In finance, the private equity secondary market refers to the buying and selling of pre-existing investor commitments to private equity and other alternative investment funds. Given the absence of established trading markets for these interests, the transfer of interests in private equity funds as well as hedge funds can be more complex and labor-intensive.
A private equity firm is an investment management company that provides financial backing and makes investments in the private equity of startup or operating companies through a variety of loosely affiliated investment strategies including leveraged buyout, venture capital, and growth capital. Often described as a financial sponsor, each firm will raise funds that will be invested in accordance with one or more specific investment strategies.
Box, Inc., based in Redwood City, California, is a cloud content management and file sharing service for businesses. Official clients and apps are available for Windows, macOS, and several mobile platforms. Box was founded in 2005.
The early history of private equity relates to one of the major periods in the history of private equity and venture capital. Within the broader private equity industry, two distinct sub-industries, leveraged buyouts and venture capital experienced growth along parallel although interrelated tracks.
GV, formerly Google Ventures, is the venture capital investment arm of Alphabet Inc. and provides seed, venture, and growth stage funding to technology companies. The firm operates independently from Google and makes financially driven investment decisions. GV seeks to invest in startup companies in a variety of fields ranging from the Internet, software, and hardware to life science, healthcare, artificial intelligence, transportation, cyber security and agriculture. GV was founded as Google Ventures in 2009. GV has offices in Mountain View, San Francisco, New York City, Cambridge, and London.
ePlanet Capital is a venture capital firm.
Silicon Valley Association of Startup Entrepreneurs (SVASE) is a Silicon Valley nonprofit dedicated to fostering entrepreneurship. SVASE currently operated virtually in Silicon Valley, with an associate membership exceeding 11,000. SVASE is closely affiliated with the Silicon Valley entrepreneur and investor communities, and is recognized as an important networking forum for entrepreneurs. SVASE's speakers and sponsors are drawn from nearly every early stage venture capital firm, angel group and legal firm in Silicon Valley.
Scott Harris Lenet is an American venture capitalist and co-founder of the seed stage venture capital firm DFJ Frontier.
David Lawrence Cremin is an American venture capitalist and co-founder of the seed stage venture capital firm DFJ Frontier.
Mapbox is a large provider of custom online maps for websites and applications such as Foursquare, Lonely Planet, Facebook, the Financial Times, The Weather Channel and Snapchat. Since 2010, it has rapidly expanded the niche of custom maps, as a response to the limited choice offered by map providers such as Google Maps. Mapbox is the creator of, or a significant contributor to some open source mapping libraries and applications, including the MBTiles specification, the TileMill cartography IDE, the Leaflet JavaScript library, and the CartoCSS map styling language and parser.
Josh Stein is an American businessman and venture capitalist. He is a partner at DFJ and was featured in the Forbes Midas List in 2013, 2014 and 2015 in recognition of his accomplishments as an investor. Stein has been a board member and investor in Box (company), Chartbeat, LendKey, SugarCRM, and Talkdesk—and led Box’s first round of institutional investment.
Janrain, sometimes styled as JanRain, is a customer profile and identity management (CIAM) software provider based in Portland, Oregon. It was established in 2002. Akamai acquired Janrain in January 2019.
Jennifer Fonstad is an American venture capital investor and entrepreneur. She co-founded Aspect Ventures, a female-led venture capital firm that invests in early stage technology companies. 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.
