Granite Ventures is a

venture capital Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to start-up company, startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth poten ...

firm with offices in

San Francisco, California San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

. Granite's predecessor H&Q Venture Associates, founded in 1992, was the venture capital investment arm of

Hambrecht & Quist Hambrecht & Quist (H&Q) was an investment bank based in San Francisco, California noted for its focus on the technology and Internet sectors. H&Q was founded by Bill Hambrecht and George Quist in California, in 1968. H&Q was an early player in ...

, a leading technology oriented

investment bank Investment is the dedication of money to purchase of an asset to attain an increase in value over a period of time. Investment requires a sacrifice of some present asset, such as time, money, or effort. In finance, the purpose of investing i ...

. Granite completed a spinout from H&Q when the bank was sold to

Chase Manhattan Bank JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., doing business as Chase Bank or often as Chase, is an American national bank headquartered in New York City, that constitutes the consumer and commercial banking subsidiary of the U.S. multinational banking and fi ...

in 1999. Since its founding, Granite has raised over $1 billion in investor commitments and has invested in more than 90 companies. In 2005, the firm raised Granite Ventures II, its second fund since completing its spinout in 2000, with $350 million of investor commitments. Granite's investment professionals include: Chris Hollenbeck, Chris McKay, Standish O'Grady and Eric Zimits.

Investments

Granite has backed such companies as Anaplan, Tumbleweed Communications,

Plumtree Software Plumtree Software is a former software company founded in 1996 by product managers and engineers from Oracle and Informix with funding from Sequoia Capital. The company was a pioneer of extending the portal concept popularized by Yahoo! from ...

Sendmail Sendmail is a general purpose internetwork email routing facility that supports many kinds of mail-transfer and delivery methods, including the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) used for email transport over the Internet. A descendant of the ...

, Workboard, and Westbridge Technology. Its investments also include

Airbnb Airbnb, Inc. ( ), based in San Francisco, California, operates an online marketplace focused on short-term homestays and experiences. The company acts as a broker and charges a commission from each booking. The company was founded in 2008 b ...

Aspen Avionics Aspen Avionics is an American aircraft avionics manufacturer. Aspen specializes in producing aftermarket EFIS display systems that retrofit into certified general aviation aircraft. The Evolution Flight Display system family is the company's ma ...

, HyTrust,

Lucidworks Lucidworks, a San Francisco, California-based company that specializes in commerce, customer service, and workplace applications. Lucidworks was founded in 2007 under the name Lucid Imagination and launched in 2009. The company was later rena ...

, Survios, and

Telltale Games Telltale Incorporated (trade name: Telltale Games) was an American video game developer based in San Rafael, California. The company was founded in July 2004 by former LucasArts developers Kevin Bruner, Dan Connors and Troy Molander, following ...

References

External links

* Venture capital firms of the United States Companies based in San Francisco Financial services companies established in 1992 {{US-private-equity-company-stub