Lightspeed Venture Partners

Lightspeed Venture Partners is an American venture capital firm focusing on early stage investments in the enterprise technology and consumer space.[1] To date, the firm has backed more than 300 companies, including Snapchat (Snap Inc.), DoubleClick (acquired by Google after IPO), AppDynamics (acquired by Cisco for $3.7B), Brocade (BRCD),[1] Nicira (acquired by VMware),[2] Playdom (acquired, DIS),[3] Pliant Technology (acquired, SanDisk),[4] XtremeIO (acquired, EMC),[5] Blue Nile (NILE),[6] Fusion-io (FIO),[6] Phone.com (OPWV),[6] Informatica (INFA), Fastfox[7][8][9] and Solazyme (SZYM).[10]

Lightspeed Venture Partners
Founded2000
FounderChris Schaepe
Barry Eggers
Ravi Mhatre
Peter Nieh
HeadquartersMenlo Park, California, United States
Total assetsOver $4 billion
Websitewww.lsvp.com

The company invests in the U.S. and abroad, with investment professionals and advisors in Silicon Valley, Israel, India with Lightspeed India Partners and China with Lightspeed China Partners. The team is currently investing out of Lightspeed XI, a $700 million fund and Select II, a $500 million fund.[11]

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. As of 2012 the firm had over $3 billion in committed capital.[12]

In March 2016, the company raised two new funds totaling in $1.2 billion.[13]

Snapchat raised $485,000 in its seed round and an undisclosed amount of bridge funding from Lightspeed Ventures in 2012.[14] Beyond the two Snap founders, the two biggest shareholders for the planned early 2017 Snap IPO were Benchmark and Lightspeed Venture Partners, both prior Snap investors and venture-capital firms from Silicon Valley. They held a combined stake of about 20%.[15]

In 2018, Neetzan Zimmerman joined as vice president of growth.[16] In April 2020, Lightspeed Venture Partners raised $ 4.2 billion across three funds: $890 million for its latest early-stage venture fund, a $1.83 billion growth fund for later-stage investments, and a $1.5 billion opportunity fund for doubling down on winners in its international portfolio.[17]

Significant investments

Summer Fellowship Program

Every year, Lightspeed offers summer fellowships to support innovation by rising student entrepreneurs. Weekly speakers and angel investors are brought in as guest speakers, and on the start-up experience. 2018 was the program’s twelfth year. Notable participants of Lightspeed's Fellowship program include Ben Silbermann, Founder and CEO of Pinterest, Akshay Ramaswamy, CEO of Alma Campus, and Bobby Murphy, Founder and CTO of Snapchat.[45]

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References
  1. "Crunchbase". Retrieved 2013-02-25.
  2. "VMware Buys Nicira For $1.26 Billion And Gives More Clues About Cloud Strategy". Retrieved 2013-02-25.
  3. "Disney buys social game firm Playdom for up to $763.2M". Retrieved 2013-02-25.
  4. "Pliant Technology Receives $8 Million in Series A Funding". Retrieved 2013-02-25.
  5. "XtremIO Adds Lightspeed Venture Partners to Series B Funding for Scale-out Enterprise Flash Storage Array". Retrieved 2013-02-25.
  6. "Crunchbase Lightspeed Venture Partners". Retrieved 2013-02-25.
  7. Sandilya, Sanu (2017-04-06). "Home rental startup FastFox gets Rs 30 crore from Lightspeed, 2 others". The Economic Times. Retrieved 2017-06-23.
  8. "India Dealbook: FastFox gets $4.6m from Lightspeed, others; DataWeave fundraise - DealStreetAsia". www.dealstreetasia.com. Retrieved 2017-06-23.
  9. "FastFox | crunchbase". www.crunchbase.com. Retrieved 2017-06-23.
  10. "Who Wins in the Solazyme IPO?". Retrieved 2013-02-25.
  11. "Bloomberg: Lightspeed Raising $875M for U.S., China Funds". Retrieved 2013-02-25.
  12. "Business Insider: How to Remain King of the World amidst Titanic Disruptions". Retrieved 2013-02-25.
  13. Loizos, Connie. "Lightspeed Venture Partners Raises $1.2 Billion". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2016-04-05.
  14. Gallagher, Billy (October 29, 2012). "You Know What's Cool? A Billion Snapchats: App Sees Over 20 Million Photos Shared Per Day, Releases On Android". TechCrunch. Retrieved December 22, 2012.
  15. Winkler, Rolfe (February 3, 2017), Snap IPO Will Mint Fortunes for Founders, Two Big Investors, New York City: Wall Street Journal, retrieved January 4, 2017
  16. Lightspeed adds five partners and a growth guru in one fell swoop
  17. Konrad, Alex. "VC Firm Lightspeed Raises $4 Billion In Startup Landscape Shaken By COVID-19". Forbes. Retrieved 2020-04-30.
  41. http://www.sebi.gov.in/sebi_data/attachdocs/jun-2017/1497957899070.pdf
  42. "Yellow Messenger raises $20 million Series B from Lightspeed Venture Partners". The Economic Times. 2020-04-16. Retrieved 2020-04-30.
  44. https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/unilodgers#section-overview
  45. "The Lightspeed Summer Fellowship Program Explained". Retrieved 2013-02-25.
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