Institutional Venture Partners (IVP) is a US-based

private equity In the field of finance, the term private equity (PE) refers to investment funds, usually limited partnerships (LP), which buy and restructure financially weak companies that produce goods and provide services. A private-equity fund is both a t ...

investment firm focusing on later-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 h ...

and growth equity investments. IVP is one of the oldest venture capital firms, founded in 1980.

History

While Reid W. Dennis was an analyst at the

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starting in 1952, he started an informal network of screened individual investors (now called

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 ownersh ...

s). In 1974, Dennis founded Institutional Venture Associates (IVA), funded by six institutions such as

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. Burton J. McMurtry and David Marquardt, who had been involved with IVA, left and founded Technology Venture Investors, the first investor in

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, Washi ...

. These were some of the first

firms 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 ...

near

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is conside ...

, within

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 Cou ...

. With his personal wealth and that of other partners, Dennis founded Institutional Venture Partners in 1980. The first IVP fund had $22 million. In a field that was generally male-dominated, Ruthann Quindlen became a rare female general partner in 1994. After the burst of 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 Comp ...

in 1999, partners from IVP combined with Brentwood Venture Capital formed Redpoint Ventures, which would specialize in later-stage digital media and Internet companies, and Palladium Venture Capital to focus on health science investments. IVP specializes in venture growth investments, industry rollups, founder liquidity transactions, and select public market investments. It only makes a small number (about 12 to 15) relatively large investments per year. Its fourteenth fund raised about $1 billion in June 2012. Its fifteenth fund raised $1.4 billion in April 2015. Its sixteenth fund raised $1.5 billion in September 2017.

Industry recognitions

In 2014, AlwaysOn named IVP in its Top 25 VC Firms List. In 2015, GrowthCap named IVP #1 on their Top 25 Growth Equity Firms List. Entrepreneur Magazine named IVP on their VC 100 List. IVP ranked #2 as the Top VC in Mobile by App Portfolio Downloads by Sensor Tower In addition, IVP was listed as one of the Most Active Bay Area VC Firms Ranked by Number of Deals in 2015 by San Francisco Business Times. In 2016, PitchBookPitchbook Press Release (June 21, 2016)
/ref> ranked IVP #2 as The Most Active VC Investor in the U.S.- based Tech Companies That Have Completed an IPO Since the Beginning of 2011. CB Insights ranked IVP #3 among top investors that are consistently in the top tech exits.

References

External links

* {{venture capital firms Venture capital firms of the United States Financial services companies established in 1980