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 often come from high technology industries such as information technology (IT) or biotechnology.
Sean Parker is an American entrepreneur and philanthropist, most notable for co-founding the file-sharing computer service Napster, and was the first president of the social networking website Facebook. He also co-founded Plaxo, Causes, Airtime.com, and Brigade, an online platform for civic engagement. He is the founder and chairman of the Parker Foundation, which focuses on life sciences, global public health, and civic engagement. On the Forbes 2022 list of the world's billionaires, he was ranked No. 1,096 with a net worth of US$2.8 billion.
Jason McCabe Calacanis is a podcaster, American Internet entrepreneur, angel investor, and author.
Kongregate is an American web gaming portal and video game publisher. Its website features over 124,000 online games and 30+ mobile games available to the public. The company also publishes games for PC, mobile, and home consoles. It was purchased by GameStop Corporation in 2010 before being acquired by Modern Times Group MT AB in 2017.
Widgetbox was a San Francisco, California based company that enabled businesses to create and deliver applications to their customers. Widgetbox formally discontinued their service on March 28, 2014.
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.
Shazam is an application that can identify music based on a short sample played using the microphone on the device. It was created by the British company Shazam Entertainment, based in London, and has been owned by Apple since 2018. The software is available for Android, macOS, iOS, Wear OS, watchOS and as a Google Chrome extension.
IDG Ventures is a global family of venture funds with approximately $3.6 billion under management. All of the funds were originally sole-source-funded by International Data Group.
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.
The DEMO conference is a series of technology-focused business conferences in which pre-selected companies and entrepreneurs launch new products and services. Produced by IDG, DEMO seeks to identify and promote new technology with the potential to solve big problems with careful selection and coaching. Products launched at DEMO include: Salesforce.com, TiVo, VMware, Evernote, E*Trade, WebEx and Fusion-io. DEMO Conferences are held under the names DEMO Enterprise, DEMO Africa, DEMO China, DEMO Brazil, DEMO Asia (Vietnam), DEMO India, DEMO Europe (Russia), DEMO Pakistan, DEMO Traction, DEMO Tour, and DEMO Fall.
Simply Hired is an employment website utilizing desktop and mobile application for an online recruitment advertising network based in Sunnyvale, California. The company was launched in 2003. In 2016, Recruit Holdings Co., Ltd., purchased Simply Hired.
AH Capital Management, LLC is an American privately held venture capital firm, founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. The company is headquartered in Menlo Park, California. As of April 2023, Andreessen Horowitz ranks first on the list of venture capital firms by assets under management, with $42 billion as of May 2024.
Scopely, Inc. is an American interactive entertainment company and mobile-first video game developer and publisher. The company is headquartered in Culver City, California, with offices across the US, EMEA and Asia.
Optimizely is an American company that provides digital experience platform software as a service. Optimizely provides A/B testing and multivariate testing tools, website personalization, and feature toggle capabilities, as well as web content management and digital commerce.
VCCircle, founded in 2005, is an Indian information services group with presence in online business news, data, events and training for private equity and venture capital fund managers, entrepreneurs, investment bankers, corporate executives and lawyers. It currently employs about 100 people and is owned by Mosaic Media Ventures Private Limited, a subsidiary of HT Media Limited, with offices in M3M Urbana, Sector 67, Gurugram; Delhi-National Capital Region, Mumbai and Bengaluru. The company was acquired in 2015 by News Corp, and later by HT Media Limited in 2020. Leslie D'Monte joined as the Executive Editor of VCCircle and TechCircle in August, 2021.
The Alchemist Accelerator is a venture-backed accelerator focused on the development of seed-stage ventures that monetize from enterprises. Alchemist's backers include Khosla Ventures, DFJ, Cisco, Siemens, GE, and Salesforce, among others. The accelerator seeds around 75 enterprise-monetizing ventures per year.
Allied Minds plc is an American intellectual property (IP) commercialization company. It was listed on the London Stock Exchange until November 2022. The company has technology transfer agreements with over 160 partners, including 34 U.S. federal research facilities, as well as university labs such as Harvard and New York University. It reviews thousands of IP assets per year, and forms, funds and manages start-ups that operate as subsidiaries. This IP commercialization model is relatively new to the US.
Machine Zone, Inc. (MZ) is an American privately held technology company, founded in 2008 and based in Palo Alto, California. The company is best known for its widely advertised freemium mobile MMO strategy games Game of War: Fire Age and Mobile Strike, which have both simultaneously been ranked among the top ten highest-grossing mobile games.
Cyan Banister is an American angel investor and entrepreneur. She is a partner at Long Journey Ventures, an early stage venture capital fund. She was an early investor in Uber, Niantic, Postmates, DeepMind, Carta, Thumbtack, Flexport, Affirm, and SpaceX, and co-founded Zivity, an adult-themed social networking site. Banister was the first woman investing partner at the venture capital Founders Fund, where she led seed and early-stage investments.
Genies is an American avatar technology company founded by Akash Nigam and Evan Rosenbaum in 2017. Genies' consumer app allow users to create fully personalized avatars to be used in apps such as Giphy, iMessage, and Instagram. Genies also offers a software development kit (SDK) enabling brands to create a branded avatar experience and online marketplace directly in their apps. The company also consists of an Avatar Agency that creates digital versions of its clients.
