Sutter Hill Ventures

Last updated
Sutter Hill Ventures
Type Private
Industry Venture capital
Founded1964;60 years ago (1964)
Founder
Headquarters Palo Alto, California, U.S.
Products Investments
Website www.shv.com

Sutter Hill Ventures is an American private equity firm focused on venture capital investments in technology-based start-up companies. Founded in 1964, Sutter Hill is one of the oldest venture capital firms still in operation. [1] Based in Palo Alto, CA, the firm is primarily focused on investments in the fields of networking and computer technology, business and financial services, healthcare, web development, and pop culture, and have been known to invest in angel funds. [2]

Contents

History

Sutter Hill Ventures was founded in 1964 by Bill Draper and Paul Wythes. It began as an off-shoot of a real estate firm and was licensed as a Small Business Investment Company. [3] The firm was an early investor in companies including Qume, a maker of disk drives and printers acquired in 1978 by ITT, and Diablo Systems, a pioneer of daisy-wheel printers that was acquired by Xerox in 1972. In the 1980s, the firm provided seed money for LSI Logic and Banyan Systems. [1]

Notable Investments

The firm has held positions in a number of publicly traded companies, including Restoration Robotics (HAIR), Pure Storage (PSTG), Mattersight (MATR), Forty Seven (FTSV), Threshold Pharmaceuticals (THLD), Molecular Templates (MTEM), Cardica (CRDC), and Corcept Therapeutics (CORT). [4] The firm has also incubated and invested in Snowflake Computing (SNOW) which had the record-setting technology IPO in 2020. [5]

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References

  1. 1 2 Arnold, Laurence (5 November 2012). "Paul Wythes, Pioneering Venture Capitalist, Dies at 79". Bloomberg News . Retrieved 2 August 2020.
  2. Geron, Tomio. "Angel Investors Get Backers of Their Own". Wall Street Journal . Retrieved 27 March 2018.
  3. Jane Perry, Mauree. "Paul Wythes Interview" (PDF). UC Berkeley Library. Retrieved 7 November 2023.
  4. "Sutter Hill Ventures - Latest Holdings". Fintel.io. Retrieved 10 October 2019.
  5. Levy, Ari (7 January 2021). "A low-profile investor who bet on Snowflake eight years ago is up more than $12 billion after IPO pop". CNBC .