Venture capital is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been 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. Venture capitalists take on the risk of financing risky 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. The start-ups are usually based on an innovative technology or business model and they are usually from high technology industries, such as information technology (IT), clean technology or biotechnology.
Sweat equity refers to work one does to build up value without a salary. This ownership interest, or increase in value, is created as a direct result of hard work by the owner. For example, homeowners who renovate or repair their house themselves are investing in sweat equity that increases the value of their home. Or it could be a non-monetary benefit that a company's stakeholders give in labour and time, rather than a monetary contribution, that benefit the company. In some cases, sweat equity may be rewarded in the form of sweat equity shares. These are shares given out by a company in exchange for labour and time rather than a monetary amount.
Seed money, sometimes known as seed funding or seed capital, is a form of securities offering in which an investor invests capital in a startup company in exchange for an equity stake or convertible note stake in the company. The term seed suggests that this is a very early investment, meant to support the business until it can generate cash of its own, or until it is ready for further investments. Seed money options include friends and family funding, seed venture capital funds, angel funding, and crowdfunding.
Benchmark is a venture capital firm founded in 1995 by Bob Kagle, Bruce Dunlevie, Andy Rachleff, Kevin Harvey, and Val Vaden.
A business incubator is an organization that helps startup companies and individual entrepreneurs to develop their businesses by providing a fullscale range of services starting with management training and office space and ending with venture capital financing. The National Business Incubation Association (NBIA) defines business incubators as a catalyst tool for either regional or national economic development. NBIA categorizes its members' incubators by the following five incubator types: academic institutions; non-profit development corporations; for-profit property development ventures; venture capital firms, and a combination of the above.
Business.com is a digital media company and B2B web destination which offers various performance marketing advertising, including lead generation products on a pay per lead and pay per click basis, directory listings, and display advertising. The site covers business industry news and trends for growth companies and the B2B community to stay up-to-date, and hosted more than 15,000 pieces of content as of November 2014. Business.com operates as a subsidiary of the Purch Group since being acquired in 2016.
Social venture capital is a form of investment funding that is usually funded by a group of social venture capitalists or an impact investor to provide seed-funding investment, usually in a for-profit social enterprise, in return to achieve an outsized gain in financial return while delivering social impact to the world. There are various organizations, such as Venture Philanthropy (VP) companies and nonprofit organizations, that deploy a simple venture capital strategy model to fund nonprofit events, social enterprises, or activities that deliver a high social impact or a strong social causes for their existence. There are also regionally focused organizations that target a specific region of the world, to help build and support the local community in a social cause.
An entrepreneur in residence, or executive in residence (EIR), is a position most often held by successful entrepreneurs in venture capital firms, private equity firms, startup accelerators, law firms or business schools. The EIR typically leads, or has led, a small, early-stage, emerging company deemed to have high-growth potential, or which has demonstrated high growth in its number of employees, annual revenue, or both. An institutional fund may provide an entrepreneur in residence, or executive in residence, with the working capital to nurture expansion, new-product development, or restructuring of a company's operations, management, or ownership.
Robert Kagle is a Director at eBay and a partner at Benchmark, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm. In addition to eBay, Kagle sits on the Board of Directors for several companies including: E-Loan, Jamba Juice, Logoworks, Mint.com, Prosper, uShip, and ZipRealty.
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.
In 2018, Tyler Technologies acquired Socrata, a business-to-government software company, that sells an "open data platform" whose goal was to help "civic developers build apps more efficiently."
govWorks Inc. was a dot-com company that was founded in 1998 by Kaleil Isaza Tuzman, Tom Herman and Chieh Cheung. It went bankrupt when the dot-com bubble burst in 2000. govWorks's rise and fall is documented in the 2001 documentary Startup.com. The firm, originally known as Public Data Systems, produced software to help government clients track contracts and purchasing functions. As the Internet boom accelerated, the company transitioned toward becoming an Internet web portal.
Turquoise Partners is a privately-owned international financial services group based in Iran which was established in 2005. Turquoise provides a wide range of financial services to foreign and domestic clients. The company is considered a pioneer in terms of managing foreign assets on the Tehran Stock Exchange. Turquoise is the largest manager of foreign portfolio investment on Iran's capital markets.
Guosen Securities Company Limited is a Chinese state-owned financial services company headquartered in Shenzhen, China, with more than 70 branches and 11,500 employees nationwide. It has offices in 47 major cities in China including Shenzhen, Beijing, Guangzhou, Foshan, Nanjing, Shanghai, Tianjin and Hong Kong. Guosen Securities provides sales and trading, investment banking, research, asset management, private equity, and other financial services with both institutional and retail clients in China and Hong Kong. It also operates a trading platform called GuoXin TradingStation.
MicroVentures is an equity crowdfunding website offering investments in early stage companies. MicroVentures connects accredited investors with startups, businesses and services looking to raise funds or participate in select secondary market opportunities. It is the only major equity crowdfunding site that is a broker-dealer registered by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) and the first to take a portfolio company to a successful exit. As of October 2013, MicroVentures had raised $20 million, spread among 45 companies including Twitter, Facebook, and Yelp.
Shasta Ventures is an early-stage venture capital investment firm located in Silicon Valley that invests in enterprise and technology consumer startups. It is located on Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park.
Softeq Development Corporation is a privately-held, full-stack development company focusing on low-level programming hardware,, and software apps for web, desktop, and mobile. Softeq builds end-to-end IoT and cloud infrastructure solutions, and provides technology business consulting services, and is an ISO 13485:2016 company with certified partnerships with Amazon, Microsoft, and Xamarin. Softeq serves Fortune Global 500 companies: Verizon, Epson, Purple Innovations, Microsoft, Lenovo, AMD, Disney, Intel, NVIDIA, and Halo by PAWS. From 2018 to 2021 Softeq appeared in Inc. 5000, the annual rankings of the fastest-growing privately-held companies in the United States. Softeq company is headquartered in Houston, TX with development centers in Vilnius, Lithuania, and Monterrey, Mexico with offices in Munich, Germany, and London, United Kingdom. Softeq has over 500 employees globally.
Eureeca is an equity crowdfunding platform with presence in Europe, the Middle East and South East Asia that allows early-stage businesses and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to raise capital from a group of investors, who range from casual and angel investors to institutional firms, in exchange for equity. Eureeca serves as an alternative financing option to more traditional financing sources such as banks and venture capital firms.
Craftsvilla is an Indian e-commerce portal that sells ethnic apparel, footwear, fashion accessories, beauty products, handcrafted home accessories and other ethnic fashion and lifestyle products. The company is headquartered in Mumbai, Maharashtra.
Clio is a legal technology company headquartered in Burnaby, British Columbia. Clio offers law firms cloud-based software that handles various law practice management tasks including client intake, contact management, calendaring, document management, timekeeping, billing, and trust accounting.
