 Venrock logo | |
| Company type | Limited liability company |
|---|---|
| Industry | Venture Capital |
| Founded | 1969 |
| Founder | Laurance Rockefeller |
| Headquarters | Palo Alto, California, United States |
| Products | Investments |
| Website | venrock |
Venrock (portmanteau of Venture and Rockefeller) is a venture capital firm formed in 1969 to build upon the successful investing activities of the Rockefeller family that began in the late 1930s. It has offices in Palo Alto, California, New York City, and Boston, Massachusetts.
Venture capitalist Laurance S. Rockefeller (1910–2004) was the fourth of the six children of John D. Rockefeller Jr. In January 1946 he formed Rockefeller Brothers, Inc., one of the first postwar venture-capital operations, starting with a capitalization of $1.5 million. There were eight partners in all, the five brothers and their sister, Abby, and two non-family members, Harper Woodward and MIT scientist Ted Walkowicz. In 1969, the firm became known as Venrock. [1] Laurance S. Rockefeller became an investor in enterprises based on science and technology. His investment interests included the fields of aviation, aerospace, electronics, high temperature physics, composite materials, optics, lasers, data processing, thermionics, and nuclear power.[ citation needed ]
Venrock closed its seventh fund in July 2014 with 8 partners and its eighth fund in January 2017 with 15 partners, each fund totalling $450 million. [2] [3]
Venrock invested more than $2.5 billion in more than 440 companies, resulting in 125 initial public offerings.[ citation needed ] Venrock focuses its investments on early-stage and start-up companies in information technology, healthcare and emerging technologies. These include: Intel, Apple, AppNexus, Astranis, StrataCom, Check Point Software, Dapper Labs, DoubleClick, 3Com Corporation, Mosaic, PGP, Itek, Digex, Interos, [4] Shape Security, Phoenix, Second Rotation (gazelle), RedSeal, CTERA Networks, and Juno Therapeutics. It also has a significant venture in the nascent nanotechnology field, with early funding of Nanosys and the nanotech division of Du Pont. [5] Others include BioTime. [6] [7]
In the healthcare sector with partners such as Bryan Roberts, Venrock has invested in athenahealth, Grand Rounds, HealthSouth Corporation, MedPartners, Inc., Castlight Health, Caliper Technologies Corporation, Centocor, Geron, [8] senolytic startup UNITY Biotechnology, [9] Genetics Institute, Idec Pharmaceuticals Corporation, Illumina, Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Sirna Therapeutics, and Sugen.[ citation needed ]
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.
Kleiner Perkins, formerly Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB), is an American venture capital firm which specializes in investing in incubation, early stage and growth companies. Since its founding in 1972, the firm has backed entrepreneurs in over 900 ventures, including America Online, Amazon.com, Tandem Computers, Compaq, Electronic Arts, JD.com, Square, Genentech, Google, Netscape, Sun Microsystems, Nest, Palo Alto Networks, Synack, Snap, AppDynamics, and Twitter. By 2019 it had raised around $9 billion in 19 venture capital funds and four growth funds.
Sevin Rosen Funds (SRF) is a Texas-based venture capital firm credited with pioneering the personal computing revolution in the 1980s and also venture investing in Dallas. It was established in 1981 by L. J. Sevin, a former Texas Instruments engineer, and Ben Rosen, and was one of the leading investors on the US West Coast.
Khosla Ventures is a private American venture capital firm based in Menlo Park, California. It was founded by entrepreneur Vinod Khosla in 2004. The firm focused on early-stage companies in the Internet, computing, mobile, financial services, agriculture, healthcare and clean technology sectors. Some of its most successful investments include Affirm, DoorDash, Square, Impossible Foods, Instacart, and OpenAI.
The history of private equity, 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.
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.
Advanced Technology Ventures (ATV) is an American venture capital firm with more than $1.8 billion in capital under management. The firm was founded in 1979 and invests in IT, healthcare, and cleantech companies. ATV is based in Menlo Park, California with offices in Waltham, Massachusetts.
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.
James W. Breyer is an American venture capitalist, founder and chief executive officer of Breyer Capital, an investment and venture philanthropy firm, and a former managing partner at Accel Partners, a venture capital firm. Breyer has invested in over 40 companies that have gone public or completed a merger, with some of these investments, including Facebook, earning over 100 times cost and many others over 25 times cost. On the Forbes 2021 list of the 400 richest Americans, he was ranked #389, with a net worth of US$2.9 billion.
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.
Sandbox Industries is a venture capital firm located in Chicago. The firm focuses on connecting established corporations with disruptive startups via strategic corporate investment funds.
Third Rock Ventures is a venture capital firm with offices in Boston and San Francisco. Founded in 2007, the firm invests in biotechnology startups.
Ambit was an American pharmaceutical company focused on development of kinase inhibitor therapeutics to treat a variety of human diseases. As of March 2014, the company was based in San Diego, California, and consisted of a single facility. Ambit made an initial public offering in May 2013, and was listed on the NASDAQ exchange under the symbol "AMBI". Ambit was acquired by Daiichi Sankyo in 2014 and is no longer traded on the NASDAQ exchange.
Oscar Health, Inc. is an American health insurance company, founded in 2012 by Joshua Kushner, Kevin Nazemi and Mario Schlosser, and is headquartered in New York City. The company focuses on the health insurance industry through telemedicine, healthcare focused technological interfaces, and transparent claims pricing systems which would make it easier for patients to navigate.
Dropel Fabrics is an American technology company that develops, manufactures, and licenses sustainable treatments for natural fabrics to make spill proof and stain proof threads. The company is known for creating the world's first water and stain repellent naturals fabrics that maintain their softness and breathability.
William H.Rastetter, a scientist, entrepreneur and venture capitalist, is the chair of Neurocrine Biosciences, of Fate Therapeutics, and of Daré Bioscience, Inc. in San Diego, California. He was a founding board member and investor in GRAIL, Inc. in Menlo Park, California, and served for a period as the company's interim CEO (2017) and chair (2017-2018). Rastetter is also a director of Regulus Therapeutics and Iambic Therapeutics. He was a partner in the venture firm Venrock (2006-2013), and a trustee at Caltech (2015-2018). He has served as a director (1998-2016) and as chair of Illumina (2005-2016). He advised SVB Leerink (2014-2019) and currently advises Illumina Ventures.
OrbiMed is an American investment firm based in New York City, United States. It is focused on making public and private investments in the Healthcare and Biotechnology industries. OrbiMed is considered one of the world's largest dedicated healthcare investment firms.
Canaan Partners (Canaan) is an American venture capital firm headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut with offices in San Francisco, Menlo Park and New York City. The firm focuses on investing in early stage companies in the technology and healthcare industries. Since 2014, the firm has also been investing in technology companies based in Israel.
