Bessemer Venture Partners is a private venture capital

Venture capital

Venture capital is financial capital provided to early-stage, high-potential, high risk, growth startup companies. The venture capital fund makes money by owning equity in the companies it invests in, which usually have a novel technology or business model in high technology industries, such as...

 firm with offices in Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley is a term which refers to the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area in Northern California in the United States. The region is home to many of the world's largest technology corporations...

, New York

New York

New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

, Massachusetts

Massachusetts

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...

, Israel

Israel

The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

, China

China

Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...

, and India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

.

Bessemer Venture Partners is the longest-standing venture capital practice in the United States. Between 1911 and 1975, the team operated as part of Bessemer Securities Corporation

Bessemer Trust

Bessemer Trust is a wealth management and investment advisory firm established in 1907 by Henry Phipps, a partner of Andrew Carnegie in the Carnegie Steel Company. From 1907 to 1974 the private company managed the substantial assets of the Phipps family and was headed by a family member...

, established in 1911 to invest Henry Phipps

Henry Phipps

Henry Phipps, Jr. was an American entrepreneur and major philanthropist.-Biography:He was the son of an English shoemaker who emigrated in the early part of the 19th century to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania before settling in Pittsburgh. When a child, he was a friend and neighbor to Andrew Carnegie...

's share of the proceeds from the sale of Carnegie Steel. Since 1975, Bessemer Venture Partners has operated as a standalone partnership with Bessemer Securities Corporation as its primary limited partner.

Since its inception, BVP has provided capital to such companies as Criteo, Ciena Corporation

Ciena Corporation

Ciena Corporation is a United States-based global supplier of telecommunications networking equipment, software and services that support the delivery and transport of voice, video and data services. Its products are used in telecommunications networks operated by telecommunications service...

, Flarion, Knewton

Knewton

Knewton is an adaptive learning company that has developed a platform to personalize educational content. The Knewton platform allows schools, publishers, and developers to provide adaptive learning for any student. Knewton recently announced a partnership with Pearson Education to power the...

, Parametric Technology Corporation

Parametric Technology Corporation

Parametric Technology Corporation is a U.S.-based company that develops, markets and supports software for product development. Its main products are for CAD/CAM, engineering calculations, and product lifecycle management. Its customers include companies in manufacturing, publishing, services,...

, Skype

Skype

Skype is a software application that allows users to make voice and video calls and chat over the Internet. Calls to other users within the Skype service are free, while calls to both traditional landline telephones and mobile phones can be made for a fee using a debit-based user account system...

, Staples Inc., VeriSign

VeriSign

Verisign, Inc. is an American company based in Dulles, Virginia that operates a diverse array of network infrastructure, including two of the Internet's thirteen root nameservers, the authoritative registry for the .com, .net, and .name generic top-level domains and the .cc and .tv country-code...

 and VERITAS Software

VERITAS Software

Veritas Software Corp. was an international software company that was founded in 1983 as Tolerant Systems, renamed Veritas Software Corp. in 1989, and merged with Symantec in 2005. It was headquartered in Mountain View, California...

. Of this group, over 100 Bessemer companies have gone public, including American Superconductor

American Superconductor

American Superconductor is an American energy technologies company based in Devens, Massachusetts specializing in the design and manufacture of power systems and superconducting wire...

, Ciena Corporation

Ciena Corporation

Ciena Corporation is a United States-based global supplier of telecommunications networking equipment, software and services that support the delivery and transport of voice, video and data services. Its products are used in telecommunications networks operated by telecommunications service...

, Gartner

Gartner

Gartner, Inc. is an information technology research and advisory firm headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut, United States. It was known as GartnerGroup until 2001....

, Ingersoll Rand

Ingersoll Rand

Ingersoll-Rand plc is a $13 billion global diversified industrial company founded in 1871. The Ingersoll Rand name came into use in 1905 through the combination of Ingersoll-Sergeant Drill Company and Rand Drill Company...

, International Paper

International Paper

International Paper Company is an American pulp and paper company, the largest such company in the world. It has approximately 59,500 employees, and it is headquartered in Memphis, Tennessee.-History:...

, Maxim Integrated Products

Maxim Integrated Products

Maxim Integrated Products is a publicly traded company that designs, manufactures, and sells analog and mixed-signal semiconductor products. Maxim develops integrated circuits for the industrial, communications, consumer, and computing markets....

, Parametric

Parametric Technology Corporation

Parametric Technology Corporation is a U.S.-based company that develops, markets and supports software for product development. Its main products are for CAD/CAM, engineering calculations, and product lifecycle management. Its customers include companies in manufacturing, publishing, services,...

, Perseptive Biosystems, Staples, Inc.

Staples, Inc.

Staples Inc. is a large office supply chain store, with over 2,000 stores worldwide in 26 countries. Based in Framingham, Massachusetts, United States, the company has retail stores, serving customers under its original name in Austria, Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Norway,...

, VeriSign

VeriSign

Verisign, Inc. is an American company based in Dulles, Virginia that operates a diverse array of network infrastructure, including two of the Internet's thirteen root nameservers, the authoritative registry for the .com, .net, and .name generic top-level domains and the .cc and .tv country-code...

, Veritas Software

VERITAS Software

Veritas Software Corp. was an international software company that was founded in 1983 as Tolerant Systems, renamed Veritas Software Corp. in 1989, and merged with Symantec in 2005. It was headquartered in Mountain View, California...

, Shriram EPC, and W. R. Grace and Company

W. R. Grace and Company

W. R. Grace and Company is a Columbia, Maryland, United States based chemical conglomerate.The company has two main divisions, Davison Chemicals and Performance Chemicals. The Davison unit makes chemical catalysts, refining catalysts, and silica-based products that let other companies make...

. Other notable companies in BVP's current portfolio include Diapers.com

Diapers.com

Diapers.com, founded in 2005 by Marc Lore and Vinit Bharara in Montclair, NJ, is the largest online specialty retailer for baby products. Initially founded as 1-800 Diapers, the company set out delivering consumables, such as diapers, wipes, and formula, to parents with free 1-2 day shipping and a...

, Yelp

Yelp

Yelp, Inc. is a company that operates yelp.com, a social networking, user review, and local search web site. Yelp.com has more than 54 million monthly unique visitors as of late 2010.- History :...

, Avalanche Technology, Reputation Defender, Yodle

Yodle, Inc

Yodle, originally named Natpal , was founded in 2005 by Nathaniel Stevens while attending The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Nathaniel then teamed up with friends Ben Rubenstein, John Berkowitz, Milind Mehere as well as one of his professors at Wharton, Dr...

, Ziff-Davis Enterprise, Zoosk

Zoosk

Zoosk is an online dating website with third-party applications on several social networking services. Zoosk is based in San Francisco, California, and was ranked number 29 on Wall Street Journal's The Next Big Thing: Top 50 Venture-Backed Companies in March 2011, moving up from number 42 the...

, LifeLock

LifeLock

LifeLock Inc. which was founded in 2005, is an American identity theft protection company.According to the LifeLock website, for a minimum fee of $10 a month, the LifeLock Identity Alert system can identify fraudulent applications for some forms of credit and non-credit related services...

, Hunch

Hunch

Hunch may refer to:* Hunch , a collective intelligence decision making system* Hunch, an intuitive reckoning* Hunch, a forward bend in one's body, such as that from a crushed vertebra...

, and LinkedIn

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a business-related social networking site. Founded in December 2002 and launched in May 2003, it is mainly used for professional networking. , LinkedIn reports more than 120 million registered users in more than 200 countries and territories. The site is available in English, French,...

.

Other notes

Bessemer Venture Partners is widely known in the venture capital industry for the publication of its "anti-portfolio"http://www.bvp.com/port/anti.asp, a light-hearted retrospective by the firm's partners of missed investment opportunities. The "anti-portfolio" describes how and why the firm's investment professionals passed on the earliest (and often most profitable) Series A rounds of now successful companies including Apple Inc., Ebay

EBay

eBay Inc. is an American internet consumer-to-consumer corporation that manages eBay.com, an online auction and shopping website in which people and businesses buy and sell a broad variety of goods and services worldwide...

, FedEx

FedEx

FedEx Corporation , originally known as FDX Corporation, is a logistics services company, based in the United States with headquarters in Memphis, Tennessee...

, Google

Google

Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...

, Hewlett Packard, Intuit, PayPal

PayPal

PayPal is an American-based global e-commerce business allowing payments and money transfers to be made through the Internet. Online money transfers serve as electronic alternatives to paying with traditional paper methods, such as checks and money orders....

 and Intel.

External links

• Bessemer Venture Partners (official website)