Lightspeed Venture Partners
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| Founded | 2000 |
|---|---|
| Founder | Chris Schaepe, Barry Eggers, Ravi Mhatre, and Peter Nieh |
| Headquarters |
Sand Hill Road Menlo Park, California, United States |
Key people | Andrew Moley, Arif Janmohamed, Barry Eggers, Bejul Somaia, Bipul Sinha, Chris Schaepe, David Dubick, David Gussarsky, Jeremy Liew, John Vrionis, Justin Caldbeck, Peter Nieh, Ravi Mhatre, Yoni Cheifetz |
| Total assets | Over $3 billion |
| Website | www.lsvp.com |
Lightspeed Venture Partners is a venture capital firm focusing on early and expansion stage investments in the consumer, enterprise technology and cleantech markets.[1]
Lightspeed Venture Partners has backed more than 200 companies, including Brocade (BRCD),[1] DoubleClick (acquired by Google after going public), Nicira (acquired by VMware),[2] Playdom (acquired, DIS),[3] Pliant Technology (acquired, SanDisk),[4] XtremeIO (acquired, EMC),[5] Blue Nile (NILE),[1] Fusion-io (FIO),[1] Phone.com (OPWV),[1] Informatica (INFA), and Solazyme (SZYM).[6] The fund has 24 early stage enterprise investments that have gone public, the most of any fund in the world.
Lightspeed Venture Partners invests in the U.S. and internationally, with investment professionals and advisors in Silicon Valley, India, Israel, and China with Lightspeed China Partners. The team is currently investing out of Lightspeed X, a $1 billion fund.[7] Recently it has invested in 'Vee (application)' which is a mobile dating application by GetVee Technologies Private Limited (an India based startup).[8]
History
The firm was founded in October 2000 by Chris Schaepe, Barry Eggers, Ravi Mhatre, and Peter Nieh. All four were formerly a part of the investment firm Weiss, Peck & Greer and left to start Lightspeed following the sale of the investment management business to Robeco.
In 2014, Lightspeed closed Lightspeed X, a $1 billion fund focused on the Enterprise, Consumer and Cleantech markets. Today the firm has over $3 billion in committed capital.[9]
Significant Investments
Nicira acquired by VMware for $1.26B
Fusion-io (NYSE: FIO)
Linkamedia acquired by SK Hynix
XtremeIO acquired by EMC
Pliant Technology acquired by SanDisk
Riverbed (NASDAQ: RVBD)
Playdom acquired by Disney
Kosmix acquired by Walmart
Flixster acquired by Warner Brothers
Serious Business acquired by Zynga
TutorVista acquired by Pearson
Ciena (NASDAQ: CIEN)
Informatica (NASDAQ: INFA)
DoubleClick acquired by Google post IPO
eHealth (NASDAQ: EHTH)
BlueNile (NASDAQ: NILE)
Brocade (NASDAQ: BRCD)
Virsa acquired by SAP
Avamar acquired by EMC
TimesTen acquired by Oracle
Telogy acquired by Texas Instruments
Kiva Software acquired by Netscape
Growth Networks acquired by Cisco
Waveset acquired by Sun Microsystems
Terayon (NASDAQ: TERN)
LiveProfile acquired by BlackBerry
Snapchat ($485K in March 2012)
Whisper ($3M in April 2013)
Percolate ($40M in May 2015)[10]
Summer Fellowship Program
Every year, Lightspeed offers summer fellowships to support entrepreneurship and innovation among highly motivated engineering and computer science students. Weekly speakers and angel investors are brought in to share their insights and offer further advice about the start-up experience. 2015 will be the program’s 9th year running. Notable participants of Lightspeed's Fellowship program include Ben Silberman, Founder and CEO of Pinterest and Bobby Murphy, Founder and CTO of Snapchat.[11]
References
- 1 2 3 4 5 "Crunchbase". Retrieved 2013-02-25.
- ↑ "VMware Buys Nicira For $1.26 Billion And Gives More Clues About Cloud Strategy". Retrieved 2013-02-25.
- ↑ "Pliant Technology Receives $8 Million in Series A Funding". Retrieved 2013-02-25.
- ↑ "XtremIO Adds Lightspeed Venture Partners to Series B Funding for Scale-out Enterprise Flash Storage Array". Retrieved 2013-02-25.
- ↑ "Who Wins in the Solazyme IPO?". Retrieved 2013-02-25.
- ↑ "Bloomberg: Lightspeed Raising $875M for U.S., China Funds". Retrieved 2013-02-25.
- ↑ "Why We Invested in Vee?". Retrieved 2014-11-12.
- ↑ "Business Insider: How to Remain King of the World amidst Titanic Disruptions". Retrieved 2013-02-25.
- ↑ "Fortune: Percolate, a marketing software startup, raises $40 million to make the CMOs life simpler"
- ↑ "The Lightspeed Summer Fellowship Program Explained". Retrieved 2013-02-25.
External links
- Lightspeed Venture Partners (Company website)
- Lightspeed Venture Partners (Company blog)
- Lightspeed Venture Partners (Company Twitter feed)
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