Formation 8

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Formation 8
Type Private
Industry Private equity
Founded 2011
Founder(s) Joe Lonsdale
Headquarters 501 2nd Street
San Francisco, California
Products Venture capital
Total assets $448,000,000
Website www.formation8.com

Formation 8 is a venture capital firm founded in 2011 by Joe Lonsdale, Jim Kim and Brian Koo. The company is dual-headquartered in Palo Alto, California and San Francisco, California.

General Partners

Formation 8 launched in 2011 by Jim Kim, Brian Koo and Joe Lonsdale.[1]

Jim Kim

Kim previously was a partner at Khosla Ventures, and before this was a senior partner at CMEA.[2] Kim began his career at General Electric where he worked in the Structured Finance and Energy Financial Services Division, founding the Energy Technology Ventures group.[3] Kim serves as an adjunct professor at the UCLA Anderson School of Management teaching courses on green energy and entrepreneurship.[3] Kim has an MBA from Columbia University and holds undergraduate degrees in computer science, electrical engineering and political science from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.[3]

Brian Bonwoong Koo

Koo previously founded InnovationHub, which helped his family business LS Group, source investment opportunities.[4] Koo also co-founded Harbor Pacific Capital, a venture capital fund which was focused on helping young technology companies navigate business development in Asia.[5] Koo holds an MBA from Stanford's Graduate School of Business and an undergraduate degree in economics from Stanford University where he was classmates with Lonsdale.[4]

Joe Lonsdale

Lonsdale is a prominent entrepreneur, investor and adviser in Silicon Valley. Previously Lonsdale founded Anduin Ventures, a seed fund focused on helping the best technology teams in Silicon Valley build information technology companies across a variety of industries.[6] Lonsdale serves as the Chairman of Addepar, which he co-founded in 2009. Lonsdale co-founded Palantir Technologies in 2004 with Thiel, Alex Karp, Stephen Cohen, and Nathan Gettings. Lonsdale graduated from Stanford University in 2003 with a degree in Computer Science.

Founding

In 2012, Formation 8 intended to close its first round fund with $200 Million dollars, but decided to push back its initial launch to 2013 in order to accommodate the increasing number of limited partners who expressed interest.[1] Lonsdale revealed the limited partners of Formation 8 includes "founders of PayPal, Palantir, Yahoo, and Yammer, plus Asian conglomerates and some New York institutions."[1] The team was later joined by James Zhang of Softbank China Venture Capital and BioDiscovery and Tom Baruch, founder of CMEA Capital and Director of Intermolecular. The firm added Gideon Yu, the former Facebook Chief Financial Officer who is now president of the San Francisco 49ers, as a special adviser to the firm.[7]

Fortune Magazine described the firm as "the hottest venture capital since Andreessen."[8]

In April 2013, it closed its first round fund with $448M and are looking to launch the next round fund shortly after.[9]

Mission

According to Formation 8's website, the firm’s investment philosophy centers around ”Large, growing and global markets with hard problems that can be solved through technology and partnership.” It wants companies with a strong technology culture that offer long-term equity incentives, make data-driven decisions, dream big, stress discipline, and have the humility to accept advice.

Formation 8 provides financial and strategic capital to early growth smart enterprise and energy technology companies with a heavy focus on "government, finance, healthcare, energy and logistics."[10] Specifically, Formation 8 says that they are looking for “smart enterprise” startups that can help enormous companies like those that define Asia to make sense of the vast seas of data now available. Government, finance, healthcare, and business services can all fall within this net. Formation 8 also focuses on energy companies that can transform the global energy value chain.

The company has local branches in South Korea, China and Singapore for business development and localized deployment purposes.

Portfolio companies

  • Aka Study
  • Blend Labs
  • ContextLogic
  • OpenGov
  • Foro Energy
  • Hyperdyadic
  • LearnSprout
  • RelateIQ
  • Revinate

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 "Formation 8 Raises Its First Fund Of $448M To Plug Silicon Valley Startups Into Asian Conglomerates"
  2. ↑ http://www.crunchbase.com/person/james-kim
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 http://formation8.com/team/jim-kim/
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 http://formation8.com/team/brian-bonwoong-koo/
  5. ↑ http://www.harborpac.com/about-us/
  6. ↑ http://anduinventures.com/
  7. ↑ "New VC fund Formation 8 has $450M, star partners"
  8. ↑ "The hottest VCs since Andreessen"
  9. ↑ http://edgar.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1543731/000154373112000002/xslFormDX01/primary_doc.xml
  10. ↑ "Joe Lonsdale Of Formation 8 Sees Government, Finance, Healthcare, Energy And Logistics As Ripe Areas For Disruption"

External links

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