DAG Ventures
Encyclopedia
DAG Ventures is an American venture capital
firm based in Palo Alto, California
. It is known as a "coattail" fund for co-investing in later-stage private financing rounds
alongside more prominent top-tier venture funds such as Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia Capital
, Benchmark Capital
, and Accel Venture Partners.
s, each with different money sources and investments. Its third fund of approximately $477 million closed in 2005.
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 based in Palo Alto, California
Palo Alto, California
Palo Alto is a California charter city located in the northwest corner of Santa Clara County, in the San Francisco Bay Area of California, United States. The city shares its borders with East Palo Alto, Mountain View, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Stanford, Portola Valley, and Menlo Park. It is...
. It is known as a "coattail" fund for co-investing in later-stage private financing rounds
Venture round
A venture round is a type of funding round used for venture capital financing, by which startup companies obtain investment, generally from venture capitalists and other institutional investors. The availability of venture funding is among the primary stimuli for the development of new companies...
alongside more prominent top-tier venture funds such as Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia Capital
Sequoia Capital
Sequoia Capital is a Californian venture capital firm located on Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park, California. The Wall Street Journal has called Sequoia Capital "one of the highest-caliber venture firms", and noted that it is "one of Silicon Valley's most influential venture-capital firms"...
, Benchmark Capital
Benchmark Capital
Benchmark Capital is a venture capital firm responsible for the early stage funding of some very successful startups. In 1997, the firm invested $6.7 million in eBay, which became worth more than $5 billion by the spring of 1999. Other high-profile investments include Ariba, Juniper Networks, Red...
, and Accel Venture Partners.
Background
Founded in 2001 as an offshoot of San-Francisco based Duff Ackerman & Goodrich, DAG invests primarily in the fields of energy, information technology, and life sciences.Funds
Like many venture firms, DAG has raised a series of different closed-end fundClosed-end fund
A closed-end fund is a collective investment scheme with a limited number of shares. It is called a closed-end fund because new shares are rarely issued once the fund has launched, and because shares are not normally redeemable for cash or securities until the fund liquidates.Typically an...
s, each with different money sources and investments. Its third fund of approximately $477 million closed in 2005.
Portfolio
A partial list of investments includes:- AdBriteAdBriteAdBrite, Inc. is an online advertising network based in San Francisco, California. It was founded by Philip J. Kaplan and Gidon Wise.AdBrite serves advertisements on 112,009 sites, according to their published statistics , and is the 10th largest advertising network on the Internet, according to...
, invested $23 million in 2007. - Amyris BiotechAmyris BiotechAmyris is an integrated renewable products company providing sustainable alternatives to a broad range of petroleum-sourced products. Amyris uses its industrial synthetic biology platform to convert plant sugars into a variety of hydrocarbon molecules, flexible building blocks which can be used in...
, lead $70 million round, 2007 - Bittorrent, lead investor. DAG eventually negotiated for most of its investment money to be returned.
- CallVision, an Internet billing and customer relations management site
- DisplayLinkDisplayLinkDisplayLink is a semiconductor and software startup company. DisplayLink USB graphics technology is designed to connect computers and displays using USB and Wireless USB, allowing multiple displays to be connected to a single PC...
, co-investor, 2009 - FriendsterFriendsterFriendster is a social gaming site that is based in Malaysia, KL. The company now operates mainly from the three Asian countries namely in the Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore....
, lead $10 million round, 2006. - FireEye, Inc.FireEye, Inc.FireEye is a Milpitas, California-based network security company that provides dynamic malware protection and automated threat forensics. Its main product line is the Malware Protection System with versions for Web security, Email security, and Malware Analysis researchers.-History:FireEye was...
, co-invested with In-Q-TelIn-Q-TelIn-Q-Tel of Arlington, Virginia, United States is a not-for-profit venture capital firm that invests in high-tech companies for the sole purpose of keeping the Central Intelligence Agency equipped with the latest in information technology in support of United States intelligence capability...
, 2009 - Grouper, a video-sharing site
- KosmixKosmixKosmix was an American privately held company in Mountain View, California. Their website earned revenue from advertising related to its categorization engine. The engine organizes the Internet into topic pages allowing users to explore the Web by topic, "presenting a dashboard of relevant videos,...
, co-invested in 2007 - Lithium TechnologiesLithium TechnologiesLithium Technologies provides Social CRM solutions for the enterprise. Headquartered in Emeryville, California, Lithium has additional offices in San Francisco, London, and Zürich....
, co-invested in 2010 - Matrix Semiconductor
- MetacafeMetacafeMetacafe is a web site that specializes in short-form video entertainment in the categories of movies, video games, sports, music and TV.The company is headquartered in San Francisco, California, with offices in New York, Los Angeles, London and Tel Aviv...
, co-investor in $30 million round, 2007 - MevioMevioMevio Inc., is an American internet entertainment network, whose properties include PodShow+, PodShow Podcast Network, PodShowPDN, Podcast Alley, CastBlaster, the Podsafe Music Network and, BT PodShow...
, co-investor in $15 million round, 2008 - Mint.comMint.comMint.com is a free web-based personal financial management service for the US and Canada created by entrepreneur Aaron Patzer. Mint originally provided account aggregation through a deal with Yodlee, but has since moved to using Intuit for connecting to accounts...
, lead investor in $14 million round, 2009. - Oakley Networks
- oDeskODeskoDesk is a company with a global job marketplace and a series of tools targeted at businesses that intend to hire and manage remote workers. Based in Redwood City, CA, oDesk was founded in 2003 by Greek entrepreneurs Odysseas Tsatalos and Stratis Karamanlakis....
, co-investor - OpenXOpenXOpenX refers to:* OpenX - a company based in Pasadena, California* OpenX - an open-source software package...
, co-investor in $31 million round, 2009. - PlaxoPlaxoPlaxo is an online address book and social networking service originally founded by Sean Parker, Minh Nguyen and two Stanford engineering students, Todd Masonis and Cameron Ring...
- Proofpoint, Inc.Proofpoint, Inc.Proofpoint, Inc. is based in Sunnyvale, California and provides SaaS and on-premises solutions for inbound email security, outbound data loss prevention, privacy protection, email encryption, electronic discovery and email archiving.-Founding:...
, leads $28 million round, 2008. - Seeking AlphaSeeking AlphaSeeking Alpha is a stock market blog that provides free stock market analysis primarily from money managers, investment newsletter writers, and the general public. Alpha is a financial term referring to a stock's performance, relative to the market indexes used by fund managers. So, fund managers...
, $7m as lead investor, November, 2009. - TrapezeTrapezeA trapeze is a short horizontal bar hung by ropes or metal straps from a support. It is an aerial apparatus commonly found in circus performances...
- XoomXOOMXoom was an early dot-com that used to primarily provide free unlimited space web hosting, similar to GeoCities.-History:Xoom was founded by Chris Kitze in September 1996 as a download website offering free clipart and a productivity suite including a word-processing application, centering around a...
, lead investor in $20 million round, 2007 - WhrrlWhrrlWhrrl is a social location-based game developed by the Seattle-based company Pelago, Inc.Whrrl has a recommendation engine that uses algorithms and users' votes to surface relevant recommendations...
, co-investor in $7 million round, 2008 - Yelp, Inc. - invested $15 million in 2008.
- YuMeYumeis a Japanese word that means "dream", also "hope" or "vision". It may refer to:*Dreams , a film by the Japanese director Akira Kurosawa*"Yume" , a single released by Japanese singer Miwako Okuda...
, co-investor in follow-on round, 2009. - ZimbraZimbraZimbra Collaboration Suite is a groupware product created by Zimbra, Inc., located in Palo Alto, California, USA. The company was purchased by Yahoo! in September 2007, and subsequently purchased by VMware on Tuesday, January 12, 2010. The software consists of both client and server components...
External links
- dagventures.com - official site