Investor Chamath Palihapitiya’s skeptical comments about the current wave of tech startups (comments that included a not-too-veiled dig at Snapchat), ended up fueling plenty of discussion at our Disrupt NY conference earlier this week. In fact, when I interviewed Sequoia Capital partner Aaref Hilaly backstage, Palihapitiya’s remarks provided a springboard for Hilaly’s take on messaging apps… → Read More
When Sequoia Capital India landed in Singapore quietly in 2012, the buzz around town was that a big-name US fund being in the country was going to really jolt the market and provide serious cred to the startups here. The Indian team running operations here, however, appears to have spent the last year of its time in the island state helping startups in its India portfolio expand into Singapore… → Read More
Sequoia Capital and the student-run Princeton publication Business Today held their first Start @ A Startup conference this weekend, where more than 100 students (largely, but not entirely, from Ivy League schools) were recruited to join the startup world.
At least that’s the broad outline that Sequoia partner Bryan Schreier and Dropbox vice president Sujay Jaswa (Jaswa is the one speaking in the… → Read More
Sometimes, I feel like every single person in their 20s is hoping to either create or work at the next big startup. But Bryan Schreier, a partner at Sequoia Capital, said that’s largely a West Coast phenomenon. For example, according to Sequoia’s research, 41 percent of Stanford’s computer science majors go to work for a startup after graduation, while that number is only 13 percent for Harvard… → Read More
Sequoia Capital filed a form with the SEC today, indicating a $700 million raise for a fund titled Sequoia Capital Global Growth Fund, L.P. While Sequoia declined to comment on the filing, our sources tell us that this fund is actually separate from the international funds that Sequoia raised money for earlier this year. → Read More
Digital marketing company Kenshoo has raised $12 million in new funding.
The round was led by late-stage investment firm Tenaya Capital, with participation from all past investors, including Sequoia Capital, Sequoia Growth Fund, and Arts Alliance. A Kenshoo spokesperson told me this brings the company’s total funding to $30 million. → Read More
In a discussion on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco today, Sequoia Capital’s Jim Goetz said it is shocking that more startups are not focused on the enterprise.
It’s the notion of reinventing the IT stack that holds such opportunity, Goetz said. And it’s an opportunity for everyone in the Disrupt audience. Companies like Salesforce.com have helped pave the way with SaaS models that… → Read More
Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Bryan Schreier (@schreier), Dropbox’s board member and partner at Sequoia Capital. Sequoia is an investor in Dropbox, Evernote, Stripe, Tumblr, Instagram and Airbnb and a TechCrunch Disrupt Partner.
Everyone follows the mainstage events at Disrupt, and with good reason. Who can forget Heather Harde recovering the missing check for Mint at TechCrunch… → Read More
It looks like Sequoia Capital finally closed in on that cash we’ve been hearing about.
We’ve heard that the firm has raised three separate funds for U.S., China and Israeli investments. Our sources say that Sequoia has already raised $450 million for a U.S. venture fund, $325 million for a China venture fund, and $200 million for a fund for Israel-based venture investments. While the amount… → Read More
Qualtrics has released its Site Intercept technology. It’s a hallmark event for the family run Provo, Utah company. Now it’s time to see if it really will disrupt the stodgy world of market research and change the way we view the ways data gets collected and acted upon in real-time for online marketing purposes.
Accel Partners and Sequoia Capital have a $70 million bet that the company can do… → Read More
Sequoia Capital is indeed in the process of raising a total of some $1 billion for a series of several new venture funds, we’ve confirmed with sources close to the situation.
The new raise is currently underway, and its structure as of now underlines the storied Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm’s increasing focus on having a global footprint. Legendary venture capitalist Michael… → Read More
TechCrunch founder Mike Arrington sat down with Sequoia Capital partner Roelof Botha in another fireside chat at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2012 this morning. Prior to joining Sequoia Capital in 2003, Botha served as the Chief Financial Officer of PayPal during its sale to eBay, and today considers himself a champion of consumer web plays. He also sits on the board of hot startups like Eventbrite… → Read More
In very sad news, Mike Moritz, who has led top-tier venture firm Sequoia Capital through the very beginnings of the web until now, is stepping back because of an incurable disease. His firm has backed many of the home runs of the last two decades including Google, PayPal and Yahoo.
In a letter to limited partners this morning, he wrote, “We have always tried to be straightforward with you… → Read More
Birst, a San Francisco-based startup that offers on-demand business intelligence and analytics solutions for companies big and small, has raised $26 million in series D financing, led by Sequoia Capital. Existing investors, including Hummer Winblad and DAG Ventures, also participated in the round, bringing Birst’s total funding to $46 million. → Read More
Sequoia Capital is announcing a new partner today—former Clearwell and CenterRun CEO Aaref Hilaly. At Sequoia, Hilaly will focus on investing and working with enterprise, internet, and mobile companies.
Hilaly was formerly the CEO of enterprise-class eDiscovery management platform maker Clearwell systems, which was acquired by Symantec last year for $410 million. While at Clearwell, Hilaly… → Read More
Druva, the creator of data protection solutions for SMEs, announced this morning that it has raised $12 million in series B funding. The round was led by Nexus Venture Partners, with participation from existing investor, Sequoia Capital. Jishnu Bhattacharjee of Nexus Venture Partners will be joining Druva’s board of directors as a result of this investment, joining Sequoia Capital Managing… → Read More
If you read the comments on any our recent stories about the Airbnb controversies, you’ll see plenty of people saying that Airbnb needs to take a page out of the Zappos playbook. It turns out, they tried. → Read More
Demand for private company shares declined in the second quarter versus the first quarter but was up sharply year-over-year, according to a new report released today by SecondMarket. The market for private company stock saw $112 million in transactions last quarter, versus $156 million in the first quarter, or down 39 percent sequentially. On an annual basis, however, it was up 120 percent over… → Read More
My, what big eyes you have Jawbone! It hasn’t even been four months since the consumer electronics company closed its $49 million in funding from Andreessen Horowitz and already it’s making funding news again.
Jawbone has raised another round of growth funding, this time it’s $70 million from a group of unnamed investors advised by JP Morgan Asset Management. This brings the total raised so far… → Read More
Social advertising is the next hot thing, and startups are starting to come out of the woodworks with different approaches. One to watch is Taykey, a startup we first wrote about a year ago, but which is launching today with a fresh $9 million B round from Crescent Point, Sequoia, and Softbank Capital. It previously raised $2 million in June, 2010 from Sequoia Israel.
Taykey tries to determine… → Read More
Mu Sigma, a startup that provides ‘decision sciences’ and analytics services to help companies make business decisions based on ‘big data’, has secured $25 million in Series C financing from Sequoia Capital.
Mu Sigma in a press statement says it currently employs some 1,200 analysts (and growing), mostly based in India, in an effort to build the world’s “largest applied math lab”. → Read More
According to several sources Airbnb is in the process of closing a whopper of a funding round: $100 million or more at a $1 billion-plus valuation. The round is being lead by Andreessen Horowitz, and includes participation from DST, say our sources.
That’s a big increase from the company’s last funding round of $7.2 million, which included Sequoia Capital, Greylock, SV Angel, Ashton Kutcher and… → Read More
Any seasoned investor knows that past performance is not indicative of future returns. That is as true with public stocks as it is with venture capital firms. But if someone were to ask you to rank the top VC firms today based on their probability of success, how would you do it? Remember, looking at past returns won’t help you.
Chris Farmer, a VC at General Catalyst Partners, has come up with a… → Read More
It was only a few shorts weeks ago that we reviewed Onavo, the must-have iOS app that significantly shrinks data consumption. We were so impressed with the app’s ability to save users money on their data usage plans, that we went so far as to say that every iOS user should download it.
Today the company is announcing a $3M Round A led by Sequoia Capital, with participation of Magma Venture… → Read More
Sequoia Capital has invested ‘multiple millions of dollars’ in Milanoo.com, a China-based online retailer and wholesaler with a “passion for fashion”.
The proceeds of the financing rounds will be used to strengthen Milanoo’s product supply system, optimize its online shopping platform, allow it to lower its prices and to hire more people. → Read More
Messaging apps that let you use your smartphone to text or chat with your friends or even large groups of people, often free of charge, are red hot. We’ve heard from a reliable source that one of the companies making waves in the space, WhatsApp, has just secured $8 million in financing from Sequoia Capital, and possibly other investors.
WhatsApp enables users of iPhone, Android, Blackberry and… → Read More
In Silicon Valley it’s not just who you invest in that matters– it’s also when you invest in them. The earlier the investment, the riskier the bet. But the more jawdropping the returns if the company hits it big. It’s so lopsided, that typically just 5% of those unsure early bets create some 95% of the entire venture industry’s returns. Miss one of them, and it haunts you for years. Snag it, and… → Read More
In case you missed it, being a super angel is officially passe. The new hotness is having a late-stage growth cash. Sequoia Capital is doing it. Andreessen Horowitz is doing it. Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers is doing it. Accel is doing it. Hell, even Chris Sacca is somehow doing it.
Greylock is the latest to officially join the club, with news today of an expansion to its current fund… → Read More
Earlier tonight, Mike posted a bombshell that must have made super angels shudder. Not content with the grenade he threw into the late-stage investing world with aggressive investments in Facebook, Groupon and Zynga, tonight Yuri Milner announced a new partnership with Ron Conway that offers similar you’d-be-crazy-not-to-take-this-deal terms for every Y Combinator company.
But you know who might… → Read More
Sequoia Capital partner Mark Kvamme is leaving the firm in a full time role to become the director of the Ohio Department of Development, where he will focus on driving Ohio’s economic growth. He was appointed by incoming governor John Kasich.
Kvamme joined Sequoia in 1999 and led early investments in LinkedIn, MarkLogic, Funny or Die, StrongMail and CastIron Systems (acquired by IBM). Prior to… → Read More
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