Shasta Ventures is an early-stage

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 ...

investment firm located in

Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that serves as a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical areas San Mateo County ...

that invests in enterprise and technology consumer startups. It is located on

Sand Hill Road Sand Hill Road, often shortened to just "Sand Hill" or "SHR", is an arterial road in western Silicon Valley, California, running through Palo Alto, Menlo Park, and Woodside, notable for its concentration of venture capital companies. The road h ...

in Menlo Park.

Funds

Shasta's second fund of US$250 million included

Nest Labs Google Nest is a line of smart home products including smart speakers, smart displays, streaming devices, thermostats, smoke detectors, routers and security systems including smart doorbells, cameras and smart locks. The Nest brand name was ...

, which almost all by itself repaid the entire fund when it was sold to

Google Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...

for $3.2 billion. Shasta's third fund of $265 million was announced in September 2011. The fourth fund, of $300 million, was announced in June 2014.

Investment philosophy

Shasta was originally focused on companies in the consumer technology space, with then managing director Tod Francis calling

Mint.com Mint, also known as Intuit Mint (styled in its logo as intuit mint with dotted 't' characters in "intuit" and undotted 'i' characters) and formerly known as Mint.com, is a personal financial management website and mobile app for the US and Canad ...

a "classic Shasta" investment in September 2011. In September 2013,

Rob Coneybeer Rob or ROB may refer to: Places * Rob, Velike Lašče, a settlement in Slovenia * Roberts International Airport (IATA code ROB), in Monrovia, Liberia People * Rob (given name), a given name or nickname, e.g., for Robert(o), Robin/Robyn * Rob ...

of Shasta, the new managing director, said that he was betting big on hardware startups, citing

Moore's Law Moore's law is the observation that the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit (IC) doubles about every two years. Moore's law is an observation and projection of a historical trend. Rather than a law of physics, it is an empir ...

-style continued performance improvements making opportunities for new hardware possible.

Companies

Mint.com

Shasta Ventures was an early investor in

, an online personal finance management service that was bought in September 2009 by financial software company

Intuit Intuit Inc. is an American business software company that specializes in financial software. The company is headquartered in Mountain View, California, and the CEO is Sasan Goodarzi. Intuit's products include the tax preparation application Tu ...

for US$170 million in cash. An article by

Alexia Tsotsis Alexia Bonatsos, (born 1982), is a venture capitalist and former co-editor of ''TechCrunch'', a technology news website. In 2011, she was listed by ''Forbes'' magazine as among the top 30 under 30 in the Media category. Early life and education ...

for ''

TechCrunch TechCrunch is an American online newspaper focusing on high tech and startup companies. It was founded in June 2005 by Archimedes Ventures, led by partners Michael Arrington and Keith Teare. In 2010, AOL acquired the company for approximately ...

'' quoted Shasta's managing director Tod Francis as using the phrase "Classic Shasta" to describe Shasta's investment in Mint.com.

Nest Labs

Shasta Ventures and

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers Kleiner Perkins, formerly Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB), is an American venture capital firm which specializes in investing in incubation, early stage and growth companies. Since its founding in 1972, the firm has backed entrepreneurs ...

were the only investors in the

Series A A series A round (also known as series A financing or series A investment) is the name typically given to a company's first significant round of venture capital financing. The name refers to the class of preferred stock sold to investors in exchan ...

round for

(the home automation company) in September 2010. When

later bought Nest Labs for US$3.2 billion in January 2014, Shasta had a net gain of about $200 million, enough to pay out "almost all" of the $250 million Shasta II fund.

Other investments

Shasta has invested in a number of other companies such as Anaplan, Brandcast, Entelo, Leanplum,

Nextdoor Nextdoor Holdings, Inc. is an American company which operates a hyperlocal social networking service for neighborhoods. The company was founded in 2008 and is based in San Francisco, California. Nextdoor launched in the United States in October ...

Lithium Technologies Khoros, formerly Spredfast + Lithium, is a global customer engagement software company that provides online community management, social media marketing, social media analytics, digital care, and content management software and services to ent ...

, Logoworks,

Zuora Zuora is an American enterprise software company headquartered in Redwood City, California that creates and provides software for businesses to launch and manage their subscription-based services. Zuora's applications are designed to automate re ...

, Tally Technologies,

Spiceworks Spiceworks is a professional network for the information technology (IT) industry that is headquartered in Austin, Texas. The company was founded in January 2006 by Scott Abel, Jay Hallberg, Greg Kattawar, and Francis Sullivan to build IT manage ...

Stealth Security
and VoloMetrix.

Controversy

In August 2019 partner Doug Pepper left the firm, potentially triggering a " key-man" event

References

External links

* {{official website Financial services companies established in 2004 Venture capital firms of the United States