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San Francisco is the 3rd most popular city in America and the most famous one around the globe. There are much more than just being a hot tourist destination, SF is a major hub for high-tech startups and large companies. The investment capital of the San Francisco area produces more tech millionaires than any other region in the United States. Today we are going to share a list of highest well-known venture investors that strive to invest in upcoming startups.
This article is part of a series where we present you the best Venture Capital firms across different cities and countries. Here you can view the rankings for Dallas, Austin and Atlanta.
Top Venture Capital Firms San Francisco
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1. 500 Startups
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500 Startups is a global venture capital firm with a network of startup programs headquartered in Silicon Valley with over $454M in committed capital across 4 main funds and 15 thematic funds. They have invested in 2,200+ technology startups globally since its inception in 2010 including Twilio (NYSE: TWLO), Credit Karma, SendGrid, Grab, GitLab, Bukalapak, Canva, Udemy, TalkDesk, Intercom, Ipsy, MakerBot (acquired by SSYS), Wildfire (acquired by GOOG), and Viki (acquired by Rakuten).
500 Startups support startups via their Seed Accelerator Programs which emphasize digital marketing, customer acquisition, lean startup practices, and fundraising for pre-Seed companies. It contributes to the development of innovation ecosystems by supporting startups and investors through educational programs, events, conferences, and partnerships with corporations and governments around the world.
The team of 150 people based in 20 countries manage venture investments across 74 countries and speak over 25 languages. In addition to investments, they are passionate about helping build viable startup ecosystems around the world and run educational programs, events and conferences, and partnerships globally. Their investment team and mentor network has operational experience at companies such as PayPal, Google, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Yahoo, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Apple.
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Website: www.500.co
Founded: 2010
Total fund size: $2M
500 Startups's most notable exits include Animoca Brands, Reddit, and Credit Karma.
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2. Index Ventures
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Index Ventures is a venture capital firm based in London, San Francisco, and Geneva, helping entrepreneurs turn bold ideas into global businesses.
Since 1996, Index has partnered with exceptional entrepreneurs who are using technology to reshape the world around us. The companies they’ve started include Adyen, Deliveroo, Dropbox, Farfetch, King,Slack, and Supercell.
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Website: www.indexventures.com
Founded: 1996
Total fund size: $12B
Index Ventures's most notable exits include Zendesk, Funding Circle, and Datadog.
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3. First Round Capital
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First Round is a seed-stage venture firm focused on building a vibrant community of technology entrepreneurs and companies, including Uber, Square, and Warby Parker. Through custom-built software, incredible in-person experiences, and a host of other unique services, First Round helps tiny companies get big while constantly reimagining the role ofventure capital. It offers a growing number of services and products to help founders build companies from scratch.
First Round has adopted the Diversity Term Sheet Rider.
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Website: www.firstround.com
Founded: 2004
Total fund size: $738M
First Round Capital's most notable exits include Uber, Ring, and Planet.
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4. Founders Fund
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Founders Fund is a venture capital firm that invests at every stage in companies building revolutionary technologies. It has been investors, founders, and early employees of prominent technology companies. It has historically invested in a wide variety of sectors, including aerospace, artificial intelligence, advanced computing, energy, health, andconsumer Internet.
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Website: www.foundersfund.com
Founded: 2005
Total fund size: $13B
Founders Fund's most notable exits include Meta, Lyft, and Spotify.
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5. Menlo Ventures
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Menlo Ventures provides capital for multi-stage consumer, enterprise and life sciences technology companies. Since 1976, the firm’s market-driven analysis has led to the identification of opportunities and successful investments in innovative markets. Notable areas of investment include Marketplaces (Uber, Rover.com, Poshmark); Consumer Services(Tumblr, Betterment, Roku, Siri); Dev/Ops (Harness, Edge Delta, Firehydrant); SaaS (Carta, ScoutRFP, Qualia, Benchling, Everlaw); Fintech (Betterment, Bluevine, Chime); Cybersecurity (Cavium, IronPort, BitSight, Abnormal, StackRox); and Life Sciences Technology (Synthego, Cofactor Genomics, Recursion Pharmaceuticals, 3T Biosciences). Menlo’s portfolio includes more than 70 public companies, and more than 100 mergers and acquisitions, with $5 billion under management. The firm is currently investing in Menlo Ventures XV, a $500 million early-stage fund, as well as its $500 million Inflection Fund, which targets early-growth investments. Our team believes in playing an active role at any stage of a company’s development. We typically invest up to $20 million in our main fund, and continue to support subsequent rounds. For later stage opportunities, we have the capacity to invest more than $40 million, focusing on capital-efficient models with the potential to disrupt huge markets.
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Website: www.menlovc.com
Founded: 1976
Total fund size: $4B
Menlo Ventures's most notable exits include Uber, Roku, and Pliant Therapeutics.
6. Benchmark
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Benchmark invests in and works alongside entrepreneurs building startups into transformational companies. They focus on early-stage venture investing in mobile, marketplaces, social, and infrastructure and enterprise software. Founded in 1995, the firm has offices in Woodside and San Francisco, California.
The firm has been recognized for itscommitment to open source and is noted for creating the first equal ownership and compensation structure for its partners. The six equal general partners who take board seats and a hands-on approach to every entrepreneur and company they back, with no junior investment staff. Current general partners are Matt Cohler, Peter Fenton, Bill Gurley, Mitch Lasky, Eric Vishria, and Scott Belsky. Benchmark has had 37 exits since beginning of 2011; 14 IPOs and 23 M&As representing a total market value of more than $60 billion.
Benchmark’s current portfolio of early-stage venture investments includes private market leaders such as Uber, Snapchat, Tinder, Stitch Fix, Elastic and Cyanogen; recent IPOs and acquisitions such as Twitter, Instagram, Yelp, League of Legends, Jasper, OpenTable, New Relic, Hortonworks, GrubHub, Zendesk and Zillow; and franchise companies from Juniper to eBay to Red Hat.
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Website: www.benchmark.com
Founded: 1995
Total fund size: $2B
Benchmark's most notable exits include One Medical, Grubhub, and Zendesk.
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7. Matrix Partners
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We work with product people from day one to help you win. We’re a team of builders who lead pre-seed through Series A rounds. Recent Matrix investments include Fivetran, Canva, Side, Afterpay, Markforged, CTRL-Labs, Oculus, Zendesk, Hubspot, Apollo GraphQL, Flock Safety, GOAT, Postmates, Acacia Communications, and Sila.
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Website: www.matrixpartners.com
Founded: 1977
Total fund size: $3B
Matrix Partners's most notable exits include Apple, Zendesk, and HubSpot.
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8. Spark Capital
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Spark Capital is a venture capital firm that invests in the consumer, commerce, FinTech, software, frontier, and media sectors. It was founded in 2005 and is based in San Francisco, California.
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Website: www.sparkcapital.com
Founded: 2005
Total fund size: $4B
Spark Capital's most notable exits include Coinbase, Twitter, and Wayfair.
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9. Bain Capital Ventures
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Bain Capital Ventures invests in seed to growth-stage startups that are using tech to disrupt existing markets or create entirely new ones. The firm invests from seed to growth in enterprise software, infrastructure software, and industries being transformed by data.
Bain Capital Ventures has helped launch and commercialize 200-plus companiessince 2000, including investments in DocuSign, Jet.com, Kiva Systems, LinkedIn, Rapid7, SurveyMonkey, Taleo, and TellApart. Bain Capital Ventures has more than $5.2 billion of assets under management with offices in San Francisco, New York, and Boston.
Bain Capital Ventures was founded in 1984.
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Website: www.baincapitalventures.com
Founded: 1984
Total fund size: $6B
Bain Capital Ventures's most notable exits include BlockFi, DocuSign, and Rapid7.
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10. Initialized Capital
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Initialized Capital is an early-stage venture capital firm focused on the seed. Initialized has 6 investing partners and over $3.2B under management over five core funds since its founding in 2012. The firm's startups have created in aggregate over $200B in market value so far.
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Website: www.initialized.com
Founded: 2012
Total fund size: $1.4B
Initialized Capital's most notable exits include Coinbase, Reddit, and Wave.
