Venture capital 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 companies 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.
Sean Parker is an American entrepreneur and philanthropist, most notable for co-founding the file-sharing computer service Napster, and serving as 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 an American Internet entrepreneur, angel investor, author and podcaster.
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 London-based Shazam Entertainment, and has been owned by Apple Inc. since 2018. The software is available for Android, macOS, iOS, Wear OS, watchOS and as a Google Chrome extension.
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.
Andreessen Horowitz is a private American 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.
Animoca Brands Corporation Ltd. is a Hong Kong-based game software company and venture capital company co-founded in 2014 by Yat Siu and David Kim. The company initially focused on developing mobile games, then shifted to blockchain gaming and NFTs in 2018.
Base CRM is an enterprise software company based in Mountain View, California with R&D offices located in Kraków, Poland. It provides a web-based all-in-one sales platform that features tools for email, phone dialing, pipeline management, forecasting, reporting and more. Base's platform is available on iOS and Android, and was the first full native CRM Android app available. On September 10, 2018 Base was acquired by Zendesk and later rebranded as Zendesk Sell.
Socialpoint is a Spanish video game developer based in Barcelona. Founded in October 2008 by Horacio Martos and Andrés Bou, the company specializes in free-to-play mobile and social network games. Socialpoint was acquired by Take-Two Interactive in February 2017.
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.
OurCrowd is an online global venture investing platform that empowers institutions and individual accredited investors to invest and engage in emerging technology companies at an early stage while still privately held. Based in Jerusalem, the company launched in February 2013, and has since opened overseas branches in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Spain, Singapore, Brazil, and the UAE.
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.
Fuze is a cloud communications and collaboration software platform designed for the enterprise. Fuze was acquired by 8x8. The company is headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts.
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.
