Company type | Private |
---|---|
Industry | Investments |
Founded | 2012 |
Headquarters | , |
Key people |
|
Products | Venture capital, private equity secondary market |
Website | founderscircle |
Founders Circle Capital is an American growth capital firm based in the San Francisco Bay Area. [1] Founders Circle Capital invests in private companies and specializes in growth stage investments providing preferred stock and common stock (sometimes referred to as employee liquidity or direct secondaries) [2] purchases, institutional liquidity and other unique structures to founders and long-term employees.
The company has also developed a private executive leadership community called The Circle for growth stage CFOs and CEOs to share professional development knowledge and resources with their peers. [3]
Founders Circle Capital was founded in 2012 by Ken Loveless, [4] a former managing director of SVB Capital, and Mike Jung, previously a JPMorgan Partners Principal. In February 2014, the firm closed its first $195 million venture capital fund, FCC Fund I. [5] In July 2016, the firm began investing from its second $208 million fund. [6] By January 2021, the firm closed on FCC Fund III, a $355 million fund. [7] The three funds bring the firm's assets under management to $1 billion. [8]
Founders Circle has invested in over 40 companies since 2012, amongst others: Adaptive Insights, [9] Anaplan, [10] Carbon Black, [11] DocuSign, [12] Elemental, [13] Kabam, [14] Twilio [15] Pinterest, [16] and Ticketfly. [17] Founders Circle Capital has invested in more than 73 startups, of which 13 have gone public and 19 have been acquired. [18]
Citadel LLC is an American multinational hedge fund and financial services company. Founded in 1990 by Ken Griffin, it has more than $58 billion in assets under management as of January 2024. The company has over 2,800 employees, with corporate headquarters in Miami, Florida, and offices throughout North America, Asia, and Europe. Founder, CEO and Co-CIO Griffin owns approximately 85% of the firm. As of December 2022, Citadel is one of the most profitable hedge funds in the world, posting $74 billion in net gains since its inception in 1990, making it the most successful hedge fund in history, according to CNBC.
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.
Coller Capital is one of the largest global investors in the private equity secondary market ("secondaries"). It was founded in 1990 by the UK-based investor and philanthropist Jeremy Coller.
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.
Super angel was a term used in the early 2010s to describe venture capital investors who had once been angel investors and subsequently raised small venture capital funds.
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.
Vista Equity Partners is an American private equity firm that invests in software, data, and technology-enabled businesses. With over $100 billion in AUM, it is one of the largest private equity firms in the world. Vista Equity Partners has invested in hundreds of technology companies, including Citrix, SentinelOne, and Marketo, and has achieved many accolades in the space, most recently being named as 2023's Global Technology Private Equity Firm of the Year by Private Equity International.
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 ~$25 billion in committed capital, NEA is one of the world's largest venture capital firms.
Jeffrey D. Jordan is an American venture capitalist at the Silicon Valley firm Andreessen Horowitz and the former President and CEO of OpenTable.
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.
Spark Capital is a venture capital firm in the United States, responsible for early-stage funding startups of consumer, commerce, FinTech, software, frontier, and media sectors. It has branches in San Francisco, Boston, and New York City.
SeedInvest is an equity crowdfunding platform that connects startups with investors online. The company was founded in 2012 and launched in 2013. SeedInvest has focused on building liquidity in the platform by attracting high-net-worth individuals, family offices and venture capital firms. SeedInvest screens and vets deals before allowing them to take advantage of the JOBS Act exemption permitting General Solicitation. In September 2014 the company launched a partnership with Angel Investing website Gust. In October 2018, SeedInvest was acquired by peer-to-peer payment company Circle Internet Financial Ltd.
A startup studio, also known as a startup factory, or a startup foundry, or a venture studio, is a studio-like company that aims at building several startup companies in succession. This style of business building is referred to as "parallel entrepreneurship".
Initialized Capital is a venture capital fund founded in 2011 and headquartered in San Francisco. It was founded by Alexis Ohanian, Harjeet Taggar, and Garry Tan.
George Arison is a Georgian-born American businessman and investor. He is the founder and co-CEO of Shift, an online, peer-to-peer marketplace for buying and selling used cars. Prior to Shift, in 2007, he co-founded Taxi Magic, known today as Curb. As a political scholar and activist, he is considered for strong pro-democracy views for Georgia in its post-Soviet transition.
DCM (also known as DCM Ventures) is a venture capital firm located in Silicon Valley, Tokyo and Beijing. DCM was one of the first venture capital firms to invest in the early-stage technology sector in China, beginning in 1999. It has increasingly shifted away from Chinese investments due to US sanctions against China.
Venture equity is an investment strategy that includes a hybrid of venture capital and private equity approaches. Firms or individuals involved in venture equity acquire struggling startups, make improvements to the companies to help spur growth, and resell them for a profit.
Sixth Street is a global investment firm with a round $75 billion in assets under management. The firm operates nine investment platforms across its growth investing, adjacencies, direct lending, fundamental public strategies, infrastructure, special situations, agriculture and par liquid credit businesses. Sixth Street invests in the equity and debt of public and private companies, acquires real estate, finances infrastructure projects, and provides start-up capital to new businesses. Sixth Street has been noted in the financial media for the unusual structure of its largest fund, which is open-ended and able to hold longer-term investments.
Arjun Sethi is an American internet entrepreneur, investor and executive. He is co-founder and partner at venture capital firm Tribe Capital. He previously was partner at Social Capital and served as an executive at Yahoo! where he launched Yahoo! Livetext. Before that, he was co-founder and CEO of MessageMe and he was CEO of Lolapps, the developer behind Ravenwood Fair. In December 2023, he became Tribe Capital's chairman and CIO.
Republic is an investment platform headquartered in New York City that allows individuals to invest in startups, growth-stage pre-IPO companies, real estate, video games, and crypto companies.