Snapchat, the impermanent messaging app that won “Fastest Rising Startup” at the 2012 Crunchies, has finalized a $13.5 million Series A round led by Benchmark’s Mitch Lasky.
According to The New York Times, Snapchat is now valued between $60 and $70 million. → Read More
Mobile looks like a threat to the growth of Facebook’s profits, because advertisers aren’t spending much and users aren’t enjoying the experience. But Matt Cohler, thinks that mobile ads are going to be huge, “bigger than the web.” Formerly a Facebook executive and now a general partner with Benchmark Capital, he compares the mobile ad experience to television.
“It’s a lot more like a TV than… → Read More
TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington sat down with Benchmark Capital’s Matt Cohler this morning at TechCrunch Disrupt SF to discuss the state of tech investing. One of the first questions Arrington asked was about Cohler’s own startup investments, and specifically whether or not he had invested in any new companies this year. As it turns out, he has not – but it wasn’t a specific decision… → Read More
Peter Fenton joined Benchmark Capital in 2006, after spending seven years as a partner at Accel. Not yet 40, Fenton already sits on the board of directors at companies like New Relic, Polyvore, Twitter, Yelp, and Zendesk. Starting at Accel in his late twenties, the young investor focused his attention on the enterprise — on backing smart software and infrastructure companies. In 2009, for… → Read More
Well, we’ve said it before: Technology is changing education. It’s flipping the classroom, bringing instructional videos to the masses, and dragging online higher education into legitimacy. Investors have begun to hear the call, as was evidenced today when Benchmark Capital made its largest seed investment to date — $25 million — in a startup/university called The Minerva Project.
Sure, it’s… → Read More
The Yakuza, Chinese Triads and more. There’s just so many more mafias for Benchmark-backed mobile gaming studio Red Robot Labs to infiltrate.
So the gaming company, which has made a huge bet on location, said it’s partnering with Next Media to enter Asian markets. (Yes, Next Media is the Hong Kong-based owner of that Taiwanese animation subsidiary that’s become infamous for its off-key and… → Read More
I just finished reading an interesting blog post by venture capitalist Bill Gurley about Twitter, a portfolio company of his firm Benchmark Capital. In it, he argues that there’s a misperception about Twitter in that people keep regarding it as a social network and pitting it against Facebook.
Gurley makes some good points, albeit ones that have been made in the past, about Twitter being an… → Read More
After Accel nabbed Salesforce exec and Chatter creator Chuck Ganapathi as EIR a few months ago, another Salesforce exec is heading to the venture world. Craig Weissman, Salesforce’s former CTO, is joining Benchmark Capital as its latest Entrepreneur-in-Residence.
Weissman, whose focus on Benchmark will be in the enterprise and big data space, has been working in enterprise software for the past… → Read More
CouchSurfing International is one of those rare Web companies– like Mozilla or Craigslist– that has eschewed the normal Silicon Valley values of growth, greed and venture capital.
It’s one of those startups that uses the word “community” to mean people that have lasting, real-world connections to one another, not just the new industry jargon for “eyeballs.”
And its CEO Daniel Hoffer still… → Read More
A new software as a service company Domo is formally launching tonight at a party in Salt Lake City. I have no idea how opulent or bare-bones this party will be, but theoretically the company would have plenty to spend on drinks, T-shirts and canapes. It just raised a massive $33 million series A from Benchmark Capital. Actually, counting the angel investments that were closed earlier but rolled… → Read More
Editor’s Note: This is part two in an in-depth series exploring the ramifications of the explosion of late stage capital being raised by the Valley’s elite venture firms. For part one, go here.
In the mid-2000s when nearly every top venture capital firm was expanding to India and China, Benchmark Capital did not share its peers’ worldly ambitions. In fact, while the firm retained its Israel fund… → Read More
If you blinked you might have missed last Friday’s news that Chinese Web giant Tencent is buying LA-based Riot Games. And that’s just fine by Tencent.
Tencent and its founder Pony Ma (seen in a sea of winking penguins to your left) are incredibly press-shy, as everything about the way the deal “leaked” demonstrates. It came late on a Friday before the Superbowl, it was positioned as Tencent… → Read More
“I hope we’re not entering a world where Silicon Valley becomes Versailles”
That was Matt Cohler speaking today at our TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco. Cohler, a partner at Benchmark Capital (and one of the original employees of Facebook), sat down with our own Mike Arrington to talk about the state of the venture capital industry.
Cohler made his provocative statement in the… → Read More
“So ResearchGATE is Facebook for Scientists?” I asked ex-Facebook exec, current Benchmark Capital general partner and new ResearchGATE investor Matt Cohler. “I bristle at that characterization,” he responded telling me that doesn’t adequately describe the company.
Either way he’s invested in the Berlin based startup, along with Accel Partners, Simon Levene, Michael Birch, Joachim Schoss, Martin… → Read More
Stitcher CEO Noah Shanok wants his company to become the Pandora of Web talk radio, and he just raised a $6 million Series B to help him get there. The round was led by Benchmark Capital, and follows a $2.7 million Series A in 2008. Existing investor New Atlantic Ventures put in more money as well.
The company’s apps stream news, talk, and informational podcasts to people’s iPhones… → Read More
Mårten Gustaf Mickos, former CEO of MySQL, has joined Index Ventures as Entrepreneur In Residence (EIR).
The news comes four months after the man joined another VC firm, Silicon Valley-based Benchmark Capital, also as EIR.
In a statement, Index Ventures says Mickos will focus on seeking out new investment opportunities within the European technology market, helping to identify and evaluate… → Read More
Clarizen, provider of online work and project management software, has secured $8 million more in a Series C round of venture capital funding led by DAG Ventures, Benchmark Capital and Carmel Ventures. The total amount of venture capital invested in the company, which was founded in 2005, now totals $24 million.
The company provides collaborative project management software that allows businesses… → Read More
In the third quarter of 2009, we saw a slight rebound in venture funding from earlier in the year. But which venture capital firms were the most active in the quarter? One of my favorite new tables in our latest TechCrunch Trends report, which is based on company data we collect in CrunchBase, is the ranking of the most active venture capital firms.
We’ve reproduced that ranking below in two… → Read More
For more TechCrunch Analysis, check out the Q3 09 Trends Report here.
Which venture capitalists had the most exist last quarter? A peek at Crunchbase data shows that Accel Partners, Benchmark Capital, Foundation Capital and New Enterprise Asosciates all recorded at least three exits by acquisition in Q3 2009.
The four firms were all also among the ten most active investors in CrunchBase in the… → Read More
Mårten Gustaf Mickos, former CEO of MySQL, is Benchmark Capital‘s newest Entrepreneur In Residence (EIR).
Mickos served as chief executive officer for the open source database company from January 2001 to February 2008, when Sun Microsystems acquired MySQL for $1 billion. Benchmark was a relatively early investor in the company; they participated in the $20 million Series B round together with… → Read More
Billed as the web’s “largest almanac of pro and college athletes, built entirely by fans”, Fanbase is today launching its directory of all things sports to the world after 18 months of work and a few months of public beta. Backed by $5 million in venture capital from Benchmark, Fanbase’s aim is to mobilize and unite fans around pages of any athlete or sports team at any level.
In its limited… → Read More
Benchmark Capital is investing in Danish startup Zendesk, and led a $6 million B round of funding. Benchmark’s rock star partner Peter Fenton is joining the board.
Zendesk just raised money in May in an A round from Charles River Partners, which also participated in this latest funding. → Read More
As Erick pointed out yesterday, IPO registrations are up. But even if all of these companies go out, does this mean VCs are out of the no liquidity woods? Hardly.
Sure everyone brings up LinkedIn and Facebook as the potentially huge homerun IPOs in the wings, but a lot of the companies queuing up look more like OpenTable.
The reservation Web site deserves props for making it out in a tricky… → Read More
Everyone is obviously talking about the Facebook/FriendFeed deal, but everyone wants to know one key detail: How much did Facebook pay? Now we know: Facebook paid nearly $50 million when you add the $15 million it paid in cash with roughly $32.5 million (based on current valuations) in stock, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The stock is the key part of this deal. Its value is derived from… → Read More
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