Doughty Hanson & Co is a British private equity fund manager focused on leveraged buyout and recapitalization transactions primarily of upper middle-market companies in Europe. The firm also invests opportunistically in European real estate and provides early-stage venture capital to technology companies.
Sir Richard Charles Nicholas Branson is a British business magnate, investor, author and philanthropist. He founded the Virgin Group in the 1970s, which controls more than 400 companies in various fields.
The Carlyle Group is an American multinational private equity, alternative asset management and financial services corporation. It specializes in corporate private equity, real assets, and private credit. In 2015, Carlyle was the world's largest private equity firm by capital raised over the last five years, according to the PEI 300 index.
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, in those companies. 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 the high technology industries, such as information technology (IT), clean technology or biotechnology.
A business incubator is a company that helps new and startup companies to develop by providing services such as management training or office space. The National Business Incubation Association (NBIA) defines business incubators as a catalyst tool for either regional or national economic development. NBIA categorizes their members' incubators by the following five incubator types: academic institutions; non-profit development corporations; for-profit property development ventures; venture capital firms, and combination of the above.
Jason McCabe Calacanis is an American Internet entrepreneur, angel investor, author and podcaster.
Accel, formerly known as Accel Partners, is an American venture capital firm. Accel works with startups in seed, early and growth-stage investments. The company has offices in Palo Alto, California and San Francisco, California, with additional operating funds in London, India and China.
The history of private equity and venture capital and the development of these asset classes has occurred through a series of boom-and-bust cycles since the middle of the 20th century. Within the broader private equity industry, two distinct sub-industries, leveraged buyouts and venture capital experienced growth along parallel, although interrelated tracks.
Sofinnova is the name shared by two venture capital firms, Sofinnova Partners and Sofinnova Ventures. The name Sofinnova is a contraction of the French, "Société de Financement de l’Innovation" or, Innovation Venture Capital Company. Both firms trace their roots back to Sofinnova SA, an investment institution founded in Paris in 1972. The two firms have raised ~$4B since inception and have generally shared a similar investment strategy of financing projects and ideas in the life sciences and technology sectors. The two firms distinguish themselves on the basis of their target geographies, stage of investment, and sectors. They have been independent entities since 1997.
GV, formerly Google Ventures, is the venture capital investment arm of Alphabet Inc., founded by Bill Maris, that 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.
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."
Riverstone Holdings is a multinational private equity firm based in New York City focused on leveraged buyout, growth capital, and credit investments in the energy industry and electrical power industry sectors. The firm focuses on oil and gas exploration, midstream pipelines, electricity generation, energy and power services, energy and power technology, and renewable energy infrastructure and technology. Riverstone has raised approximately $39 billion since the firm's inception in 2000.
Klaus Hommels is a venture capitalist based in Zurich, Switzerland. He focuses on early and growth-stage investments and has founded his own venture capital fund by the name of Lakestar, through which he has been investing mainly in Internet businesses. He has been involved in successful Internet investments such as Skype, Facebook and Xing.
Viktoriya V. Tigipko is a businesswoman, public figure, founding partner and managing director of venture capital firm TA Ventures, president of Odesa International Film Festival, Head of the Supervisory Board of Ukrainian Film Academy, mastermind of the "IDCEE. Internet technologies and Innovations" conference (2010–2014). Initiated the establishment of Code Club UA - the Ukrainian chapter of Code Club. Co-creator of Wtech - a community for women IT and tech business leaders.
Balderton Capital is a venture capital firm based in London, UK, that invests in early-stage, technology and internet startup companies in Europe. It is considered to be among the four-biggest venture capital firms in the English capital.
SOSV is a venture capital and investment management firm that provides seed, venture and growth stage funding to startup companies in the technology sector. The company's focus is on accelerating startups via their market specific seed accelerator programs located in Europe, Asia and the USA. The firm is made up of 7 investment partners, 45+ full-time support staff and hundreds of mentors. SOSV is headquartered in Princeton, New Jersey, with back office operations based in Cork, Ireland, and flagship offices in San Francisco, Shenzhen, Shanghai, New York, and London.
Robin Klein is a British entrepreneur and investor. He was until 2015 a venture partner at Index Ventures and co-founder of The Accelerator Group, an advisor and investor in early-stage companies. In April 2015, he and his son, Saul founded LocalGlobe, a seed stage venture capital firm.
Shervin Kordary Pishevar is an Iranian-American entrepreneur, venture capitalist, super angel investor, and philanthropist. He is the co-founder and former executive chairman of Hyperloop One and a co-founder and managing director of Sherpa Capital, a venture capital fund which has invested in companies including Airbnb, Uber, and Munchery.
DN Capital is an international venture capital firm headquartered in London that invests in technology companies. It was founded in 2000 by Nenad Marovac and Steve Schlenker, two Harvard Business School classmates.
Venture capital in Poland is a segment of the private equity market that finances early-stage high-risk companies based in Poland, with the potential for fast growth. As of March 2019, there is a total of 130 active VC firms in Poland, including local offices of international VC firms, and VC firms with mainly Polish management teams. Between 2009–2019, these entities have invested locally in over 750 companies, which gives an average of around 9 companies per portfolio. The Polish venture market accounts for 3% of the entire European ecosystem of VC investments, mainly in the digital space.
