In July of last year, Eric Vishria, a longtime Opsware executive who became co-founder and CEO of the social browsing startup Rockmelt, joined the Sand Hill Road firm Benchmark as its fifth general partner. It’s an enviable position, given the reputation of the 20-year-old firm, which has backed Uber, Snapchat, and the publicly traded companies […]
Benchmark
Wences Casares on the Future of Xapo (and Bitcoin)
Wences Casares is among the most-trusted proponents of the digital currency bitcoin. Indeed, last year, Casares – a serial entrepreneur who previously ran the digital wallet service Lemon (acquired by LifeLock in late 2013) – raised $41 million for his now 40-person, Palo Alto, Ca.-based company, Xapo, including from Benchmark and Fortress Investment Group. That […]
Duo Security Raises $30 Million More, Led by Redpoint
Duo Security, a five-year-old, 100-person company that sells its cloud-based two-factor authentication software to thousands of organizations, including Facebook, Twitter, NASA and Uber, has just raised $30 million in Series C funding led by Redpoint Ventures, with participation from Benchmark, Google Ventures, Radar Partners and True Ventures. (The Ann Arbor, Mi.-based startup has now raised […]
VC Michael Eisenberg: More Founders are Staying in Israel
If you’ve ever done an Internet or software venture deal in Israel, you probably know Michael Eisenberg. He started off in the industry 20 years ago, working first as a general partner at Israel Seed Partners, then spending nearly a decade with Benchmark, which he left last year to launch Aleph, an early-stage firm he […]
Bill Gurley: Those Earlier Warnings are Making an Impact
Venture capitalist Bill Gurley appeared on CNBC’s “Squawk Alley” show earlier this week to clarify some of the comments he’d made in mid-September to the Wall Street Journal – comments that Gurley thinks were misconstrued in follow-on reports that confused risk with valuations. “I was talking about risk and I didn’t say a word about […]
That’s It?
Almost a week ago, some odious years-old emails written by Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel were leaked to the media, and it’s a wonder how quickly their content seems to be have been swept under the rug. It’s understandable, to a point. Spiegel’s emails were written when he was a college student trying to impress his […]
Preempting Others, Tiger Leads $80 Million Round in Quora
Quora, the question-and-answer platform cofounded roughly five years ago by top Facebook engineers Adam D’Angelo and Charlie Cheever, has just raised a whopping $80 million in new funding led by Tiger Global Management, the 13-year-old Park Avenue-based hedge fund. Its new valuation, reportedly: $900 million The deal marks the third outsize funding that Tiger has […]
Zuora: The Hottest Company You Don’t Know
Zuora isn’t a household name, but the six-year-old is becoming kind of a big deal as private companies go. Its high-touch subscription-billing platform already counts as customers dozens of established corporate giants (HP, Dell, News Corp), newer corporate giants (Box, Docusign, ZenDesk), and up-and-comers (Dollar Shave Club) for whom its technology handles everything from pricing […]
So Snapchat is Worth More than $3 Billion. Got It.
Yesterday, there was lots of back and forth about Snapchat, the fast-growing messaging service, and the $3 billion all-cash offer from Facebook that it recently spurned, according to the Wall Street Journal’s sources. (Apparently, three sources also confirmed this account to the New York Times.) As the Journal reported, the “rebuff” came as Snapchat is “being wooed by other […]
Venture Heavyweights Sit Back as Deal Sizes Soar
It’s been a banner week for a number of Internet companies. Last Wednesday, social network Pinterest acknowledged closing on a $225 million round that valued the company at $3.8 billion. Shortly thereafter, AllThingsD reported that Snapchat, the messaging app, is now weighing a $200 million investment round that would value the company at $3.5 billion. And just yesterday, NextDoor, […]