Spark Capital Partners, LLC is a multi-stage venture capital firm based in the U.S. with operations in San Francisco, New York, and Boston. Spark is a generalist VC firm with a portfolio that spans verticals such as consumer internet, enterprise software, gaming, infrastructure technologies, hardware, semiconductors, crypto, fintech, and AI.
Funds
Spark Capital was launched in 2005 by Paul Conway, Santo Politi, and Todd Dagres.
Today the firm manages assets north of $12 billion. They have raised eight early-stage funds: US$265 million in 2005; $360 million in 2008; $360 million in 2010; $450 million in 2013; $400 million in 2016; $450 million in 2019; $700M in 2021; and $700M in 2024.They have also raised five growth funds: $375 million in 2014; $600 million in 2016;$900 million in 2019; $1.4B in 2021; and $1.4B in 2024.
Team
Spark Capital was founded in 2005 by Bijan Sabet
Bijan Sabet is an American venture capitalist who had served as the List of ambassadors of the United States to the Czech Republic, United States ambassador to the Czech Republic.
Education
Sabet's mother immigrated from Korea in the 1960s, his f ...
, Paul Conway, Santo Politi, and Todd Dagres. Other people who have joined the company since its inception include Jeremy Philips, Alex Finkelstein, Yasmin Razavi, Will Reed and Nabeel Hyatt. The company consists of approximately 1150 employees.
Investment approach
Spark Capital has been known for co-investing with Union Square Ventures
Union Square Ventures (USV) is an American venture capital firm based in New York City. The firm has backed more than 130 startups, including Twitter, Etsy, Stripe, Coinbase, Zynga, Tumblr, Stack Overflow, Meetup, Kickstarter, MongoDB, ...
. Many of Spark Capital's early picks, including Twitter
Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, image ...
, Tumblr
Tumblr (pronounced "tumbler") is a microblogging and Social networking service, social networking website founded by David Karp in 2007 and is owned by American company Automattic. The service allows users to post multimedia and other content ...
, and Foursquare
Four square is a ball game.
Four square may also refer to:
Internet and entertainment
* Foursquare City Guide, a local search and discovery app
* 4 Square (game show), ''4 Square'' (game show), a British game show
* 4 Square (TV series), ''4 Squ ...
, were made via partner Bijan Sabet and were joint investments with Union Square Ventures, made by partner Fred Wilson. Sabet says that Spark Capital's portfolio companies do not use non-compete agreements, which he says have been a key factor in limiting startup growth in New York and Boston.
Companies
Spark is has been an early institutional investor in:
* Affirm: Spark Capital led the series B, with Jeremy Philips joining the board.
* Anthropic
Anthropic PBC is an American artificial intelligence (AI) startup company founded in 2021. Anthropic has developed a family of large language models (LLMs) named Claude as a competitor to OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Gemini. According to the ...
: Yasmin Razavi, the company's General Partner at Spark Capital led the Series C (first institutional VC round) in 2022.
* The Bot Company: Kyle Vogt's venture after Cruise, Nabeel Hyatt co-led the $150M series A.
* Coinbase
Coinbase Global, Inc. is an American cryptocurrency exchange. It was founded in 2012 by Brian Armstrong and Fred Ehrsam. Coinbase has over 100 million users, and is the largest U.S. based cryptocurrency exchange as well as the world's bigge ...
* Cruise: Spark Capital invested in Cruise in the Series A funding round, and the company's General Partner Nabeel Hyatt joined the board of directors.
* Deel: Spark Capital led the Series B in 2020, the company's General Partner, Yasmin Razavi joining the board.
* Discord
Discord is an instant messaging and Voice over IP, VoIP social platform which allows communication through Voice over IP, voice calls, Videotelephony, video calls, text messaging, and digital media, media. Communication can be private or take ...
: Spark Capital invested in multiple funding rounds of a gamer chat tool Discord
Discord is an instant messaging and Voice over IP, VoIP social platform which allows communication through Voice over IP, voice calls, Videotelephony, video calls, text messaging, and digital media, media. Communication can be private or take ...
, with General Partner Nabeel Hyatt joining the board as an observer.
* Oculus: Spark capital invested in Oculus VR
Reality Labs, formerly Oculus VR, is a business and research unit of Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook Inc.) that produces virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) hardware and software, including virtual reality headsets such as the Qu ...
in both Series A and Series B funding rounds, which was subsequently sold to Facebook for an estimated $2 billion. The company's General Partner Santo Politi joined the board of directors.
* Slack
* Twitter
Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, image ...
: Bijan Sabet, the partner at Spark Capital, invested in Twitter's second (Series B) round in June 2008, along with Jeff Bezos
Jeffrey Preston Bezos ( ;; and Robinson (2010), p. 7. ; born January 12, 1964) is an American businessman best known as the founder, executive chairman, and former president and CEO of Amazon, the world's largest e-commerce and clou ...
and additional investments from past investors such as Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures
Union Square Ventures (USV) is an American venture capital firm based in New York City. The firm has backed more than 130 startups, including Twitter, Etsy, Stripe, Coinbase, Zynga, Tumblr, Stack Overflow, Meetup, Kickstarter, MongoDB, ...
, and Sabet also accepted a board seat at Twitter. According to ''Hatching Twitter'', Sabet and Wilson played a crucial role in facilitating smooth leadership changes at Twitter in October 2008 and later October 2010—ousting Jack Dorsey
Jack Patrick Dorsey (born November 19, 1976) is an American businessperson, who is a co-founder of Twitter, Inc. and its CEO during 2007–2008 and 2015–2021, as well as co-founder, principal executive officer and chairman of Block, Inc. (deve ...
to install Evan Williams in 2008 and ousting Williams to install Dick Costolo
Richard William Costolo (pronounced: ) (born September 10, 1963) is an American businessman. He was the CEO of Twitter, Inc. from 2010 to 2015; he also served as the COO before becoming CEO.
Career
Costolo was born in Royal Oak, Michigan. In 1 ...
in 2010.
* Tumblr
Tumblr (pronounced "tumbler") is a microblogging and Social networking service, social networking website founded by David Karp in 2007 and is owned by American company Automattic. The service allows users to post multimedia and other content ...
: Spark Capital was one of the early investors in Tumblr
Tumblr (pronounced "tumbler") is a microblogging and Social networking service, social networking website founded by David Karp in 2007 and is owned by American company Automattic. The service allows users to post multimedia and other content ...
, where they co-invested with Union Square Ventures
Union Square Ventures (USV) is an American venture capital firm based in New York City. The firm has backed more than 130 startups, including Twitter, Etsy, Stripe, Coinbase, Zynga, Tumblr, Stack Overflow, Meetup, Kickstarter, MongoDB, ...
, paying the same amount for the same share, with Bijan Sabet as the assigned partner from Spark Capital. Following the sale of Tumblr
Tumblr (pronounced "tumbler") is a microblogging and Social networking service, social networking website founded by David Karp in 2007 and is owned by American company Automattic. The service allows users to post multimedia and other content ...
to Yahoo!
Yahoo (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web portal that provides the search engine Yahoo Search and related services including My Yahoo, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo News, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Sports, y!entertainment, yahoo!life, and its a ...
for $1.1 billion, Spark Capital and Union Square Ventures each took home $192 million from the deal.
Others
* Carta
* Framework Computer
* Plaid
* Postmates
Postmates Inc. is an American 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 operate ...
* Scale AI
Scale AI, Inc. is an American data annotation company based in San Francisco, California. It provides data labeling and model evaluation services to develop applications for artificial intelligence.
The company’s research arm, the Safety, E ...
* Ramp
References
External links
*
{{Private equity and venture capital, state=collapsed
Financial services companies established in 2005
Venture capital firms of the United States
Companies based in Boston
Companies based in San Francisco