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.
Seed money, also known as seed funding or seed capital, is a form of securities offering in which an investor puts 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.
The MIT Blackjack Team was a group of students and ex-students. The students were from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, and other leading colleges; they used card counting techniques and more sophisticated strategies to beat casinos at blackjack worldwide. The team and its successors operated successfully from 1979 through the beginning of the 21st century. Many other blackjack teams around the world have been formed with the goal of beating the casinos.
Ben Mezrich is an American author.
Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six MIT Students Who Took Vegas for Millions is a 2003 book by Ben Mezrich about a group of MIT card counters commonly known as the MIT Blackjack Team. Though the book is classified as non-fiction, The Boston Globe alleges that the book contains significant fictional elements, that many of the key events propelling the drama did not occur in real life, and that others were exaggerated greatly. The book was adapted into the movies 21 and The Last Casino.
Techstars is a pre-seed investor that provides access to capital, mentorship, and other support for early-stage entrepreneurs. It was founded in 2006 in Boulder, Colorado. As of January 2024, the company had accepted over 4,100 companies into its accelerator programs with a combined market capitalization of $106bn USD. Techstars operates accelerator programs in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and Oceania.
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.
SMTP, Inc. is a provider of transactional email relay services.
AngelPad is an American seed-stage startup incubator, launched in September 2010 by Thomas Korte and Carine Magescas with six other former Google employees as mentors. AngelPad provides mentorship, seed money, and networking at two 10-week courses per year.
Atlas Venture is an early-stage venture capital firm that creates and invests in biotechnology startup companies in the U.S. Atlas is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where the majority of its investments are located. Atlas raised its thirteenth fund totaling $450 million in March 2022, after raising its Opportunity Fund II totaling $300 million in September 2021.
Xconomy was a media company providing news on business, life sciences, and technology focusing on the regions of Boston, Boulder/Denver, Detroit, New York City, Raleigh-Durham, San Diego, San Francisco and Seattle. The website was launched in June 2007 by founders Robert Buderi and Rebecca Zacks. Xconomy content covered "local personalities, companies, and technological trends to business and technology leaders" with a target audience of "entrepreneurs, business and technology executives and innovators, venture capitalists, angel investors, lawyers, and university researchers and officials." Bill Mitchell of the Poynter Institute described Xconomy in 2010 as reflecting "the insiderish feel of, say, Politico, but with some of the familiarity that you might expect from a small town paper."
SendGrid is a Denver, Colorado-based customer communication platform for transactional and marketing email. The company was founded by Isaac Saldana, Jose Lopez, and Tim Jenkins in 2009, and incubated through the Techstars accelerator program. As of 2017, SendGrid has raised over $81 million and has offices in Denver, Colorado; Boulder, Colorado; Irvine, California; Redwood City, California; and London.
Bill Maris is an American entrepreneur and venture capitalist focused on technology and the life sciences. Bill Maris's investments have to date resulted in over 150 exits and more than 50 companies that have grown to over $1B in value, including: Aurora Innovation, Nest, Uber, Crowdstrike, Coinbase, 23andme, Flatiron Health, Foundation Medicine, The Climate Corporation, Vir and Auris. He is the founder and first CEO of Google Ventures (GV) and also served as VP of Special Projects at Google/Alphabet. He is the creator of Google's Calico project, a company focused on the genetic basis of aging. He is the founder of early web hosting pioneer Burlee.com, now part of Web.com, and the founder of Section 32, a California-based venture fund focused on frontier technology.
Brad Feld is an American entrepreneur, author, blogger, and venture capitalist at Foundry Group in Boulder, Colorado, a firm he started with partners Seth Levine, Ryan McIntyre, and Jason Mendelson.
John F. Frankel, more commonly known as John Frankel, is a British venture capitalist, author and speaker. Frankel is the founding partner at ff Venture Capital, a New York-based, seed stage investment firm.
Lowercase Capital was an American venture capital firm that provided seed and early stage funding for a number of successful startups including Twitter, Twilio, Kickstarter, Uber, Instagram, and Stripe. It raised over $1 billion in capital and sources claim a return of at least $5 billion to its investors. In 2017 Chris Sacca closed the fund for new start-up investments to focus on climate action and politics. He said however that Lowercase Capital would continue to support the existing portfolio of investments.
Jonathan Lacoste is a venture capitalist and software entrepreneur based in Austin, TX. He is the Founder & General Partner at Space.VC, an early-stage venture capital fund specialized on space, defense, and frontier tech investments. Notable investments have included SpaceX, True Anomaly, and Loft Orbital. Previously, Jonathan was the Co-Founder of Jebbit, an enterprise software company he co-founded in 2011 with university classmates. He and co-founder Tom Coburn ran the company for 12 years before being acquired by Vista Equity Partners.
David Tisch is a businessman and angel investor based in New York City. He is managing partner of BoxGroup, a seed-stage capital firm, and a co-founder of TechStars New York City. He is the grandson of American businessman Laurence Tisch, co-owner of Loews Corporation. His great-uncle, Preston Robert Tisch purchased the New York Giants, now co-owned by Steve Tisch, who produced the films Forrest Gump and Risky Business.
Foresite Capital is an American venture capital and growth equity firm headquartered in San Francisco. As of March 2021, the company had raised five funds: Foresite Capital Fund I, II, III, IV and V.
Plated was an American ingredient-and-recipe meal kit service that has been acquired by Albertsons. The company was founded in 2012 and became well known through its participation in Techstars in 2013, Shark Tank in 2014 and Beyond the Tank in 2015. Plated's founders, Nick Taranto and Josh Hix, earned a deal on Shark Tank that fell through, but negotiated a deal with a different Shark Tank investor after the show was filmed. The company accepted several rounds of venture capital investments and remained private until it was acquired by Albertsons in September 2017.
