Private equity (PE) typically refers to investment funds, generally organized as limited partnerships, that buy and restructure companies. More formally, private equity is a type of equity and one of the asset classes consisting of equity securities and debt in operating companies that are not publicly traded on a stock exchange.
Venture capital (VC) 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 firms 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.
A joint venture (JV) is a business entity created by two or more parties, generally characterized by shared ownership, shared returns and risks, and shared governance. Companies typically pursue joint ventures for one of four reasons: to access a new market, particularly emerging markets; to gain scale efficiencies by combining assets and operations; to share risk for major investments or projects; or to access skills and capabilities. Work by Reuer and Leiblein challenged the claim that joint ventures minimize downside risk.
Sequoia Capital is an American venture capital firm. The firm is headquartered in Menlo Park, California and mainly focuses on the technology industry.
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 through a share sale to an investment body, another trading company or to the general public via an Initial public offering (IPO). Venture Capital can be made in four methods: 1) Equity Financing; 2) Conditional Loan; 3) Income Note; and 4) Participating Debenture.
TA Associates, founded in 1968, is one of the early modern-era private equity firms in the United States. The firm leads buyouts and minority recapitalizations of profitable growth companies. TA Associates has invested across a range of industries, including technology, healthcare, consumer products, financial services and business services.
Founders Fund is a San Francisco-based venture capital firm. Formed in 2005, Founders Fund had more than $11 billion in aggregate capital under management as of 2022. The firm invests across all stages and sectors, including aerospace, artificial intelligence, advanced computing, energy, health, and consumer Internet, with a portfolio that includes Airbnb, Lyft, Spotify, Stripe, and Oscar Health. Founders Fund was the first institutional investor in Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) and Palantir Technologies, and one of the earliest investors in Facebook. The firm’s partners, including Peter Thiel, Ken Howery and Brian Singerman, have been founders, early employees and investors at companies including PayPal, Google, Palantir Technologies, and SpaceX.
Thomas H. Lee Partners, L.P. is an American private equity firm based in Boston investing in middle market growth companies across financial technology and services, healthcare and technology & business solutions.
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.
Norwest Venture Partners (Norwest) is an American venture and growth equity (GE) investment firm with more than $12.5B in capital under management. The firm targets early to late-stage venture and growth equity investments across several sectors, including cloud computing and information technology, Internet, software as a service, business and financial services, consumer and healthcare. Headquartered in Palo Alto, California, Norwest has offices in San Francisco and subsidiaries in Mumbai, India and Herzelia, Israel. The firm has funded more than 650 companies since inception. As of 2022, the firm has approximately 200 active companies across its venture and growth equity portfolio.
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.
Polaris Partners is an investment firm that has partnered with entrepreneurs in the fields of healthcare and technology. The firm has partnered with enterprises in various stages of development.
Battery Ventures is an American technology-focused investment firm. Founded in 1983, the firm makes venture-capital and private-equity investments in markets across the globe from offices in Boston, Silicon Valley, San Francisco, Israel and London. Since inception, the firm has raised over $8.9 billion and is now investing its thirteenth funds, Battery Ventures XIII and Battery Ventures XIII Side Fund, with a combined capitalization of $2 billion.
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.
Lincoln International LLC is a multinational independent investment bank and financial services company specializing in advisory services and financings on middle market transactions. The firm works with publicly traded and privately owned companies, financial sponsors, and lenders. The firm provides advisory services including mergers & acquisitions, capital advisory consisting of growth equity, debt and restructuring advisory, valuations and opinions, private funds advisory and joint ventures & partnering. The firm completed more than 400 advisory assignments globally in 2021, as well as over 10,000 debt and equity valuations.
Menlo Ventures is a venture capital firm based in Menlo Park, California with an additional office in San Francisco, California. The firm was founded as one of the earliest venture capital firms in Silicon Valley in 1976 and provides technology venture capital funding for seed, early stage and growth companies.
Female entrepreneurs are women who organize and manage an enterprise, especially a business. Female entrepreneurship has steadily increased in the United States during the 20th and 21st century, with female owned businesses increasing at a rate of 5% since 1997. This increase gave rise to wealthy self-made females such as Coco Chanel, Diane Hendricks, Meg Whitman, and Oprah Winfrey.
Union Square Ventures (USV) is an American venture capital firm based in New York City. The firm has backed more than 130 startups, including Twitter, Etsy, Stripe, Coinbase, Zynga, Tumblr, Stack Overflow, Meetup, Kickstarter, MongoDB, Flurry, and Carta.
In business, a unicorn is a privately held startup company valued at over US$1 billion. The term was first popularised in 2013 by venture capitalist Aileen Lee, choosing the mythical animal to represent the statistical rarity of such successful ventures.
Women in venture capital or VC are investors who provide venture capital funding to startups. Women make up a small fraction of the venture capital private equity workforce. A widely used source for tracking the number of women in venture capital is the Midas List which has been published by Forbes since 2001. Research from Women in VC, a global community of women venture investors, shows that the percentage of female VC partners is just shy of 5 percent.
