Uncork Capital (formerly known as SoftTech VC) 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 ...

firm based in San Francisco, California, founded by Jeff Clavier. Considered one of the most active established seed funds 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 ...

, it has invested in companies such as

Postmates Postmates is a food delivery service, founded in 2011, and acquired by Uber in 2020. It offers local delivery of restaurant-prepared meals and other goods. It is headquartered in San Francisco, California. , Postmates operates in 2,940 U.S. c ...

Eventbrite Eventbrite is an American event management and ticketing website. The service allows users to browse, create, and promote local events. The service charges a fee to event organizers in exchange for online ticketing services, unless the event is f ...

Fitbit Fitbit (stylized as fitbit) is an American consumer electronics and fitness company. It produces wireless-enabled wearable technology, physical fitness monitors and activity trackers such as smartwatches, pedometers and monitors for heart rate ...

, and

SendGrid SendGrid (also known as Twilio SendGrid) is a Denver, Colorado-based customer communication platform for transactional and marketing email. The company was founded by Isaac Saldana, Jose Lopez, and Tim Jenkins in 2009, and incubated through the ...

History

The firm was founded in 2004 by

angel investor An angel investor (also known as a business angel, informal investor, angel funder, private investor, or seed investor) is an individual who provides capital for a business or businesses start-up, usually in exchange for convertible debt or owners ...

Jeff Clavier when he transitioned his portfolio into a formal venture firm. Partners include Andy McLoughlin (formerly of

Huddle In sport, a huddle is the action of a team gathering together, usually in a tight circle, to strategize, motivate or celebrate. It is a popular strategy for keeping opponents insulated from sensitive information, and acts as a form of insulation ...

), Susan Liu (formerly of

Scale Venture Partners Scale Venture Partners is an early-stage venture capital firm that typically leads Series A or Series B rounds. Over the last 20 years, Scale has made over 380 investments in Cloud, SaaS and Infrastructure companies, with over 159 exits, includ ...

) and Tripp Jones (formerly of

August Capital August Capital, legally August Capital Master Management Company, LLC, is a venture capital firm founded by David Marquardt and John Johnston (venture capitalist), John Johnston in 1995. It is focused on information technology and is based in Men ...

). As of 2022, the firm had invested in over 240 early stage start-ups. In 2017, the firm changed its name from SoftTech VC to Uncork Capital.

Investments

The firm primarily invests in SaaS (software as a service), marketplaces, consumer services and "frontier technology" ventures. With a focus on seed-stage funding, the firm generally aims to secure between 8-12% ownership of the companies it invests in. The firm's first fund raised less than $1 million, while the second fund raised $15 million in 2007. In 2012, Fund III oversubscribed at $55 million, and, in 2014, they closed their fourth fund at $85 million, bringing their capital under management to $155 million. In 2016, the firm raised $100 million for SoftTechVC V and $50 million for a breakout fund. In 2019, the firm raised $100M for Uncork VI and $100 for their second breakout find, Plus II. Notable investments have included:

Survata Upwave, formerly Survata, is a marketing analytics company based in San Francisco, California. It is the leading Analytics Platform that provides software and data to plan, measure and optimize brand marketing. Upwave rebranded from Survata in Sept ...

Gnip Gnip, Inc. was a social media API aggregation company that was purchased by Twitter in 2014. Headquartered in Boulder, Colorado, it provided data from dozens of social media websites via a single API. Gnip was among the first social media API agg ...

BrightRoll BrightRoll was a programmatic video advertising platform that was acquired by Yahoo!. BrightRoll's video platform became Yahoo's primary video advertising marketplace and demand-side platform. The BrightRoll brand was discontinued by Verizon Medi ...

Vidyard Vidyard is a software company headquartered in Kitchener, Ontario, that creates software to host and analyze video performance. The company was founded in May 2010. Beginnings Originally starting as a fourth-year design project at the University ...

LiveRamp LiveRamp Holdings, Inc. (commonly LiveRamp), is a San Francisco, California-based SaaS company that offers a data connectivity platform whose services include data onboarding, the transfer of offline data online for marketing purposes. The comp ...

, about.me,

August Home August, Inc is a San Francisco home automation company, focusing on Wi-Fi connected door locks and doorbell cameras. The company was founded in November 2012 by Yves Béhar and Jason Johnson. On October 19, 2017, Swedish lock manufacturer Assa ...

Bitly Bitly is a URL shortening service and a link management platform. The company Bitly, Inc. was established in 2008. It is privately held and based in New York City. Bitly shortens 600 million links per month, for use in social networking, SMS, and ...

Bleacher Report Bleacher Report (often abbreviated as B/R) is a website that focuses on sport and sports culture. Its headquarters are in San Francisco, with offices in New York City and London. Bleacher Report was acquired by Turner Broadcasting System in Aug ...

Blekko Blekko, trademarked as blekko (lowercase), was a company that provided a web search engine with the stated goal of providing better search results than those offered by Google Search, with results gathered from a set of 3 billion trusted webpag ...

Chariot A chariot is a type of cart driven by a charioteer, usually using horses to provide rapid motive power. The oldest known chariots have been found in burials of the Sintashta culture in modern-day Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russia, dated to c. 2000&nbs ...

Curse LLC Curse is a network of gaming websites. The company is headquartered in Huntsville, Alabama, and has offices in San Francisco, New York City, Los Angeles, Brighton, and Berlin. Curse initially focused on offering mods for various video games. As ...

Handshake A handshake is a globally widespread, brief greeting or parting tradition in which two people grasp one of each other's like hands, in most cases accompanied by a brief up-and-down movement of the grasped hands. Customs surrounding handshakes a ...

Kongregate Kongregate is an American web gaming portal and video game publisher. Its website features over 110,000 online games and 30+ mobile games available to the public. The company also publishes games for PC, mobile, and home consoles. It was purchase ...

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 Canada ...

, and

Next Big Sound Next Big Sound (NBS) is a New York-based company which provides analytics for online music. The company analyses the popularity of musicians in social networks, streaming services, and radio. The company was acquired by Pandora Radio in May 2015. ...

References

External links

* Venture capital firms of the United States Private equity firms of the United States Companies based in Palo Alto, California Financial services companies established in 2004 {{US-private-equity-company-stub