U.S. Venture Partners (USVP) 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 startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which ha ...

investment firm specializing in early-stage ventures in

enterprise software Enterprise software, also known as enterprise application software (EAS), is computer software used to satisfy the needs of an organization rather than individual users. Such organizations include businesses, schools, interest-based user groups, ...

cybersecurity Computer security, cybersecurity (cyber security), or information technology security (IT security) is the protection of computer systems and networks from attack by malicious actors that may result in unauthorized information disclosure, the ...

, consumer,

e-commerce E-commerce (electronic commerce) is the activity of electronically buying or selling of products on online services or over the Internet. E-commerce draws on technologies such as mobile commerce, electronic funds transfer, supply chain manageme ...

healthcare Health care or healthcare is the improvement of health via the prevention, diagnosis, treatment, amelioration or cure of disease, illness, injury, and other physical and mental impairments in people. Health care is delivered by health profe ...

, and IT-enabled healthcare services. The venture capital partnership is headquartered in

Menlo Park, California Menlo Park is a city at the eastern edge of San Mateo County within the San Francisco Bay Area of California in the United States. It is bordered by San Francisco Bay on the north and east; East Palo Alto, Palo Alto, and Stanford to the south; ...

. Since its inception in 1981, USVP has invested over $4.2 billion across a wide range of sectors. Out of the 516 companies financed by USVP, 93 have completed an initial public offering.

History

Founded by

Bill Bowes William Eric Bowes (25 July 1908 – 4 September 1987) was an English professional cricketer active from 1929 to 1947 who played in 372 first-class matches as a right arm fast bowler and a right-handed tail end batsman. He took 1,639 wickets ...

, Stuart Moldaw, and Robert Sackman, U.S. Venture Partners was an early entrant to the burgeoning venture capital industry 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 ...

in the late 1970s and early 1980s. As of 2020, the firm was investing out of its twelfth fund, USVP XII. Composed of former venture investors, entrepreneurs, CEOs, technologists, corporate executives, financial professionals, and industry domain experts, USVP has a combined 150 years of investment and operating experience with backgrounds across a wide array of sectors. The investment team is composed of Jacques Benkoski, Steve Krausz, Rick Lewis, Jonathan Root, Casey Tansey and Dafina Toncheva. The firm makes investments between $5 million and $10 million in markets with revenue potential exceeding $1 billion. USVP prefers to invest in companies with a market greater than $300 million and avoids companies in direct competition with each other. On average, USVP will invest for a period of three to ten years.

Investments

The firm has invested across multiple sectors over the years and is focused on enterprise software, IT security, consumer internet, mobile, e-commerce, healthcare, and IT-enabled healthcare services. Select portfolio companies include:

Arkose Labs Arkose () or arkosic sandstone is a detrital sedimentary rock, specifically a type of sandstone containing at least 25% feldspar. Arkosic sand is sand that is similarly rich in feldspar, and thus the potential precursor of arkose. Quartz is c ...

, Box, Carrot Fertility, Cato Networks, Happy Returns, HeartFlow,

HotelTonight HotelTonight is a travel agency and metasearch engine owned by Airbnb and accessible via website and mobile app. It is used to book last-minute lodging in the Americas, Europe, Japan and Australia. History HotelTonight was founded in December 2 ...

, Human Interest, Inari Medical, Inspire Medical Systems,

Intersect ENT Intersect ENT, a subsidiary of Medtronic, is a health care equipment company based in Menlo Park, California. It manufactures drug-delivery devices used by Otolaryngology, Ear, Nose & Throat (ENT) clinicians in the treatment of sinusitis. Intersec ...

, Medigate, Omada Health,

Pluto TV Pluto TV is a free, ad-supported video streaming service owned and operated by the Paramount Streaming division of Paramount Global. Co-founded by Tom Ryan, Ilya Pozin and Nick Grouf in 2013 and based in Los Angeles, California, in the United Sta ...

, ThreatMetrix, and

Zerto Zerto Ltd., through its main product the ''Zerto IT Resilience Platform'', provides disaster recovery, backup and workload mobility software for virtualized infrastructures and cloud environments. Zerto is co-headquartered in Boston and Israel a ...

. Notable historical investments include:

Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Sun for short) was an American technology company that sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services and created the Java programming language, the Solaris operating system, ZFS, the ...

Callaway Golf Callaway, legally Topgolf Callaway Brands Corp., is an American global sports equipment manufacturing company that designs, manufactures, markets and sells golf equipment, more specifically clubs and balls, also including accessories such as b ...

, St. Francis Medical,

SanDisk SanDisk is a brand for flash memory products, including memory cards and readers, USB flash drives, solid-state drives, and digital audio players, manufactured and marketed by Western Digital. The original company, SanDisk Corporation was acquire ...

Ross Stores Ross Stores, Inc., operating under the brand name Ross Dress for Less, is an American chain of discount department stores headquartered in Dublin, California. It is the largest off-price retailer in the U.S.; as of 2018, Ross operates 1,483 stor ...

Ask Jeeves Ask.com (originally known as Ask Jeeves) is a question answering–focused e-business founded in 1996 by Garrett Gruener and David Warthen in Berkeley, California. The original software was implemented by Gary Chevsky, from his own design. Warth ...

, Adify,

PetSmart PetSmart is a privately held American chain of pet superstores, which sell pet products, services, and small pets. It is the leading North American pet company, and its direct competitor is Petco. Its indirect competitors are Amazon, Walmart, ...

Check Point Check Point is an American-Israeli multinational provider of software and combined hardware and software products for IT security, including network security, endpoint security, cloud security, mobile security, data security and security managem ...

Mellanox Mellanox Technologies Ltd. ( he, מלאנוקס טכנולוגיות בע"מ) was an Israeli-American multinational supplier of computer networking products based on InfiniBand and Ethernet technology. Mellanox offered adapters, switches, softwa ...

, Vontu,

Proteolix Proteolix, Inc., was a private biotechnology company with headquarters in South San Francisco, California. Proteolix was founded in 2003 based on technology developed by co-founders Dr. Craig Crews (Yale University) and Dr. Raymond J. Deshaies ( ...

, Dotomi,

Imperva Imperva is a cyber security software and services company which provides protection to enterprise data and application software. The company is headquartered in San Mateo, California. History Imperva, originally named WEBcohort, was founded in 20 ...

Guidewire Software Guidewire Software, Inc., commonly ''Guidewire'', is an American software company based in San Mateo, California. It offers an industry platform for property and casualty (P&C) insurance carriers in the U.S. and worldwide. The company has been ...

Yammer Yammer () is an enterprise social networking service that is part of the Microsoft 365 family of products. It is used mainly for private communication within organizations but is also used for networks spanning various organizations. Access to a ...

Trusteer Trusteer is a Boston-based computer security division of IBM, responsible for a suite of security software. Founded by Mickey Boodaei and Rakesh K. Loonkar, in Israel in 2006, Trusteer was acquired in September 2013 by IBM for $1 billion. Trust ...

, Nanostim and

Trunk Club Trunk Club was a personalized mid- to high-end men's and women's clothing service based in Chicago, Illinois, United States. From its start in 2009, Trunk Club pioneered the at-home try-on model within the men's clothing industry. Each customer w ...

."OUR PORTFOLIO." USVP
www.usvp.com/portfolio/
Retrieved August 5, 2018

References

{{Reflist Venture capital firms of the United States 1981 establishments in California