Investor Teardowns

A data-driven look at select firms’ financing strategy, investment thesis, key people, exit history, investment syndicates, and more
About Techcelerate Ventures

Tech Investment and Growth Advisory for Series A in the UK, operating in £150k to £5m investment market, working with #SaaS #FinTech #HealthTech #MarketPlaces and #PropTech companies.
invest deal venture Google venture company Series
A data-driven look at select firms’ financing strategy, investment thesis, key people, exit history, investment syndicates, and more
About Techcelerate Ventures

Tech Investment and Growth Advisory for Series A in the UK, operating in £150k to £5m investment market, working with #SaaS #FinTech #HealthTech #MarketPlaces and #PropTech companies.
invest deal venture Google venture company Series
<p>C
B
IN
S
IG
H
TS
TM
B
IN
S
IG
H
TS
TM
Investor Teardowns 
A data-driven look at select firms' financing 
strategy, investment thesis, key people, 
exit history, investment syndicates, and 
more
2
cbinsights.com
Backed by the National Science Foundation and RSTP, CB Insights uses data 
science and machine learning to help our customers predict what's nexttheir 
next customer, their next nvestment, the next market they should attack, the 
next move of their competitor or the next company they should acquire. The 
world's leading global corporations including the likes of Cisco, Salesforce, 
Castrol and Gartner as well as top tier VCs including, NEA, Upfront Ventures, RRE, 
and FirstMark Capital rely on CB Insights to make decisions based on data, not 
decibels.
To make your life easier, visit http://www.cbinsights.com
About CB Insights
A unique combination of data science and machine learning 
to help you see what's next.
3
cbinsights.com
Table of Contents
Benchmark Capital Teardown
4
Accel Partners Teardown
13
Union Square Ventures Teardown 
   24
Greylock Partners Teardown        
 33
Sequoia Capital Teardown
40
Google Ventures Teardown
49
Lowercase Capital Teardown
58
4
cbinsights.com
Prominent Silicon Valley venture capital firm Benchmark recently announced the addition 
of former Behance CEO Scott Belsky as its sixth general partner. Benchmark follows a 
unique model in which all partners have an equal stake in the firm's success. Based on the 
data, the formula seems to be working.
Here we will dive into Benchmark's investment and exit trends as part of our investor 
"teardown," drilling into Benchmark's activity.
1. Where's the data & viz from? 100% of the visualizations and data you see in this 
teardown are directly from the CB Insights platform's Investor Analytics tool.
2. What's a teardown?  A product teardown is the act of disassembling a product to 
understand its parts, functionality, etc. An investor teardown is analogous in that 
we're trying to understand a firm by analyzing data around their financing strategy, 
investment thesis, key people, exit history, investment syndicates, and more.
March 8, 2016
Benchmark Capital Teardown
Silicon Valley stalwart Benchmark has added Jasper 
Technologies to its tally of $1B+ exited investments. 
Benchmark also was early to invest in unicorns such as Uber, 
Snapchat, and Docker.
5
cbinsights.com
Financing activity  funding and deal slowdown
Benchmark slowed down their investment activity in 2015 year-over-year compared to 2014. 
The firm's investment pace has been steadily declining, with the firm participating in under 
30 deals in 2015 compared to at leat 35 deals in 2014.
Despite the slowdown, Benchmark had some recent notable investments, a few of which are 
included below:
 Urban transport app Citymapper raised a $40M Series B, marking Benchmark's first 
investment in 2016
 
Interior design marketplace Laurel & Wolf raised a $25M Series B at an $100M valuation in 
September 2015
 HR software Greenhouse Software raised a $35M Series C in August 2015. Benchmark also 
participated in their Series B round in March 2015.
Exit Activity
Benchmark continuously finds itself invested in top exits. Since 2013, they have been involved 
in 7 IPOs, including those of Zendesk, Hortonworks, and New Relic. Additionally, Benchmark 
has had 4 mega-exits ($1B+) since 2013, including the IPOs of Twitter and GrubHub Seamless, 
with the acquisition of Jasper Technologies adding to their list of mega-exits as of February 
2016. The data highlighted on the next page details some of Benchmarks high-profile exits 
from the last 14 months.
6
cbinsights.com
 
Internet of Things company Jasper Technologies was acquired by Cisco Systems for $1.4B. 
Benchmark placed their bet early, investing in Jasper's Series A in 2005 and continued 
investing through the company's Series E in 2012.
 
Business analytics company Pentaho was bought by Hitachi for $600M. Benchmark was 
an investor in Pentaho's Series B and Series C rounds; Pentaho's exit was in February 2015.
 
Fashion community site Polyvore was bought by Yahoo for a reported $200M. Benchmark 
was invested in the company starting with their Series A financing in 2007.
 
Testing and upgrade automation software-as-a-service provider Panaya was bought by 
Infosys Technologies for a reported $200M. Benchmark was an early investor, participating 
in their Series A back in 2006.
Unicorn hunters
Its worth noting that Benchmark has a strong unexited portfolio and is an early investor in 
various unicorns as well. 
 
Photo sharing and messaging application Snapchat has raised $1.33B in disclosed funding. 
Benchmark invested in their Series A back in February 2013.
 
Container software provider Docker has raised $179M in disclosed funding since inception. 
Benchmark got in early, investing in their $10M Series A in March 2011.
 
Lastly and most notably, Benchmark is an early investor in popular ride-sharing app Uber, 
which has raised over $8B in disclosed funding. Benchmark participated in Uber's Series A 
in February 2011 through their Series C in August 2013.
7
cbinsights.com
Notable Partners
Benchmark has a small team of GPs with a unique structure, as previously mentioned. Here 
are a couple of the notable folks:
Matt Cohler joined Benchmark in 2008, after working previously at Facebook and LinkedIn. As 
one of Facebook's first employees, Cohler was an integral part of Instagram's sale to Facebook 
in 2012. His interest in consumer internet companies is on display via his investments which 
include Tinder, Quora, Asana, Dropbox, Edmodo, and 1stdibs. Cohler also sits on the boards 
for companies like Xapo, Greenhouse, and Domo.
Peter Fenton joined Benchmark in 2006 after spending seven years as a partner with Accel 
Partners, where his investment interests included software, digital media, and technology 
enabled services. He currently sits on the boards for companies such as Docker, Quip, 
Optimizely, and Cockroach Labs. The following table shows other investors with whom 
Fenton shares boards, taken from his profile on CB Insights.
Mitch Lasky has spent more than two decades in the mobile gaming, new media, and 
interactive entertainment business. Prior to joining Benchmark in 2007, he served as executive 
vice president of mobile and online at Electronic Arts. Earlier in his career, he practiced law, 
worked at the Walt Disney Company, and started a multiplayer online game company. Lasky 
currently sits on the boards of Snapchat, Cyanogen, Engine Yard, and PlayFab.
Fund history
The following table details Benchmark's most recent fund history. Most recently, Benchmark 
raised smaller funds in February 2015 and January 2016. Benchmark's most recent notable 
fund was Fund VIII at $425M, which it raised in December 2013.
8
cbinsights.com
Bill Gurley joined Benchmark Capital in 1999 after spending two years as a partner with 
Hummer Winblad Venture Partners. Before entering the venture capital business, he spent 
four years on Wall Street as a research analyst. Gurley sits on the boards for Uber, Nextdoor, 
Stitch Fix, and Vessel, among others.
Industry Strategy
Benchmark's investment in internet companies has remained strong while mobile & telecom 
has overtaken software and computer hardware as the firm's second-most frequent target 
for investment. Companies in the non-internet software sector still remains prominent in 
Benchmark's investment strategy behind internet, but computer hardware investment has 
lagged.
The industry heatmaps below show the changes between these two time periods. The size of 
the box represents the number of deals and the darkness of the blue represents total funding 
amount.
Diving into the industries within mobile & telecom, Benchmark has slightly shifted away from 
telecom services and focused more on mobile software & services. Within the latter industry, 
the firm has recently funded Quip, Amplitude, and Cyanogen.
Benchmark continues to invest in the internet software space with recent investments in 
Optimizely, Greenhouse, and CloudPassage
9
cbinsights.com
Geographic Strategy
Benchmark primarily focuses their investments domestically with the bulk of their activity 
going to US-based companies. Within the US, although Benchmark still overwhelmingly invests 
in California-based companies, New York is an area Benchmark looks in for opportunities. 
WeWork and Farmigo are some of the New York-based companies they have placed bets on 
recently.
Perhaps the most surprising state receiving investment was Utah, which counts Domo and 
DAZ 3D as Benchmark portfolio companies.
The geography heatmaps below, taken from Benchmark's profile on CB Insights, illustrate the 
firm's increased interest in New York and Michigan. The size of the box represents the number 
of deals and the darkness of the blue represents total funding amount.
Stage Strategy
Benchmark has maintained a relatively balanced portfolio in terms of stage, with deals skewed 
a bit more towards Series A and B stages. Series C, D, and E+ stage companies account for 
50% of deals while just Series A and B deals receive the the other 50% split evenly as seen on 
the next page.
10
cbinsights.com
New vs. follow-on investments
Benchmark's investment pace is more measured than many other Valley firms and so the 
firm's follow-on rate is quite high as it leans into its winners.
In fact, Benchmark's Q4'15 investments were 100% follow-on financings with bets placed on 
One Medical Group, Quip, and Optimizely. Meanwhile, Q3'15 had several new deals such as 
investments in Bugsnag, Outpost Games, and Amplitude.
Finally, looking at the first half of 2015, the firm had about 83% follow-on and 17% new 
investments for Q2'15, compared to 63% follow-on and 37% new investments for Q1'15.
The following graph, taken from CBI's Investor Analytics, illustrates the ratio of new and 
follow-on investments for each quarter for the past five years.
The size of the bubbles represents the number of deals and the darkness of the blue represents 
the amount of funding.
11
cbinsights.com
Deal Size
Benchmark's average deal size has been relatively stable for the last five years but spiked 
in two quarters: Q4'14 and Q2'15. The jumps in average deal size can be attributed to the 
participation in large financing rounds to WeWork ($355M) and Snapchat ($486M) in Q4'14, 
and Docker ($95M) and WeWork ($434M) in Q2'15.
The graph below illustrates the trends in Benchmark's average and median deal size for each 
quarter.
12
cbinsights.com
Investment syndicate analysis
Benchmark Capital's top syndicate partner in deals is DAG Ventures, a "coattail" fund, which 
has figured out that Benchmark is a good fund to co-invest with. The two firms have invested 
together in 41 companies across 80 rounds making DAG the largest co-investor by a wide 
margin.
Benchmark's other co-investors includes Smart Money VCs like Greylock Partners and Accel 
Partners. The top feeder of deals to Benchmark is Lowercase Capital, followed by Y Combinator.
The tables below show the investors that Benchmark often invests after or with, taken from 
Investor Analytics on CB Insights.
13
cbinsights.com
Accel Partners is perhaps best known for its prescient early bet on Facebook. But the 
venture firm has long been one of the most active venture capital firms in Silicon Valley 
and has been the investor in prominent exits in industries ranging from big data to 
cybersecurity to home automation.
Using CB Insights data on Accel yields insights into their strategy, recent performance, 
and where the venture firm is seeing opportunity.
1. Where's the data & viz from? 100% of the visualizations and data you see in this 
teardown are directly from the CB Insights platform's Investor Analytics tool.
2. What's a teardown?  A product teardown is the act of disassembling a product to 
understand its parts, functionality, etc. An investor teardown is analogous in that 
we're trying to understand a firm by analyzing data around their financing strategy, 
investment thesis, key people, exit history, investment syndicates, and more.
February 5, 2016
Accel Partners Teardown
Drilling into Accel Partners' financing trends, exit and people 
data provides us a unique data-driven view into where the 
firm sees opportunity.
14
cbinsights.com
Recent Financings  deals steady in 2015
Accel has increased its investment activity every year since 2013, which was the lowest year 
for deals in the past 5 years. In 2014, deal activity shot up to 107 deals, a 60% increase in deals 
year-over-year. In 2015, Accel's deal count ticked it up again, by 6%, to 127 deals.
Notable deals in 2015 included an investment in Olacabs' $400M Series E round, Slack's 
$160M Series E round, and a pre-aquisition growth round for Lynda.com (Lynda was acquired 
by LinkedIn in April 2015). The prior year, also saw some noteworthy deals including Flipkart's 
$1B Series G mega-round, and SunRun's pre-IPO $150M Series E. Accel was also serial investor 
in Flipkart, participating in its Series D in 2012, Series E in 2013, and Series G round in 2014.
Slack, in particular, exemplifies Accel's investment style. They'll often jump in early and 
continue investing in later rounds. In the case of Slack, Accel invested in every round, including 
its 2010 seed round. For several years, Slack operated as a gaming company called Tiny Speck, 
but later pivoted to developing its enterprise messaging app that was most recently valued 
at $2.8B.
More of the firm's notable investments are detailed below. Note that all of the companies we 
have highlighted here received their first Accel investments at the Series A or B stage:
 
Accel first invested in a Q1'15 Series B round for UK-based food delivery service Deliveroo, 
but also followed on in both the $70M Series C and $100M Series D, all in 2015.
 
Accel has participated in all funding rounds for Freshdesk, a cloud-based customer 
support platform, including its most recent round in Q2'15, a $50M Series E. Accel started 
funding Freshdesk as the sole investor in its $1M Series A in 2011.
 
Tenable Network Security saw Accel investments in its Series A in 2012 and its $250M 
Series B in 2015.
 
Accel jumped on SunRun, a solar energy company, at the Series B stage back in 2009, 
and has participated in all of its major funding rounds. Rich Wong, a partner at Accel 
highlighted below, oversaw the firm's participation in SunRun's Q2'14 Series E round of 
$150M.
 
Birchbox, a subscription e-commerce platform, has been in Accel's portfolio since Accel 
led its $1.4M seed round in 2010 with First Round Capital. Accel most recently participated 
in its $60M Series B in Q2'14 at a valuation of $485M.
15
cbinsights.com
Below is a graph of Accel's monthly investment activity (deals & funding) over time taken 
from their profile on CB Insights.
Exit Activity  busy year for exits; many started as early 
investment
In 2015, Accel had 36 exits including several IPOs. Here are some of Accel's recent exits:
 
Atlassian, the last tech company to go public in the US in 2015, held an $1.1B IPO that was 
hailed a success. Accel invested in a $60M secondary market transaction in 2010, when 
Atlassian was valued at $400M.
 
LearnVest, in which Accel invested in every round since the Series A, was acquired by 
Northwest Mutual at a $250M valuation.
 
Lynda.com was acquired by LinkedIn at a $1.5B valuation.
 
Legendary Pictures saw Wanda Group acquire a majority stage for $3.5B.
 MyFitnessPal was acquired by Under Armour at a $475M valuation.
 
TaxiForSure was acquihired by Olacabs, another Accel portfolio company.
 
Etsy, which saw 4 mid- and late-stage investments from Accel, went public in Q2'15 at a 
$1.78B valuation.
16
cbinsights.com
The scatterplot below highlights Accel's exits with disclosed valuations over time. As can be 
seen, the firm participates in many exits near, at, or above the billion-dollar mark highlighting 
the firm's ability to get into venture capital's black swans quite regularly.
Funding History  Dual focus on early- and late-stage; deals 
abroad receive funding
In March 2015, Accel raised $305M for its Accel India IV fund, which will focus on early-stage 
startups in India. Prior to that, in March 2014, Accel raised two new funds totaling almost 
$1.5B. The $475M Accel XII fund, which will focus on early-stage investment opportunities, 
and the $1B Accel Growth Fund III. The latter was Accel's largest single fund ever and was 
created to focus on more mature growth-stage companies.
These funds reflect Accel's unchanged dual-focus strategy of jumping into companies early 
but also investing heavily in late-stage companies. Accel XI and Accel Growth Fund II raised 
in June 2011 for a combined $1.35B were the firm's last general funds aimed at this dual 
approach.
Another notably large fund is the $475M Accel London IV raised in March 2013. Accel is one 
of the UK's most active tech VC investors. The $155M Accel India III raised in November 2011 is 
also indicative of Accel's early expansion into Asia with a focus on India. Investments in India 
account for almost 80% of Accel's deals in Asia.
17
cbinsights.com
Notable Partners  Big name stepping down; others filling his 
place
Here is the activity of some of Accel's most notable partners.
 Rich Wong focuses on mobile services, enterprise software, and energy technologies. 
He is responsible for many notable investments, including AdMob, AirWatch, Dealer.com, 
MoPub, and Parature, all of which were acquired. He currently sits on the boards of solar 
energy company SunRun, backround check API Checkr, enterprise software company 
Atlassian, mobile app development tool Neumob, and app payment service URX.
 Ping Li focuses on early-stage, growth software, and data center investments, and is 
responsible for Accel's Big Data Fund. He sits on the boards of Cloudera, Blue Jeans, and 
Primary Data, among others. He was also responsible for investments in several companies 
that had successful exits, including Arista, Nimble Storage, Reactivity, and RelateIQ.
 
Jim Breyer has seen many of his investments in consumer internet, media, and 
technology companies successfully exit, including, most notably, Facebook. Though a 
longtime leader at Accel, Jim announced in March that he will be less active as a partner 
in order to focus more attention on his family fund, Breyer Capital, and his new role as a 
board member at the Harvard Corporation.
18
cbinsights.com
Strategy and vision  where they've gone and where they're 
going
In their 2015 retrospective Reflecting On 2015 And Looking Ahead To 2016, Accel shared 
their take on the question of "bubble-or-no-bubble" (they said there would be no "far-
reaching collapse" but would be a "reset in valuations" in certain sectors. They also offered up 
9 industries of rapid growth they're paying attention to in the coming years.
These areas included:
1. AI, predictive analytics, data usage, machine learning, and computer vision technologies
2. Social networks
3. Enterprise tools, such as their investments in Slack and Atlassian
4. Open source software
5. Video/media content
6. Augmented/virtual reality (AR/VR)
7. The API-ification of everything, such as payment systems (Braintree), analytics (Segment), 
search (Algolia) and background checks (Checkr). Accel is calling it the APX Economy
8. Cybersecurity
9. The on-demand economy
Industry focus  internet and e-commerce gets more love; 
shifting composition of mobile deals
Comparing investment in 2011-12 and 2014-15, the internet and mobile sectors shows an 
overall increase in deals and funding. Deal volume in Internet grew over 26% and funding 
amounts more than doubled, driven primarily by two huge investments in Flipkart and many 
other moderately-sized deals. Similarly, mobile and telecom has seen a 60% increase in deal 
volume with investments going to mobile ride-hailing apps such as Olacabs and TaxiForSure.
19
cbinsights.com
The Industry Heatmap shows the distribution of investments by industry for 2011-12 on the 
left and 2014-15 on the right. The size of the box represents the number of deals and the 
darkness of the blue represents total funding.
Drilling into two internet subindustries (e-commerce and software/services), we can see 
how the breakdown has changed. Over these two periods, e-commerce has increased 36% 
in deals volume and has more than doubled in dollars invested. Where in 2011-12 internet 
software and services represented about double the deal volume and capital of e-commerce, 
in more recent times the figures aren't nearly as lopsided.
20
cbinsights.com
Stage Heatmap  More funding to late-stage companies
Distribution of deals by stage shifted slightly over the 5 year period. Comparing the first half 
(Q1'11  Q2'13) to the second (Q3'13  Q4'15), Accel has moved its focus away from Series A 
deals, increasing investment at both the early and later stages. Series A deals dropped off with 
14% lower investment participation and 28% fewer deals. In that same period, the amount of 
seed/angel deals nearly doubled. And Growth Equity nearly quadrupled in capital invested, 
with deal count more than doubling at that stage.
The Stage Heatmap shows the distribution of investments by round, with the first 6 quarters 
beginning in 2011 on the left, and the next 6 quarters on the right. The size of the box 
represents the number of deals and the darkness of the blue represents total funding.
Financing by Stage  Series B most common; late-stage with 
biggest deals
Accel most commonly participates in Series B and Series A rounds which make up about 
26.7% and 26.2% of all investments, respectively. But as would be expected, the biggest deals 
are in the late-stage rounds where median deal size in which Accel participates is over $35M. 
Year-over-year from 2014 to 2015, Accel has seen 31% growth in seed deals with participation 
in a median round size of $2.1M. Series D deals grew over 60% with a median deal size of 
$35M. Below is a look at trends in round participation in the last 2 years.
21
cbinsights.com
New vs. Follow-on investments  volatile ratios over past few 
years
The ratio of new to follow-on investments (investments in companies in which Accel has 
already invested) has seen a bit of volatility in the last 5 years. New investments saw a low in 
Q2'13, recovered somewhat in 2014, but has since reverted back to 2013 levels. The ratio at 
Q4'15 was at only about 37% new investments, with the balance being follow-ons.
22
cbinsights.com
Below is a screenshot from the Investor Analytics tab on CB Insights showing the ratio of new 
investments to follow-on by quarter over the last 5 years.
Investment Syndicates  New Entrerprise Associates is a top 
feeder and co-investor
Accel looks to feeders like First Round Capital and SV Angel for many of its early-stage 
investments as the Investment Syndicate Dashboard below highlights. New Enterprise 
Associates has also been a frequent source of deal flow as well as a very frequent co-investor. 
Accel's top coinvestor in terms of unique companies invested in is Meritech Capital Partners. 
Accel has also frequently invested with fellow Silicon Valley VC, Sequoia Capital. Accel is 
Sequoia's top coinvestor, and the two have coinvested in over 60 rounds together, the most 
overlap among all of Accel's coinvestors.
On the next page is the Investment Syndicate dashboard for Accel Partners which highlights 
and ranks top dealflow sources and syndicate partners.
23
cbinsights.com
24
cbinsights.com
When Etsy went public earlier this year at a $1.78B valuation, the IPO marked the 5th 
straight year with a billion dollar exit for New York City-based venture firm Union Square 
Ventures.
Indeed, the firm has recorded some of venture's biggest wins in recent years. Twitter, 
Tumblr, and Zynga all count Union Square Ventures as an early investor. Given its fund 
size, it is probably one of the best pound-for-pound venture capital funds out there 
having shown a prescient ability (much like its larger peer Sequoia Capital) of getting 
into big exits early.
Led by a team of five partners including prominent VC investor and blogger Fred Wilson, 
Union Square Ventures (USV) raised over $330M for a pair of funds in January 2014. We 
dive into the firm as part of our updated "teardown" of Union Square Ventures.
1. Where's the data & viz from? 100% of the visualizations and data you see in this 
teardown are directly from the CB Insights platform's Investor Analytics tool.
2. What's a teardown?  A product teardown is the act of disassembling a product to 
understand its parts, functionality, etc. An investor teardown is analogous in that 
we're trying to understand a firm by analyzing data around their financing strategy, 
investment thesis, key people, exit history, investment syndicates, and more.
September 8, 2015
Union Square Ventures Teardown
New York-based Union Square Ventures has made prescient 
bets on some of consumer tech's biggest wins. We dig into 
what, where and with who USV is investing.
25
cbinsights.com
Financing Activity
Union Square Ventures' deal activity has remained consistent in recent times  with just 
two more deals in the first half of 2015 than the same period last year. However, USV has 
completed 6x as many first-time deals in the more recent period. Some of the firm's notable 
recent first-time deals are below:
 USV led private stock- and options-tracking startup eShares' Series A in January 2015. Just 
7 months later, eShares raised a $17M Series B led by earlier investor Spark Capital at a 
$77M valuation.
 USV led free legal research website Casetext's $7 million Series A round in February.
 USV led image-recognition AI startup Clarifai's $10M Series A. Lux Capital, Osage University 
Partners, Google Ventures, Qualcomm Ventures, and Nvidia Ventures were also among 
participating investors in the round.
 USV led a $4M Series A to Figure 1, a mobile network of healthcare professionals to share 
medical images and content.
 USV led a $9M Series B to La Ruche Qui Dit Oui, a France-based fair trade e-commerce 
platform. Fred Wilson blogged about USV's hunt for a way to invest in the "farm-to-table" 
market sector.
Below is a graph of Union Square Ventures' monthly investment activity (deals & funding 
participation) over time from their profile on CB Insights.
26
cbinsights.com
Recent Exit Activity  5 $1B+ Exits Since 2011
Union Square Ventures has realized two exits in 2015 year-to-date (YTD). Despite the well-
publicized IPO drought for VC-backed companies, Union Square Ventures-backed Etsy went 
public in April. Meanwhile, financial-planning startup Covestor was acquired by Interactive 
Brokers in April.
More notably, Union Square Ventures has notched a remarkable 4 $1B+ IPO exits and 2 $1B+ 
acquisition exits since 2011.
Here are its most notable exits since the start of last year:
 
Etsy went public at a $1.78B in April 2015. USV first invested in Etsy's Series A round in 
2006.
 
Lending Club went public at a $5.4B valuation in December 2014. USV first invested in 
Lending Club's Series D round in 2011.
 
Flurry was acquired by Yahoo for $300M in August 2014. USV invested in Flurry's Series B 
round in 2010.
The scatterplot below highlights USV's exits over time (those with disclosed valuations):
27
cbinsights.com
Fund History
Union Square Ventures' last-raised fund occurred in January of 2014, when the firm raised 
$350M. The funds are split evenly between the firm's fourth early-stage fund and its second 
"opportunities" fund, which allows the firm to back companies as they mature.
USV's fund size consistency is notable especially as the general partners could probably quite 
easily raise larger funds if they so desired. However, this consistency is a good thing based 
on research. Academicians have found that fund consistency is a driver of fund performance. 
Simply stated, funds that grow in size don't perform as well because the skills to invest a $100 
million fund are very different than those required to manage a $1 billion fund.
Notable Partners
Fred Wilson is a Union Square Ventures co-founder and managing partner. Wilson sits on 
the board of directors for companies including Kik, Work Market, Return Path, Coinbase, and 
Soundcloud.
Brad Burnham is a managing partner at Union Square Ventures and co-founded the firm 
with Fred Wilson in 2003. He had previous co-founded advertising network company Tacoda 
in 2001, which was acquired by AOL. Burnham is on the board for companies such as Meetup, 
Stack Exchange, and Yieldmo.
Albert Wenger is a partner at Union Square Ventures and was president of del.icio.us, a USV-
backed bookmarking service, during its acquisition by Yahoo in 2005. As an entrepreneur, 
Wenger sits on the boards of companies such as MongoDB, Twilio, and Clarifai.
Andy Weissman is a partner at Union Square Ventures and started his career at AOL then 
in venture capital with Dawntreader Ventures. Weissman co-founded New York-based startup 
studio Betaworks in 2007. Weissman sits on the board of companies including Figure 1, Splice, 
and VHX Corporation.
28
cbinsights.com
Industry Focus and Strategy  Increased Interest in 'greenfield' 
areas and new protocols
Nick Grossman of USV's investment team recently penned a blog post on some of the areas 
that USV is currently looking at, including collaborative platforms in greenfield sectors (i.e., 
industries that are "still operating under inefficient bureaucratic hierarchical models"), worker-
support services, "thin platforms" (platforms that "do less, take  less, and exert less control"), 
and new tech protocols inspired by Bitcoin and blockchain.
An analysis of USV's new investments shows that USV is not just looking in these areas but 
also betting on them.
Within greenfield sectors, for example, USV has made recent investments in Figure 1, a mobile 
network model for doctors to exchange notes on medical imagery, and Casetext, a free legal 
research website for crowdsourced legal annotations.
Within new protocols, USV has invested in several firms on the blockchain and/or in bitcoin 
technologies including OneName, an open-source identity protocol provider; OpenBazaar, a 
decentralized marketplace using bitcoin; and Coinbase, a bitcoin wallet and exchange.
The chart below highlights USV's new deals in 2015 YTD (Note: follow-on deals during the 
period not shown on the chart below).
29
cbinsights.com
Geographic Strategy  Searching Far and Wide
Despite being based in New York City, Union Square Ventures has continued to look well 
beyond the Big Apple for deals  especially in Europe. Since the start of 2012, USV has 
invested in one French startup, three German startups, and two UK startups. Figure1  the 
mobile medical imaging app  marked USV's second investment in Canada.
USV has also made a number of bets outside of Silicon Valley and New York as can be seen 
in their investments in Dwolla in Iowa, C2FO in Kansas, Covestor in Boston, OpenBazaar in 
Virginia, and Duolingo in Pittsburgh, among others.
Stage Strategy
With their Opportunity Fund structure, USV can invest at the Series A stage and is able to 
continue investing in their winners. Over the last 8 quarters, just under 29% of USV's deals 
came at the Series B stage, followed by 20% at the Series C stage, as USV pursued follow-on 
investments to firms ranging from Coinbase and Kik to Skillshare.
Early-stage deals (Seed/Series A) took a combined 29% of USV's deals over the period. All of 
USV's first investments in a company since the start of last year came at the Seed or Series A 
stages. 
On the next page is a table of details on Union Square Ventures' investments in various 
stages for the last two years. The size of the bubble represents the number of deals, while the 
darkness of the blue represents the total amount of funding.
30
cbinsights.com
New vs. Follow-On Investment Balance
With the exception of Q1'14 and Q2'09, Union Square Ventures has generally kept a well-
balanced portfolio in terms of new investments and follow-on investments. In Q2'15, USV 
ties its highest quarterly proportion of new deals to follow-ons with first-time investments to 
Dronebase, OpenBazaar, Clarifai, and La Ruche Qui Dit Oui.
The chart below, taken from Investor Analytics on CB Insights, illustrates the ratio of Union 
Square Ventures' new investments to follow-on investments.
31
cbinsights.com
Deal Size  Recent Increase in Median
Behind follow-on participation in large deals including Coinbase, Duolingo, and C2FO, Union 
Square Ventures' median deal size has risen to $20M in each of the first two quarters of this 
year.
The graph below from Investor Analytics on CB Insights shows both the average and median 
deal size each quarter for the last five years. In more recent quarters, USV's median deal sizes 
have trended between $7M and $20M.
Investment Syndicate
Union Square Ventures often invests with Spark Capital, and especially in early funding 
rounds. The two firms have seen success in their early investments together, which include 
companies like Twitter, Tumblr, Foursquare, and Sift Science. SV Angel is both one of Union 
Square Ventures' top feeders and top co-investors. Both firms got in early on companies such 
as Twitter and Foursquare, while Union Square Ventures followed SV Angel on startups like 
Kitchensurfing, Casetext, and Skillshare.
32
cbinsights.com
Andreessen Horowitz comes in second, co-investing with USV in 16 rounds across 10 
companies. Index Ventures is also among USV's prominent syndicate partners, having co-
invested in Etsy, Soundcloud, and Shapeways among others.
33
cbinsights.com
Greylock Partners is one of the oldest and most successful venture capital firms ever, 
having invested in a number of tech's most successful and largest firms including 
Facebook, Workday, Palo Alto Networks, and LinkedIn to name just a few.
Greylock is also among the most prolific investors in so-called "unicorns"  with 10 billion-
dollar private companies in its portfolio today, 4 of which were early-stage investments 
highlighting the firm's prescience in making early bets.
Using CB Insights data and visualizations, we dive into the financing strategy, investing 
pace, investment syndication patterns, and more in this "teardown" of Greylock Partners.
1. Where's the data & viz from? 100% of the visualizations and data you see in this 
teardown are directly from the CB Insights platform's Investor Analytics tool.
2. What's a teardown?  A product teardown is the act of disassembling a product to 
understand its parts, functionality, etc. An investor teardown is analogous in that 
we're trying to understand a firm by analyzing data around their financing strategy, 
investment thesis, key people, exit history, investment syndicates, and more.
August 30, 2015
Greylock Partners Teardown
With exits including Facebook, Workday and Palo Alto 
Networks, Greylock Partners is among the most prominent 
and successful firms in venture capital. We dig into what, 
where, and with who Greylock is investing.
34
cbinsights.com
Financing activity  deal pace slows in 2015
Greylock has slowed its pace of investments in 2015 having completed 43% fewer deals than 
the same period last year. A slowdown that's primarily attributable to a decline in seed activity.
However, given the firm's fund size (Greylock XIV was $1 billion), it remains among the more 
active VC funds investing across both the consumer and enterprise realms. Below are some of 
Greylock's notable recent bets.
 
Greylock led a $10M investment into Operator, an app founded by Robin Chan and Garrett 
Camp (the latter is a co-founder of both StumbleUpon and Uber) that connects people 
with services & businesses easily with their mobile phone.
 Greylock led a $14M Series B investment in live video-streaming app Meerkat.
 
Xapo, the bitcoin wallet and vault, took a $20M investment co-led by Greylock and Index 
Ventures last July, which bumped the company's Series A to $40M.
 
Avi Networks, a cloud application delivery platform, raised $33M from Greylock, Lightspeed 
Venture Partners, and Menlo Ventures in December.
 Greylock co-led a $77M investment into former Hulu CEO Jason Kilar's short-form video 
platform Vessel in 2014. Less than a year later, Vessel added $57.5M from Institutional 
Venture Partners and Comcast Ventures in April 2015.
Below is a graph of Greylock's monthly investment activity (deals and funding participation) 
over time, taken from their profile on CB Insights.
35
cbinsights.com
Exit activity  All M&A in 2015
Greylock has notched 12 exits in 2015 year-to-date  all of which have come in the form of 
acquisitions amid the well-publicized IPO drought for VC-backed companies. Here are some 
of its most notable exits since the start of last year.
 OpenDNS was acquired by Cisco for $635M in June. Greylock was a Series A investor in the 
security firm in 2009.
 
TellApart was acquired by Twitter for $532M April. The ad tech startup took a Series A 
investment from Greylock in 2010.
 
Coupons.com went public at a $1.16B valuation. Greylock invested in the digital 
promotions site via a secondary transaction in 2011.
The scatterplot below highlights Greylock's exits over time (those with disclosed valuations).
Notable Partners
David Sze joined Greylock in 2000 after serving as senior vice president of product strategy 
at Excite. Sze is widely credited for leading Greylock's investment in Facebook in 2006 as well 
as its investments in LinkedIn and Pandora. Sze currently serves on the boards of Nextdoor, 
Medium, and ToyTalk, among others.
Reid Hoffman is the executive chairman at LinkedIn, which he co-founded in 2003. Hoffman 
joined Greylock in 2009 and currently serves on the boards of Wrapp, Xapo, and Edmodo.
36
cbinsights.com
Josh Elman worked on product and engineering at three of the biggest consumer tech 
stories in recent years, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, before joining Greylock in 2011. Elman 
currently serves on the boards of Medium, Meerkat, Operator, and Super.
Asheem Chandna joined Greylock in 2003 where he invests in enterprise tech after serving 
as vice president of business development and product management at Check Point Software. 
Chandna currently serves on the boards of Rubrik, Avi Networks, Skyhigh Networks, Delphix, 
AppDynamics, and Aquantia and has deep domain knowledge in areas like cybersecurity.
Simon Rothman previously served as an executive at eBay before joining Greylock in 2011 
where he leads Greylock's $100M commitment to marketplace investments. Rothman serves 
on the boards of Sprig and EatWith.
Geographic strategy  Doubling down on California
Within the U.S., California took nearly all deals by Greylock over the last four quarters 
including Meerkat, Nextdoor, Docker, and Product Hunt among others. Just two deals went 
to Massachusetts, where Greylock invested in HourlyNerd and WiGo.
Greylock pursued more geographically diverse investments in the previous four quarters  
when the firm completed deals in Washington state, New York, Washington DC, and Utah. 
The latter two were due to investments in SmartThings (acquired by Samsung) and Domo 
Technologies, a unicorn now valued at $2B.
37
cbinsights.com
Stage strategy  Seed/Series A take nearly half of deals
Over the last two years, Greylock has been an active seed investor. The seed stage accounted 
for nearly 27% of Greylock's new and follow-on deals although as mentioned above, the 
seed activity has declined as of late. Series A deals took one-fifth of Greylock's deals over the 
period, while Series B and Series C deals combined to take nearly 28% of deal activity.
Among Greylock's seed deals in the last year are on-demand dog walking app Wag, Snowball, 
and Complex Polygon.
New vs. follow-on investment trends  Fewer new deals
The chart on the next page from CB Insights' Investor Analytics tool shows the proportion 
of Greylock's new investments vs. follow-on investments in each quarter for the past two 
years. Overall, Greylock, given its fund size, continues to do new deals and invest in follow-on 
rounds of companies which are showing momentum. Greylock did fewer new deals in the 
first half of 2015 compared to the same period in 2014, when the firm completed 18 first-time 
deals including Sprig, Docker, Medium, Vessel, and Grand Rounds.
38
cbinsights.com
Deal size trends
Greylock's median deal size has swung from as low as $8M to as high as $38M in recent quarters 
largely due to participation in larger follow-on deals. These include recent participation in 
Docker's $95M Series D, Sprig's $45M Series B, and Sumo Logic's $80M Series E.
A screenshot from the Investor Analytics tab on CB Insights showing the deal size trends of 
Greylock financings by quarter over time is below.
39
cbinsights.com
Investment syndicate  SV Angel, A16Z are most frequent co-
investors
SV Angel is the most frequent co-investor with Greylock over time and the two have co-
invested in 32 companies together, across 34 rounds. Andreessen Horowitz has emerged 
as Greylock's second most frequent co-investor, with the two sharing investments in 25 
companies including Okta, Tidemark, and Lookout among others. Y Combinator was the top 
feeder of dealflow to Greylock, followed by SV Angel, and Accel.
T. Rowe Price, which has led the mutual fund charge into VC-backed tech companies, is 
among the most frequent investors after Greylock with seven companies over time including 
Dropbox, Cloudera, AirBnB, and Redfin.  This is consistent with what the data has revealed 
about mutual fund investors in that they prefer to invest in brand name VCs with long track 
records of success  a description that fits Greylock.
The Investment Syndicate dashboard for Greylock below highlights and ranks top dealflow 
sources, co-investors, and follow-on investors.
40
cbinsights.com
Sequoia Capital is one of Silicon Valley's most prominent venture capital firms. The famed 
Sand Hill Road investment firm has maintained its stellar reputation in 2015 year-to-
date (YTD) with portfolio companies SunRun and Natera exiting for $1.7B and $871.7M, 
respectively. Additionally, these exits build on a strong 2014 performance which included 
exits from HubSpot, Whatsapp, and Kontera Technologies.
Sequoia, notably, also counts the highest number of private, billion-dollar 'unicorns' of 
any investor today and consistently finds itself in the largest tech startup exits.
Below is CB Insights' updated "teardown" of Sequoia Capital.
1. Where's the data & viz from? 100% of the visualizations and data you see in this 
teardown are directly from the CB Insights platform's Investor Analytics tool.
2. What's a teardown?  A product teardown is the act of disassembling a product to 
understand its parts, functionality, etc. An investor teardown is analogous in that 
we're trying to understand a firm by analyzing data around their financing strategy, 
investment thesis, key people, exit history, investment syndicates, and more.
August 12, 2015
Sequoia Capital Teardown
Sequoia Capital is one of Silicon Valley's storied VC firms. A 
glimpse into their financing and exit data reveals where the 
firm sees opportunity.
41
cbinsights.com
Recent financings  Deal activity stays steady
Sequoia's deal activity remained steady in 2015 YTD. In the first half of 2014 Sequoia 
participated in 40 deals compared to 36 deals completed in this year's first half.
In 2015, Sequoia participated in multiple Series B deals including recent investments in 
Github and Flipagram. Below are some of Sequoia's most recent financings that highlight 
some of their larger early-stage investments.
 
Sequoia led the enormous $250M Series B financing of Github, the popular social network 
that enables users to share code with friends, co-workers, classmates, and strangers. 
Github finally made it to unicorn status this August with a reported $2B valuation.
 
Sequoia recently led the $70M investment in Flipagram. Flipagram, which has been 
described as a hybrid between Instagram and YouTube, is a mobile application that allows 
users to create and share visual stories.
 
Carbon3D, a 3D printing company, raised $41M in Series A financing led by Sequoia in 
March.
 
Sequoia invested in the $34M Series A financing round of Springpath. Springpath offers 
storage and data management software for businesses.
Below is a graph of Sequoia's monthly investment activity (deals and funding) over time 
taken from their profile on CB Insights.
42
cbinsights.com
Exit activity
So far in 2015, Sequoia has realized 9 exits including 3 IPO's and 6 acquisitions.
Here are some of Sequoia's notable exits in 2015 YTD.
 
SunRun is an inexpensive solar technology for homeowners. It went public this August at 
a $1.74B valuation. Opening at $13 per share, the company experienced a tough public 
debut reaching as low as $8 per share, but recovered a bit to $10 a share by August 10.
 
Sequoia was an early investor in Natera, a genetic testing company, financing their Series 
A in 2007 and continuing to fund it in multiple successive rounds ahead of its $871M IPO 
in July. Natera launched its IPO at $18 per share and the store spiked to trade as high as 
$32 per share in its debut. However, since its IPO the stock has hovered a bit below the IPO 
price sitting at $16 per share on August 11, 2015.
 
Sequoia's most notable non-IPO exit was with OpenDNS. OpenDNS is an internet security 
company which Sequoia invested in back in 2009. Sequoia financed the company's Series 
A through Series C rounds, ahead of its acquisition by Cisco Systems in late June for $635M.
The scatterplot below highlights Sequoia's exits over time (those with disclosed valuations). 
As illustrated below, exits continue to stay steady halfway through 2015.
43
cbinsights.com
Notable Partners
Here is the activity of some of Sequoia's most notable partners.
Jim Goetz was responsible for the backing of WhatsApp and its acquisition by Facebook for 
$19B. Specializing in mobile and enterprise software companies, he also sits on the boards of 
three public companies he brought to IPO in the last three years: Palo Alto Networks, Barracuda 
Networks, and Nimble Storage. All of them have billion dollar market capitalizations ranging 
from $1B to $15B. Goetz's portfolio still holds gaming company Pocket Gems, game-maker 
support platform Chartboost, and ad tech company Drawbridge. Additionally, he sits on the 
board of Yik Yak and Github.
Alfred Lin helped Zappos develop from a small startup to its $1.2B acquisition by Amazon 
in 2006, before joining Sequoia. He invests primarily in consumer internet, enterprise, and 
mobile companies. He led Sequoia's investments in AirBnB starting at the seed stage through 
its $1.5B growth round in April at a $10B valuation. Alfred sits on the boards of AirBnB, 
DoorDash and Houzz, among other companies.
Roelof Botha joined Sequoia after helping steer PayPal through its IPO and acquisition 
by eBay. At Sequoia, he most notably led the initial financing of YouTube in 2005. Based on 
disclosed valuations, his unexited portfolio, in aggregate, sits at $12B. He currently sits on the 
board Jawbone alongside Mary Meeker of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Kleiner, as you'll 
see below in our analysis of Sequoia's syndicates, shares a number of portfolio companies 
with Sequoia. Botha also sits on the boards of Evernote, MongoDB, and Natera among others. 
Here are a few of the boards Botha shares with prominent investors:
44
cbinsights.com
Michael Moritz was one of the earliest partners at Sequoia, joining in 1986, well before 
the more recent venture capital booms. He has led investments in big names like Google, 
Yahoo, PayPal, Kayak, LinkedIn, and Zappos. While less active in the management of Sequoia, 
he remains on many boards. He recently joined the Flipagram board alongside well-known 
Kleiner Partner John Doerr. The last time this duo paired up as board members was with a 
small company named Google in June 1999.
Industry heatmap, and investment strategy highlights
Looking at the years between 2010 and 2015, the data shows a shifting focus for Sequoia.
 Deals in the mobile and telecom sector have increased in number, with funding to the 
mobile software and services companies driving that growth. Some of Sequoia's notable 
mobile investments include Instacart, Yik Yak, and App Annie.
 
Internet remains the top sector for deals and funding, but a greater proportion of that 
investment is now directed to internet software and services industry, with e-commerce 
receiving large investments.
 
Investments in computer hardware and services continue to fall significantly. Within 
the sector, computer hardware IT services companies received the most funding, while 
computer gaming didn't receive any investments in 2015 year-to-date.
The heatmaps below show the distribution of investments by industry for 2010-12 on the left, 
2012-14 in the middle, and 2014-15 on the right. The size of the box represents the number of 
deals and the darkness of the blue represents total funding amount of the deals that Sequoia 
participated in:
45
cbinsights.com
Geography heatmap: California leads, but Utah registers
As expected, California receives the vast majority of funding in the US. What is more interesting 
is the distribution of funding outside of California. Sequoia has diversified its US portfolio by 
venturing outside Silicon Valley for deals as seen below.
 New York commanded the most deal activity in 2015 YTD with Sequoia participating in 6 
investments.
 
In 2015 YTD, Utah received some attention, with 3 deals Sequoia was involved in including 
Qualtrics which now has a billion dollar valuation.
The geography heatmap for the US shows distribution of funds by geography for 2013-14 on 
the left and 2014-15 on the right. The size of the box represents the number of deals and the 
darkness of the blue represents total funding amount of the deals that Sequoia participated 
in.
Financing activity: trending up
Sequoia's typical deal size has generally trended upwards over the last 5 years. Participation 
in Qualtrics' $150M Series B and the Houzz $165M Series D rounds in September 2014 are 
responsible for the spike in average deal size in Q3'14. Q4'14 also saw participation in several 
big deals: Instacart ($220M), Stripe ($70M), and Yik Yak ($62M).
46
cbinsights.com
Below is a screenshot from the Investor Analytics tab on CB Insights showing the deal size 
trends of Sequoia financings by quarter over time.
Financing by stage  Series A seeing many deals
Below is a look at trends in round participation in the last year. As the data illustrates, Series A 
and Series B deals account for half the number of deals Sequoia participates in.
47
cbinsights.com
New vs. follow-on investments  Emphasis on follow-on 
financings
Sequoia maintains a fairly steady balance of new investments and follow-on investments, the 
latter being investments in companies that Sequoia has already financed. Sequoia maintained 
an average of roughly 35% of deals in new companies and 65% in follow-on over the last 4 
quarters.
Below is a screenshot from the Investor Analytics tab on CB Insights showing the ratio of new 
investments to follow-on by quarter over the last 5 years.
Investment syndicates  Y Combinator is top feeder, Accel 
top coinvestor
Sequoia most often looks to Y Combinator companies for dealflow as the Investment 
Syndicate dashboard below illustrates. Also among the top feeders are SV Angel and angel 
Paul Buchheit. Accel Partners is both a favorite feeder and the top coinvestor. Sequoia has 
coinvested with Accel in 30 companies in 61 separate rounds. Y Combinator recently reported 
they will be raising the Y Combinator Continuity Fund which will be used as a growth fund for 
YC-backed companies. It will be interesting to see how this effects the syndicate dashboard 
on the next page
48
cbinsights.com
Below is our Investment Syndicate dashboard for Sequoia Capital which highlights and ranks 
top dealflow sources and coinvestors.
49
cbinsights.com
Founded in 2009, Google Ventures has quickly established itself as one of the more high-
profile names in venture capital today and the most active firm in corporate venture 
capital.
In June 2014, we dove into the firm as part of our Google Ventures "teardown." The 
original brief received lots of interest, including from Google Ventures Managing Partner 
and Uber investor David Krane.
Since then, Google Ventures has continued to invest at a rapid clip across tech and 
healthcare in areas including satellite data, cybersecurity, and telemedicine. It has also 
been bolstered by its participation in prominent financings and exits.
Using CB Insights, we took a fresh look at Google Ventures' investment strategy and exit 
history.
1. Where's the data & viz from? 100% of the visualizations and data you see in this 
teardown are directly from the CB Insights platform's Investor Analytics tool.
2. What's a teardown?  A product teardown is the act of disassembling a product to 
understand its parts, functionality, etc. An investor teardown is analogous in that 
we're trying to understand a firm by analyzing data around their financing strategy, 
investment thesis, key people, exit history, investment syndicates, and more.
July 21, 2015
Google Ventures Teardown: The Most 
Active Corporate Venture Firm Slows 
Down
Although a relatively new kid on the block, Google Ventures 
has become a prominent player in VC. We've updated our 
"teardown" of the firm's strategy and portfolio.
50
cbinsights.com
Google Ventures slows down
In 2015, Google Ventures completed its lowest number of new and follow-on deals in a year's 
first half since 2012 and 39% less deals than in 2014's first half, when the firm completed a 
record 50 new and follow-on deals.
A few of Google Ventures' recent new deals include:
 
Farmers Business Network's $15M Series A in May, which Google Ventures led. Farmers 
Business Network is a data-driven farmer-to-farmer network.
 
Kobalt's $60M Series C round in February, with participation from MSD Capital and MSDC 
Management. London-based Kobalt provides music publishing, analytics and global 
music rights management services.
 
Slack's $120M Series D in October 2014 at a $1.1B valuation, co-led with Kleiner Perkins.
A few of Google Ventures' recent notable deals include:
 
Cloudera's $160 million Series F round (which ballooned to $900M after an investment 
by Intel) in March alongside T. Rowe Price and an affiliate of MSD Capital, the private 
investment firm of Dell founder Michael Dell.
 
Uber's $1.2 billion Series D round of funding in June, the bulk of which came from mutual 
fund investors Fidelity Investments, BlackRock and Wellington Management. This is 
following their role in Uber's $258 million Series C round last August; since then, Uber's 
valuation has jumped from $3.5 billion to $18.2 billion.
 
Flatiron Health's Series B round in May, in which the firm led the $130 million financing. 
This deal represents Google Ventures' largest investment in a health IT startup to date.
The next page shows a graph of Google Ventures' monthly investment participation (deals & 
funding) over time from their profile on CB Insights.
51
cbinsights.com
A diverse array of exits
Google Ventures' portfolio exits highlight the diversity of the firm's investments. Google 
Ventures has seen over 20 of its portfolio companies exit since last June.
Many of these have been smaller acquisitions of early-stage portfolio companies including 
Predilytics, Objective Logistics, Rekindle and tenXer. But Google Ventures did notch two IPOs 
in Q4'14.
The firm's recent exits have been all over the map, in terms of both industry and size. Recent 
notable exits:
 
FitStar was acquired by Fitbit in March for $18M. Google Ventures was a Seed investor in 
the workout app.
 OnDeck Capital went public in December at a $1.32B valuation. Google Ventures first 
invested in OnDeck's Series D round at a $259M valuation.
 Hubspot went public in October at a $759M valuation. Google Ventures first invested in 
Hubspot's Series D at a $200M valuation.
The firm's exits with disclosed valuations are plotted on the scatterplot on the next page 
taken from Google Ventures' CB Insights profile.
52
cbinsights.com
Google Ventures' partners
Here are a few of the big players in Google Ventures:
Bill Maris is Managing Partner at Google Ventures and is regarded as the founder of the 
corporate venture unit in 2009. His investments include Nest Labs, Uber, and 23andMe. He 
sits on the boards of Nest Labs and biotech company Adimab and has a particular interest in 
next generation life sciences and artificial intelligence, evidenced by his idea to create Calico, 
a biotech company focused on fighting human aging.
David Krane is Managing Partner at Google Ventures. His investments include Uber, Blue 
Bottle Coffee, CircleUp and Urban Engines. He previously served at Google's director of Global 
Communications and Public Affairs.
Joe Kraus, co-founder of Excite and JotSpot, is General Partner with investments in the 
likes of Kabam, TuneIn, and Pocket. He has also been an active angel investor in several 
companies, such as LinkedIn, Aardvark, Kongregate, and OpenCandy. Kraus is on the board 
of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Clean Power Finance, and MyLikes.
Rich Miner, co-founder of Android, is a General Partner and leads Google Ventures' East 
Coast investment team. His investments include MessageMe, Enterproid, CustomMade, and 
Hubspot. He sits on the boards for Crittercism, EnglishCentral, VigLink, and Recorded Future.
53
cbinsights.com
Krishna Yeshwant, leads Google Ventures' investments in the digital health and healthcare 
sectors, where he sits on the boards for Flatiron Health, DNAnexus and One Medical Group.
Industry Focus and Strategy  Security & Digital Health Rising
Between 2010 and 2013, Google Ventures decreased its investment in social media companies 
and switched to more "enterprise-y" areas, as evidenced by its funding of Cloudera, DocuSign, 
and Hubspot. Between 2010 and 2013, Google Ventures also increased investment in video 
and health apps, as evidenced by their fundings of Vungle, Jumpcam, and FitStar Labs.
Flash-forward to 2014 and we see that Google Ventures has placed a large strategic emphasis 
on cybersecurity. As virtual threats increase, Google Ventures has bet on a number of upstarts 
including Duo Security, Ionic Security, Threatstream and Synack. Google Ventures has also 
made a broader push into digital health in recent quarters. Recent investments in this category 
include Transcriptic, Spruce Health and Flatiron Health.
Companies within the realm of "big data" and data analytics have also been a recent focus area 
for Google Ventures. Recent deals include big data exploration program MapD, IT operations 
analytics software Rocana, and secondary storage startup Cohesity.
Our Industry Heatmap below shows the distribution of investments in the internet software 
and services space by subindustry, with 2010-2011 on the left, 2012-2013 in the middle 
and all activity since on the right. Each box's size represents deal count and color darkness 
represents funding volume.
54
cbinsights.com
Geographic Strategy  Increased Interest in New York
As in prior years, the majority of Google Ventures' investments still take place in California. 
In 2012 and 2013, Google Ventures increased its investment pace in Massachusetts. The firm 
participated in rounds totaling $87 million across 10 deals in Massachusetts between 2010 
and 2011, and this jumped to $212 million in 28 deals between 2012 and 2013.
More recently, Google Ventures has identified more opportunities in New York. In 2012 and 
2013, Google Ventures participated in 13 New York deals including rounds to OnDeck Capital, 
YieldMo, and mParticle.
Since then, Google Ventures has doubled-down in New York, completing 16 deals. Most 
notably, the firm led a $130M investment to oncology data analytics firm Flatiron Health 
in May 2014. Google Ventures has also seeded nine New York startups including LedgerX, 
Abacus Labs, Clarifai, and Bowery. The corporate VC also participated in a $10M Series A to 
Cockroach Labs.
Stage Strategy
While all stages of investment have seen increases over the last five years, the biggest growth 
has been in the early rounds, with 66% of deals taking place in Seed or Series A rounds over 
the past five years.  Google Ventures is the most active corporate venture capital firm at the 
seed stage so this is not entirely surprising.
55
cbinsights.com
The table below gives details on the firm's deals in each stage:
New vs. Follow-On Investments
As Google Ventures' portfolio matured since the firm's launch in 2009, follow-on investments 
have surged. Google Ventures completed twice as many follow-on deals as it did new deals in 
Q2'15  the highest percentage of follow-on deals it has ever done in a single quarter.
Many of these follow-on investments went to companies that had previously received 
Google Ventures backing at the seed stage, including Cambridge, Massachusetts-based data 
integration startup Tamr, mobile savings app HelloDigit, and consumer tracking company 
FullStory.
The chart on the next page from CBI's Investor Analytics shows the proportion of Google 
Ventures' new investments vs. follow-on investments in each quarter for the past five 
years.
56
cbinsights.com
Deal Size
Google Ventures has participated in a number of mega-financings  including those to Uber 
and Cloudera  which have served to drive up the median size of its deals. In Q2'15, Google 
Ventures' median deal size swelled to $15M behind large rounds, including Cohesity's $55M 
Series B and Slack's $160M Series E. Over the last five years, Google Ventures has seen its 
median deal size surpass $10M in just three quarters.
Below is a graph from the Investor Analytics tab on CB Insights that shows trends in Google 
Ventures' median deal size.
57
cbinsights.com
Investment Syndicate
Google Ventures often does deals with other big VC firms such as Kleiner Perkins (52 rounds 
across 33 companies), SV Angel (38 rounds across 34 companies), and Andreessen Horowitz 
(35 rounds across 26 companies). Several of Google Ventures' top co-investors are also among 
its top deal flow sources, including Kleiner Perkins, First Round Capital, and SV Angel. Y 
Combinator is a top feeder of deal flow to Google Ventures.
58
cbinsights.com
Founded by Google Alum Chris Sacca, Lowercase Capital has made a name for itself with 
prescient early bets in companies like Instagram and Twitter which exited for billions 
later. Sacca was also among the early adopters of special purpose vehicles which he used 
to increase his ownership of Twitter over time.
Perhaps more remarkable is the fact that the current exits are just the beginning for 
Lowercase. With giants such as Uber, Stripe, and Automattic in its portfolio, Lowercase 
is poised to score returns from several large exits in the future. These prior exits coupled 
with Lowercase's unrealized portfolio could make it the best performing VC fund ever.
So given Lowercase's success, we wanted to dig into CB Insights' data on the firm.
This Lowercase Capital Teardown uses the CB Insights' Investor Analytics tool to analyze 
its financing history, exit activity, and industry areas of focus to analyze the moves that 
the firm has made.
1. Where's the data & viz from? 100% of the visualizations and data you see in this 
teardown are directly from the CB Insights platform's Investor Analytics tool.
2. What's a teardown?  A product teardown is the act of disassembling a product to 
understand its parts, functionality, etc. An investor teardown is analogous in that 
we're trying to understand a firm by analyzing data around their financing strategy, 
investment thesis, key people, exit history, investment syndicates, and more.
May 3, 2015
Lowercase Capital Teardown
With early investments in several unicorns such as Uber 
and Stripe as well as homerun exits like Twitter and 
Instagram, Lowercase has probably the best seed investment 
performance of any VC - ever.
59
cbinsights.com
Financing History: Lowercase isn't afraid to be erratic
Lowercase is an early-stage tech investor, but is not opposed to financing companies in other 
sectors (ie. Blue Bottle Coffee) or financing companies into later stages. As can be seen from 
the chart below, the deals that Lowercase takes part in are generally restricted to the seed 
round, with an elite few including Uber receiving follow-on funding.
Notable investments include:
- Automattic (creator of WordPress) $160M Series C round, one of the rare exceptions where 
Lowercase made its initial investment in a round later than Series A.
-Two rounds in Twitter as well as buying shares from other investors through secondaries and 
aforementioned special purpose vehicles. The fund led by Lowercase ended up becoming 
the second highest shareholder behind Twitter cofounder Evan Williams.
-Participation in 4 rounds of investment in Uber, starting from the seed round where the 
company was valued at $4M. The company leads the unicorn companies being valued at 
$40B.
Below is a graph of Lowercase Capital's quarterly investment participation (deals & funding) 
over time from their profile on CB Insights. On average, the firm makes 4 investments per 
quarter based on the last 5 years.
60
cbinsights.com
Financing by Stage: Early rounds dominate deal count, but 
Series C leads in deal size
Lowercase is an early-stage investor focused on the seed stage, with 56% of deals in the last 
two years happening at the seed/angel round. Seed and Series A combined make up over 
85% of Lowercase's deals, with the average Series A deal being about 4 times larger in size. 
The firm is returning to making mostly seed deals, as shown by the negative YoY growth in 
Series A and B investments.
The table below gives details on the firms deals in each stage for the past two years
Exit Activity: Few homeruns with more in the pipeline
Lowercase has had more than 20 exits in the last five years, with a few homeruns to return the 
fund several times over. The most notable exits are:
 
Twitter, who had its IPO in 2013 for a valuation of $14.2B, and is the only company in the 
Lowercase Capital portfolio to go public.
 
Instagram, the picture sharing platform that was acquired by Facebook for between 
$750M and $1B.
 Heroku, a cloud application platform that was acquired by Salesforce for $212M.
61
cbinsights.com
Below is a scatterplot of Lowercase Capital's exits with disclosed valuations, taken from their 
profile on CB Insights.
Though Lowercase's exit history is short, the meat of Lowercase's investments still remain in 
private companies. Here are the current top 5 highest valued still-private companies:
1. Uber, the popular ride-sharing app that is now valued at over $40B.
2. Stripe, the online-payment system company that is currently valued at $3.5B
3. Automattic, the company behind the popular blog and website builder WordPress that is 
valued at $1.16B
4. Docker, the company behind the open-sourced engine that allows applications to run 
across various platforms without extra coding. It's valued above $1B after it's latest round 
of financing.
5. Lookout, the smartphone security company that releases apps for mobile security. It's 
currently valued at $1B after its last financing
With the exception of Automattic, Lowercase invested in the seed round of each of these 
companies and can expect to receive a significant return on their investment if and when 
these companies exit.
62
cbinsights.com
Fund History
Lowercase first fund was only $8.5M in size, but generated massive returns due to the 
investments in Twitter and Instagram. Despite the incredibly high returns the firm is 
experiencing, they have kept their fund sizes consistently under $50M (and cowboy 
themed) to maintain their strategy and focus on early investments in small companies with 
lots of growth potential. Not included are the SPVs Lowercase raised, most notable to buy 
secondaries in Twitter (mundanely named Institutional Associates Fund LLC. and Compliance 
Matter Services LLC).
Industry Heatmap: Heavy on Internet
Lowercase Capital's focus is on the Internet sector, with the primary industries being Content 
Management (Automattic), News & Discussion (Medium, Nuzzel), and On-Demand (Styleseat, 
Moveline Group). Lowercase also features a steadily rising amount of deals in the Mobile 
sector. In addition to its multiple rounds of investments in Uber, they have invested in two 
rounds of funding for mobile dating app developer Cleod9 (dba Hinge) totalling $17M, as 
well a few other mobile companies. In total, Lowercase has increased the number of deals in 
this space by 63% in the past two years.
63
cbinsights.com
Geography Heatmap: California-centric
Of Lowercase's total deals in the past two years, 63% were in California with New York and DC 
coming after. Notable investments outside of the Golden State include Chartbeat, Campus 
Bellhops and Hinge. The firm used to be more involved in Massachusetts-based companies, 
with 6 deals being made from Q1'11 to Q1'13 vs. only one deal being made between Q1'13 
and Q1'15.  While the absolute number of deals in New York has remained relatively consistent, 
they became a smaller part of the activity as the firm ramped up deal activity in the last two 
years (mostly in California).
New vs. Follow-On Investment Balance
Lowercase focuses on getting into companies early, and rarely follows into later rounds 
(allowing deeper pocketed investors to continue into the later stages). Almost all follow on 
investments have been in Series A rounds after a seed investment from the firm, with some 
exceptions including Automattic and Docker. The graph on the next page excludes the SPV-
related investments the firm has been involved with through other entities.
64
cbinsights.com
Syndicates:  SV Angel and Y Combinator are the top co-investors
Lowercase is an avid investor in Y-Combinator companies as the Investment Syndicate 
dashboard below illustrates. Notable YC alum that are backed by Lowercase include 9gag, 
Stripe, and Docker. For its investments, Lowercase Capital partners mostly with similar seed 
stage VC firms such as SV Angel and First Round Capital.
65
cbinsights.com
Want access to the 
underlying data that made 
this white paper?
CB INSIGHTS
Get the Data
</p>