Hummer Winblad Venture Partners is an American software and web focused
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 startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which ha ...
firm based 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 ...
. Its founders include
John Hummer
John Hummer (born May 4, 1948) is an American venture capitalist and retired professional basketball player who was an original member of the Buffalo Braves after starring for the Princeton Tigers men's basketball team. He also led his high scho ...
and
Ann Winblad. The firm was an early investor in
Napster
Napster was a peer-to-peer file sharing application. It originally launched on June 1, 1999, with an emphasis on digital audio file distribution. Audio songs shared on the service were typically encoded in the MP3 format. It was founded by Shawn ...
, the first popular file trading service, and in several internet firms that failed during the
dot-com bubble
The dot-com bubble (dot-com boom, tech bubble, or the Internet bubble) was a stock market bubble in the late 1990s, a period of massive growth in the use and adoption of the Internet.
Between 1995 and its peak in March 2000, the Nasdaq Compo ...
.
History
First decade (1989–1999)
Ann Winblad started Hummer Winblad Venture Partners with former professional basketball player
John Hummer
John Hummer (born May 4, 1948) is an American venture capitalist and retired professional basketball player who was an original member of the Buffalo Braves after starring for the Princeton Tigers men's basketball team. He also led his high scho ...
after selling her company Open Systems and serving as a consultant to
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...
,
Apple Computer
Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, United States. Apple is the largest technology company by revenue (totaling in 2021) and, as of June 2022, is the world's biggest company b ...
, and
IBM. The company originally focused on raising money from pension funds and investing in software companies. In 1999
Bill Gates
William Henry Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American business magnate and philanthropist. He is a co-founder of Microsoft, along with his late childhood friend Paul Allen. During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions ...
invested in the company's venture fund. In her book ''The Kingmakers'', reporter Karen Southwick wrote that Hummer Winblad Venture Partners "may not be among the super tier of VC firms, but it certainly gets just about as much publicity."
Napster and the dot-com bubble (2000–2014)
In 2000 Hummer Winblad led a US$15 million round of funding for
Napster
Napster was a peer-to-peer file sharing application. It originally launched on June 1, 1999, with an emphasis on digital audio file distribution. Audio songs shared on the service were typically encoded in the MP3 format. It was founded by Shawn ...
while the internet company was being sued by the
Recording Industry Association of America
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is a trade organization that represents the music recording industry in the United States. Its members consist of record labels and distributors that the RIAA says "create, manufacture, and/o ...
. ''The Economist'' noted that this investment was unusual for a company that previously had been "notably more risk-averse than most Silicon Valley rivals towards Internet investments." In 2001 several of the company's investments ended in company bankruptcies or closures, including
Pets.com
Pets.com was a dot-com enterprise headquartered in San Francisco, US that sold pet supplies to retail customers. It began operations in November 1998 and liquidated in November 2000. A high-profile marketing campaign gave it a widely recognize ...
,
Homes.com,
eHow
eHow is an online how-to guide with many articles and 170,000 videos offering step-by-step instructions. eHow articles and videos are created by freelancers and cover a wide variety of topics organized into a hierarchy of categories. Any eHow use ...
, and Rival Networks. In 2006 Hummer Winblad Venture Partners settled a lawsuit brought by
EMI Group
EMI Group Limited (originally an initialism for Electric and Musical Industries, also referred to as EMI Records Ltd. or simply EMI) was a British transnational conglomerate founded in March 1931 in London. At the time of its break-up in 201 ...
and
Universal Music Group
Universal Music Group N.V. (often abbreviated as UMG and referred to as just Universal Music) is a Dutch– American multinational music corporation under Dutch law. UMG's corporate headquarters are located in Hilversum, Netherlands and its ...
after
Napster
Napster was a peer-to-peer file sharing application. It originally launched on June 1, 1999, with an emphasis on digital audio file distribution. Audio songs shared on the service were typically encoded in the MP3 format. It was founded by Shawn ...
's bankruptcy.
Rebranding as HWVP (2015–)
In 2015 Hummer Winblad Venture Partners rebranded as HWVP. The next year, for the first time, it raised a fund without Ann Winblad or John Hummer listed among the general partners.
, its investments include
Ace Metrix
Ace Metrix is an advertising analytics company based in El Segundo, CA. The company screens and scores video advertising based on a survey method which measures an advertisement's creative impact including that of persuasion, watchability and emot ...
and
NuoDB
NuoDB is a cloud-native distributed SQL database company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 2008 and incorporated in 2010, NuoDB technology has been used by Dassault Systèmes, as well as FinTech and financial industry entities inclu ...
.
References
External links
* {{official, http://hwvp.com/
Financial services companies established in 1989
Venture capital firms of the United States
Companies based in San Francisco
American companies established in 1989
1989 establishments in California