Google Ventures is the 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...

 investment arm of Google Inc.

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...

 that makes financially driven investments in technology companies. Google Ventures seeks to invest in start-up companies

Startup company

A startup company or startup is a company with a limited operating history. These companies, generally newly created, are in a phase of development and research for markets...

 in a variety of fields ranging from Internet

Dot-com company

A dot-com company, or simply a dot-com , is a company that does most of its business on the Internet, usually through a website that uses the popular top-level domain, ".com" .While the term can refer to present-day companies, it is also used specifically to refer to companies with...

, software

Software industry

The software industry includes businesses involved in the development, maintenance and publication of computer software using any business model...

, and hardware to clean-tech

Clean technology

Clean technology includes recycling, renewable energy , information technology, green transportation, electric motors, green chemistry, lighting, Greywater, and many other appliances that are now more energy efficient. It is a means to create electricity and fuels, with a smaller environmental...

, bio-tech

Biotechnology

Biotechnology is a field of applied biology that involves the use of living organisms and bioprocesses in engineering, technology, medicine and other fields requiring bioproducts. Biotechnology also utilizes these products for manufacturing purpose...

, and health care.

The group was founded on March 31, 2009, with a $100 million capital commitment. Partners on Google Ventures include Wesley Chan

Wesley Chan

Wesley Chan is an early employee at Google Inc. and is currently an investment partner at Google Ventures, the financial investment fund of the global search company. He has led investments in and sits on the Board of Directors of software/web startups, cleantech companies, and biotech...

, Joe Kraus

Joe Kraus

Joe Kraus is the founder of Excite, JotSpot, and DigitalConsumer.org, along with his long-time business partner Graham Spencer. Currently, Kraus is an Investment Partner on the Google Ventures team....

, Bill Maris, and Rich Miner

Rich Miner

Rich Miner is an investment partner on the Google Ventures team. Miner joined the Google Ventures team in March, 2009 and is based out of Cambridge, MA. Before joining Google Ventures, Miner was a former co-founder of Android, Inc., origin of the Android mobile operating system and was an...

.

Google Ventures has offices in Mountain View

Mountain View, California

-Downtown:Mountain View has a pedestrian-friendly downtown centered on Castro Street. The downtown area consists of the seven blocks of Castro Street from the Downtown Mountain View Station transit center in the north to the intersection with El Camino Real in the south...

, California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

, New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 and Cambridge

Cambridge, Massachusetts

Cambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, in the Greater Boston area. It was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England, an important center of the Puritan theology embraced by the town's founders. Cambridge is home to two of the world's most prominent...

, 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...

.

Investments

Company	Field	Date
Pixazza	Advertising content in web-based pictures	March, 2009
Silver Spring Networks	Smart grid technology	March, 2009
VigLink Inc.	Web link affiliation	June, 2009
V-Vehicle	Green vehicle Green vehicle A green vehicle or environmentally friendly vehicle is a road motor vehicle that produces less harmful impacts to the environment than comparable conventional internal combustion engine vehicles running on gasoline or diesel, or one that uses alternative fuels... s	August, 2009
Adimab	Biotechnology Biotechnology Biotechnology is a field of applied biology that involves the use of living organisms and bioprocesses in engineering, technology, medicine and other fields requiring bioproducts. Biotechnology also utilizes these products for manufacturing purpose...	October, 2009
EnglishCentral	English language learning	October, 2009
Scvngr Scvngr SCVNGR is a social location-based gaming platform for mobile phones. The application has both a consumer and enterprise component. Companies, educational institutions, and organizations can build challenges, the core unit of their game, at places on SCVNGR from the web. The service also supports SMS...	Location-based gaming Location-based game A location-based game is one in which the game play somehow evolves and progresses via a player's location. Thus, location-based games almost always support some kind of localization technology, for example by using satellite positioning like GPS."Urban gaming" or "Street Games" are typically...  platform for mobile phones	December, 2009
OpenCandy	Software advertising	April, 2010
Recorded Future Recorded Future Recorded Future Inc. is a software company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, specializing in web intelligence and predictive analytics...	Web trends	May, 2010
Corduro	Payment services	May, 2010
Miso	Social television	May, 2010
Trada	Pay per click Pay per click Pay per click is an Internet advertising model used to direct traffic to websites, where advertisers pay the publisher when the ad is clicked. With search engines, advertisers typically bid on keyword phrases relevant to their target market... advertising	July, 2010
iPierian	Biotechnology	September, 2010
Miso Media	Music Education	December, 2010
LawPivot	Online legal services	January, 2011

External links

• Google Ventures on CrunchBase