VC Firm Bessemer Doubles Down On Investment Leadership, Adds Six New Partners

Venture capital firm Bessemer Venture Partners is adding a number of new leaders to its partnership. In addition to the promotions of Kent Bennett, Brian Feinstein, Ethan Kurzweil and Trevor Oelschig to partner, the firm is bringing BVP alum Alex Ferrara on board as partner, while EIR Jeff Epstein will move  into an operating partner role.

Bessemer (BVP), which has $4 billion under management, says that it now has 15 partners focused on investments in startups in the cloud computing, infrastructure, mobile, online retail and security sectors. BVP’s investments range from $100,000 angel investments to $50 million late-stage deals, across 15 countries from six global offices. In 2012, Bessemer had 20 exits for its investments and five IPOs.

Kurzweil led BVP’s investments in the consumer/social web (Playdom, Zoosk, Twitch, Piazza, Life360 and Reputation.com), developer platforms (Twilio, SendGrid and Crowdflower), advertising technology (adap.tv), and Skybox Imaging and serves on the Board of Directors of Twitch, Piazza, Crowdflower and Sweet Labs. Prior to BVP, Kurzweil worked at Linden Lab, the creators of Second Life.

Bennett, who has been involved in investments in data-management companies such as Endeca (acquired by Oracle) Streambase, Vertica (acquired by HP), Hadapt and InsightSquared; mobile-communications companies BroadSoft (IPO), Millennial Media (IPO) and Enforta will be focused on investments in the big data, data-infrastructure and communications sectors.

Feinstein will focus on Internet, and software, and financial services opportunities and will lead BVP’s investment practice in Brazil and Russia. Trevor Oelschig will focus primarily on investments in software and the consumer web. and led BVP’s investments in and serves on the boards of Shopify and Zopa.

Alex Ferrara joined Bessemer in 2005 and rejoined the firm in 2013 as a partner in its New York office, as reported by Fortune last week. His deals include Yodle, Shopify, OMGPop (acquired by Zynga), SelectMinds (acquired by Oracle), Wix, Quadriserv and Access 360 Media. Alex was also involved with investments in Pure Networks (acquired by Cisco), Skype (acquired by Ebay), SiteAdvisor (acquired by McAfee), Goal.com (acquired by Perform Group), Activ Financial, TeamViewer, Gerson Lehrman Group, HootSuite and Alibaba Group.

Lastly, Entrepreneur-in-Residence Jeff Epstein, who was previously the CFO of Oracle, Double Click and King World, will move into an operating partner role and will advise the firm’s portfolio companies in cloud computing and enterprise software, advertising technology, consumer internet and marketplaces. Jeff is the former Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Oracle.