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| CRV (venture capital firm) | |
|---|---|
| Name | CRV |
| Type | Private |
| Industry | Venture capital |
| Founded | 1970s |
| Founder | Arthur Rock, Bill Draper, Pitch Johnson |
| Headquarters | Menlo Park, California |
| Key people | George Zachary, Sarah Tavel, Roger Lee, Bing Gordon |
| Products | Venture capital funds |
CRV (venture capital firm) is an early-stage venture capital firm based in Menlo Park, California that has invested in technology, consumer, and enterprise startups across multiple decades. Founded by prominent Silicon Valley investors, the firm has backed companies in software, biotechnology, semiconductors, and internet services, participating in numerous initial public offerings and acquisitions. CRV’s portfolio and partners intersect with many influential institutions, accelerators, and public markets.
CRV traces roots to the early venture ecosystem that included firms such as Sequoia Capital, Kleiner Perkins, Mayfield Fund, Accel Partners, and Benchmark (venture capital firm). Its origins involved investors associated with Stanford University, University of California, Berkeley, MIT, Harvard Business School, and technology companies like Intel, Microsoft, Apple Inc., Hewlett-Packard and Fairchild Semiconductor. Over time CRV worked alongside corporate investors including IBM, Cisco Systems, Oracle Corporation, Google, Microsoft Corporation and Amazon.com in secondary rounds, while competing with firms like Andreessen Horowitz, Bessemer Venture Partners, General Catalyst Partners, Greylock Partners and Lightspeed Venture Partners. The firm’s timeline intersects with landmark events such as the Dot-com bubble, the 2008 financial crisis, and the expansion of Silicon Valley into global markets including Beijing, Shanghai, Bangalore, London, and Tel Aviv.
CRV historically emphasized seed and early-stage rounds, co-investing with angel networks like Y Combinator, 500 Startups, Techstars, and syndicates associated with investors from Andreessen Horowitz, SV Angel, Founders Fund, and Union Square Ventures. The firm targeted sectors including enterprise software, consumer internet, mobile applications, cloud infrastructure, biotechnology, semiconductor design, and fintech, aligning with companies that partnered with service providers like Salesforce, Oracle, SAP SE, Stripe (company), and Square (company). CRV’s due diligence often connected to research at Stanford University School of Engineering, MIT Media Lab, Harvard Medical School, UC Berkeley School of Information and institutions like Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.
CRV participated in early rounds or follow-ons for companies that achieved large exits or public listings, including names such as Twitter, Zendesk, DoorDash, HubSpot, Dropbox (company), Segment (software), Tanium, Carta (company), Yelp, Salesforce, Netscape Communications Corporation, PillPack, OpenTable, Braintree (company), Spire Global, Carbon3D, Crunchyroll, Akamai Technologies, Palo Alto Networks, Compare.com, Marqeta, Cruise (company), Deliveroo, Square (company), Weebly, Yammer, Flickr, A16z-backed firms, and acquisitions by companies like Google LLC, Facebook, Inc., Microsoft Corporation, Apple Inc., Amazon (company), Intel Corporation and Cisco Systems. Some portfolio companies were acquired in strategic transactions by corporations such as Oracle Corporation, IBM, Symantec, VMware, SAP SE, Adobe Inc., PayPal Holdings, and eBay Inc..
CRV’s general partners and leadership have included individuals who previously served at technology companies and academic institutions, comparable to partners from Sequoia Capital, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Benchmark Capital, NEA (New Enterprise Associates), Insight Partners, Tiger Global Management, Bain Capital Ventures, and T. Rowe Price. The firm’s advisory relationships connected to executives from Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple Inc., Intel, Cisco Systems, Salesforce, Oracle Corporation, and Microsoft Corporation. CRV has collaborated with accelerators and incubators such as Plug and Play Tech Center, StartX, Y Combinator, and academic technology transfer offices at Stanford University, UC Berkeley, MIT, Harvard University and Columbia University.
CRV raised successive venture funds comparable in vintage to those of Accel Partners, Sequoia Capital, Greylock Partners, and Benchmark. Limited partners included endowments and institutional investors such as Harvard Management Company, Yale Investments Office, Stanford Management Company, CalPERS, CalSTRS, Texas Permanent School Fund, NIH (National Institutes of Health), Wellcome Trust, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, family offices tied to Gates family, Bezos family, Zuckerberg family, and sovereign wealth funds like Temasek Holdings and Abu Dhabi Investment Authority. CRV’s fund vintages navigated public market cycles including the NASDAQ listings wave and private secondary market activity alongside firms like Silver Lake Partners and Thoma Bravo.
Like many longstanding venture firms, CRV faced critique related to return concentration, limited partner relations, diversity and inclusion in partner ranks, and competition for deals with firms such as Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, Benchmark, and Accel Partners. Controversies in the venture ecosystem that touch firms like CRV include debates over startup governance, board control disputes exemplified by cases involving WeWork, Theranos, Uber Technologies, Snap Inc., and Zenefits, as well as scrutiny concerning the role of venture capital in urban housing markets like San Francisco and the regulatory attention following events connected to SEC (U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission), Federal Trade Commission, and antitrust inquiries involving Amazon (company) and Google LLC.
Category:Venture capital firms