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Upfront Ventures
Upfront Ventures, formerly known as GRP Partners, is a Santa Monica-based venture capital firm that invests in early-stage technology companies. It is one of the largest venture capital firms in Los Angeles, with $2 billion in total raised funds. Since its founding in 1996, Upfront Ventures has invested in more than 200 companies, with notable exits including Ulta Beauty, Ulta, Yahoo! Search Marketing, Overture, PayPal Credit, TrueCar, Disney Digital Network, Kyriba, and Ring (company), Ring. History Upfront Ventures was formed in 1996 in Century City, Los Angeles under the name GRP Partners, founded by Yves Sisteron, Steven Dietz and Steve Lebow. GRP Partners was best known for investing in chain restaurants like P. F. Chang's and Starbucks, as well as retailers like Costco and Ulta Beauty, Ulta, but it also invested in tech companies such as PayPal Credit, Overture Networks, Overture, and Disney Digital Network. Mark Suster joined GRP Partners in 2007 as general manager, and ...
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Private Company
A privately held company (or simply a private company) is a company whose shares and related rights or obligations are not offered for public subscription or publicly negotiated in the respective listed markets, but rather the company's stock is offered, owned, traded, exchanged privately, or Over-the-counter (finance), over-the-counter. In the case of a closed corporation, there are a relatively small number of shareholders or company members. Related terms are closely-held corporation, unquoted company, and unlisted company. Though less visible than their public company, publicly traded counterparts, private companies have major importance in the world's economy. In 2008, the 441 list of largest private non-governmental companies by revenue, largest private companies in the United States accounted for ($1.8 trillion) in revenues and employed 6.2 million people, according to ''Forbes''. In 2005, using a substantially smaller pool size (22.7%) for comparison, the 339 companies on ...
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Startup Company
A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship refers to all new businesses, including self-employment and businesses that never intend to become registered, startups refer to new businesses that intend to grow large beyond the solo founder. At the beginning, startups face high uncertainty and have high rates of failure, but a minority of them do go on to be successful and influential.Erin Griffith (2014)Why startups fail, according to their founders Fortune.com, 25 September 2014; accessed 27 October 2017 Actions Startups typically begin by a founder (solo-founder) or co-founders who have a way to solve a problem. The founder of a startup will begin market validation by problem interview, solution interview, and building a minimum viable product (MVP), i.e. a prototype, to develop and validate their business models. The startup process can take a long period of time (by so ...
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Venture Capital Firms Of The United States
Venture may refer to: Arts and entertainment Music *The Ventures, an American instrumental rock band formed in 1958 *"A Venture", 1971 song by the band Yes *''Venture'', a 2010 EP by AJR Games * ''Venture'' (video game), a 1981 arcade game *''Venture'', a strategic card game by Sid Sackson Film * SS ''Venture'', a ship in ''King Kong'' and its 2005 remake * SS ''Venture'', an InGen-owned ship featured in '' The Lost World: Jurassic Park'' Other uses * ''Venture'' (TV series), a Canadian business television show Magazines * ''Venture Science Fiction'', defunct US science fiction magazine * ''Venture'' (magazine), a management magazine Business * Business venture * Venture (department store), a defunct discount department store operating across Australia * Venture Corporation, a Singapore firm * Venture Stores, a former retail chain Transportation * Chevrolet Venture, a General Motors minivan * Yamaha Venture, Yamaha touring motorcycles * Siemens Venture, fam ...
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UGO Networks
UGO Entertainment, Inc. was a website that provided coverage of online media in entertainment, targeting males aged 18–34. The company was based in New York, New York, United States. History The company started in 1997 as Unified Gamers Online, billed in directories as a "hand-picked network of professionally managed gaming sites and services." In 1997, founder Chris Sherman hired Ken Margolis Associates to manage sales and marketing to the Game Industry. Chris sold UGO to Actionworld, Inc., a subsidiary of InterWorld, which incorporated the company in the state of Delaware in April, 1997. That same year, InterWorld spun off the company "in order to permit UGO Networks to build a separate management team…and to position UGO Networks to seek private parts equity financing." In 1998, UGO—then described as "the largest independent gaming community on the Internet"—created the prestigious UGO E3 Awards, now the Game Critics Awards, to recognize high quality video gam ...
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Qualys
Qualys, Inc. provides cloud security, compliance and related services and is based in Foster City, California. Qualys provides vulnerability management solutions using a "software as a service" (SaaS) model. It has added cloud-based compliance and web application security offerings. Qualys has over 10,300 customers in more than 130 countries, including a majority of the Forbes Global 100. The company has strategic partnerships with major managed services providers and consulting organizations including BT, Dell SecureWorks, Fujitsu, IBM, NTT, Symantec, Verizon, and Wipro. The company is also a founding member of the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA). History Qualys has been described as "one of the earliest software-as-a-service security vendors." Philippe Courtot first invested in the company in 1999. He became CEO and board chair in 2001. In the announcement of the second round of financing, Courtot described Qualys as addressing a "mounting need for automatic detection of ne ...
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Qordoba
Qordoba was an artificial intelligence company based in San Francisco, California that provided Software as a Service (SaaS) technology. The organization invented a content intelligence platform for content quality. History Qordoba was incorporated in the U.S. in 2015 by co-founders May Habib and Waseem AlShikh. Qordoba became Writer, Inc. in August 2020. Qordoba was a privately held company, supported by investment from Aspect Ventures, Rincon Venture Partners, Upfront Ventures, and Broadway Angels. See also * Artificial intelligence * Machine learning * Natural language processing * Natural language generation Natural language generation (NLG) is a software process that produces natural language output. In one of the most widely-cited survey of NLG methods, NLG is characterized as "the subfield of artificial intelligence and computational linguistics th ... References External links *{{official, https://qordoba.com/ 2015 establishments in California Technology ...
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Deliv
Deliv Inc. was a Menlo Park-based crowdshipping, same-day delivery startup Deliv provided last mile transportation services. Deliv was founded in 2012 by Daphne Carmeli, who also served as CEO of the company, and offered same-day service to mall shoppers. Deliv raised $12.35 million in funding from the four largest mall operators in the U.S., as well as General Catalyst, Redpoint Ventures, Trinity Ventures, Operators Fund and PivotNorth. Deliv's drivers were required to undergo an extensive filtering process. In 2017, the company announced an expansion of its service to 33 markets and 1,400 cities, up from 19 markets previously. In May 2020, Deliv announced it was shutting down and Target Corporation announced plans to acquire Deliv's technology assets with Carmeli and a number of Deliv engineers joining the retailer. Target had previously acquired delivery companies Shipt and Grand Junction both in 2017. See also * Shipt: another delivery company acquired by Target Co ...
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Apeel Sciences
Apeel Sciences is a company based in Goleta, California whose edible coating product Apeel can make avocados, citrus and other types of fruit last twice as long as usual by using a tasteless edible coating made from plant materials. The coating's formulation can be modified for strawberries, mangoes, apples, bananas, kumquats, citrus, and asparagus. Founding Apeel was founded in 2012 by James Rogers, after receiving a $100,000 grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to help reduce post-harvest food waste in developing countries that lacked refrigeration infrastructure. After the initial grant, backing has been provided by Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates and venture capitalist firm Andreessen Horowitz. Apeel has raised $110 million in financing to date. See also *Edible packaging Edible packaging refers to packaging which is edible and biodegradable. Edible food packaging Several manufacturers are developing or producing food packaging that is edible. One example is ...
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Convoz
Convoz is an American online social networking service based in Houston, Texas which focuses on creating public collaborative conversation through video. It was founded by Hakeem Seriki and Glen Allison, under the parent company X Empire Inc. and was seeded by Upfront Ventures. The video-centric platform allows users to send 15-second clips directly to celebrities and they can then watch and choose which ones they want to respond to, sometimes broadcasting a message for all to see as well as livestreaming to their followers. The startup has a total of seven employees, and has cultivated an undisclosed amount of seed funding from Greycroft Ventures, Upfront Ventures, 500 Startups, Precursor VC, Okapi Ventures, XG Ventures, and a roster of angels including Justin Kan, E-40 and Snoop Dogg. Background Convoz was announced to an investor and entrepreneur crowd at the Upfront Summit in Los Angeles by founder Hakeem Seriki in January 2018, in an attempt to raise capital for the app ...
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Chamillionaire
Hakeem Temidayo Seriki (born November 28, 1979), better known by his stage name Chamillionaire (), is an American rapper. He was the founder and an original member of The Color Changin' Click from 2001 until the group split in 2005. He began his solo career with local releases in 2002, including the collaborative album ''Get Ya Mind Correct'' with fellow Houston rapper and childhood friend Paul Wall. He signed to Universal Records in 2005 and released ''The Sound of Revenge'' under Universal. It included hit singles " Turn It Up" featuring Lil' Flip and the number-one, Grammy-winning hit "Ridin'" featuring Krayzie Bone of Bone Thugs-n-Harmony. ''Ultimate Victory'' followed in 2007, which was notable for not containing any profanity. Chamillionaire is also known for his most anticipated ''Mixtape Messiah'' series, which ran from 2004 until 2009. In 2011, Chamillionaire left Universal Records, which led to his would-be third album, ''Venom'', going unreleased. He released his fir ...
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Silicon Beach
Silicon Beach is the Westside region of the Los Angeles metropolitan area that is home to more than 500 technology companies, including startups. It is particularly applied to the coastal strip from Los Angeles International Airport north to the Santa Monica Mountains, but the term may be applied loosely or colloquially to most anywhere in the Los Angeles Basin. Startups seeded here include Snapchat and Tinder. Major technology companies that opened offices in the region including Google, Yahoo!, YouTube, BuzzFeed, Facebook, Salesforce, AOL, Electronic Arts, Sony, EdgeCast Networks, MySpace, Amazon.com, Apple, Inc., and Netflix. By some 2012 metrics, the region was the second- or third-most prominent technology hub in the world. In the first six months of 2013, 94 new start-ups in Silicon Beach raised over $500 million in funding, and there were nine acquisitions. The area offers relatively easy access to LAX (Los Angeles International Airport), the biggest and most connect ...
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