Dan Levitan, the former investment banker who founded Maveron with Starbucks founder Howard Schultz, is having a pretty good run as a venture capitalist. His 16-year-old firm has backed a long line of consumer-facing startups that have become household brands, including eBay, Groupon, Cranium, Shutterfly and Zulily, the daily deals website for moms whose late […]
Groupon
A Quick Reminder that Big Rounds Don’t Mean Big Exits
The startup industry is endlessly fascinated with big financing rounds, but they do not always translate into the biggest returns, as illustrated by data assembled for StrictlyVC today by CB Insights. The list below features the largest financings of 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 and, to date, of 2014, though you could easily mistake it for a list […]
NEA’s Ravi Viswanathan on the Firm’s Concerns, Its Processes, and Its Next Big Fund
New Enterprise Associates may be big, but it isn’t unwieldy. Not according to the picture painted by Ravi Viswanathan, who joined NEA nine years ago from Goldman Sachs to co-head the firm’s growth equity effort. I sat down with Viswanathan last week at the expansive Sand Hill Road offices of the 35-year-old firm, which has raised $13.3 […]
A Global VC on Outsiders’ View of the U.S. Right Now: “Speechless”
Mathias Schilling is the cofounder and managing partner of e.ventures, an early-stage venture firm that invests out of dedicated funds in five geographies: the U.S., Russia, Germany, Asia, and Brazil. The vantage point gives Schilling a unique perspective on how the world sees the U.S. debt crisis. During a quick chat yesterday, he told me his partners are, […]