DFJ, the 31-year-old, Sand Hill Road venture firm, is announcing a new, $350 million fund this morning — the firm’s 12th early-stage vehicle. We chatted with managing director Josh Stein yesterday about the effort, which he says took about two months from start to finish. The biggest takeaway: Expect more of the same from the […]
DFJ
At Venture Firms, Balancing Brands Within Brands
There was a time in venture capital when it was almost unthinkable for investing professionals to make personal bets on startups outside their firms. That seemingly began to change about a decade ago. For example, after Accel Partners made an early bet on Facebook that would prove among the most lucrative in venture history, the […]
StrictlyVC: November 17, 2014
Good morning, everyone! Hope you had a wonderful weekend. (Web visitors, here’s an easier-to-read version of today’s email.) —– Top News in the A.M. Facebook to enterprises: You want workplace collaboration tools? We’ve got your workplace collaboration tools. Sometimes, a record-breaking IPO isn’t enough. According to Reuters, Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba will be sounding out […]
Tim Draper on Life Outside DFJ
A year ago, Fortune reported that billionaire investor Tim Draper would no longer be actively investing on behalf of DFJ, the firm he cofounded in 1985. As the news rippled throughout VC circles, Draper wrote StrictlyVC to clarify that he was “not leaving DFJ. Ever. I am just skipping a fund to do some work […]
Bubba Murarka: “We’re Underinvested as an Industry in Android”
DFJ’s newest managing director, Bubba Murarka, knows a thing or two about mobile. He has numerous bets on mobile companies, both personal and professional; he blogs and closely follows the writings of top mobile analysts, including Horace Dediu; and, oh, yeah, he was the first product manager at Facebook to get behind Android. (StrictlyVC previously wrote about Murarka’s […]
An Early Bet on Box Looks to Pay Huge Dividends
A few weeks ago, I talked shop with DFJ managing director Josh Stein about everything from Bitcoin (he’s bearish on the digital currency) to which firms are doing the most “fringe” investing (Khosla Ventures, Founders Fund, Google). Naturally, one of the topics we covered was Stein’s very early investment in the online storage company Box. […]
StrictlyVC: March 24, 2014
Hello, and happy Monday! —– Top News in the A.M. Move over, Amazon. Cisco Systems say it plans to begin offering “cloud” computing service to corporate customers, pledging to spend $1 billion over the next two years to enter the market, reports the Wall Street Journal. —– Bubba Muraka: DFJ’s Latest Whiz Steve Jurvetson has always been DFJ’s boy wonder, […]
Bubba Murarka: DFJ’s Newest Whiz
Steve Jurvetson has always been DFJ’s boy wonder, a polymath whose interests range from nanoscience to space travel and who received his electrical engineering degree from Stanford in two-and-a-half years (then he nabbed his master’s, then an MBA). Now, the Sand Hill Road venture firm appears to have found a new whiz in Bubba Murarka, […]
StrictlyVC: March 10, 2014
Good Monday morning, everyone! Hope you had a great weekend. —– Top News in the A.M. Yesterday, Google pledged to help developers create wearable devices, saying it will release an Android-based software development kit in the next two weeks. —– Josh Stein on the New DFJ DFJ has done what a lot of firms struggle to pull off; […]
Josh Stein on the New DFJ
DFJ as done what a lot of firms struggle to pull off; it has undergone a management shift without completely spooking LPs, who recently committed to give the firm $325 million for its newest fund. The transition was 18 months in the making, says Josh Stein, who joined DFJ a decade ago and who now, along with […]