Polaris Venture Partners is a venture capital firm specializing in seed and early stage investments particularly in companies engaged in the information technology

Information technology

Information technology is the acquisition, processing, storage and dissemination of vocal, pictorial, textual and numerical information by a microelectronics-based combination of computing and telecommunications...

 and life sciences

Life sciences

The life sciences comprise the fields of science that involve the scientific study of living organisms, like plants, animals, and human beings. While biology remains the centerpiece of the life sciences, technological advances in molecular biology and biotechnology have led to a burgeoning of...

 sectors.

Polaris is based in Waltham, Massachusetts

Waltham, Massachusetts

Waltham is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, was an early center for the labor movement, and major contributor to the American Industrial Revolution. The original home of the Boston Manufacturing Company, the city was a prototype for 19th century industrial city planning,...

 with an additional office in Seattle, Washington

Seattle, Washington

Seattle is the county seat of King County, Washington. With 608,660 residents as of the 2010 Census, Seattle is the largest city in the Northwestern United States. The Seattle metropolitan area of about 3.4 million inhabitants is the 15th largest metropolitan area in the country...

. The firm has over $3 billion under management and current investments in more than 90 companies. Polaris has over 35 employees.

Polaris highlights its executive recruiting program, managed by a dedicated team of experienced executive recruiters on staff as one of the firm's differentiating factor.

History

Polaris Venture Partners was founded in 1995/1996 by Jon Flint, Terry McGuire

Terry McGuire

Terry McGuire is a co-founder and general partner of Polaris Venture Partners based in the Boston office. McGuire focuses on life sciences investments....

, Steve Arnold

Steve Arnold (venture capitalist)

Steve Arnold is a co-founder of Polaris Venture Partners.Steve represents Polaris on the boards of directors of Impinj and Noetix. Steve is co-founder and vice chairman of the board of directors of the George Lucas Educational Foundation...

, who were partners of Burr, Egan, Deleage & Co.

Burr, Egan, Deleage & Co.

Burr, Egan, Deleage & Co. was a venture capital firm which focused on investments in information technology, communications, and healthcare/biotechnology companies....

 (BEDCO).
Polaris was the first of four successors to Burr, Egan, Deleage & Co.

Burr, Egan, Deleage & Co.

Burr, Egan, Deleage & Co. was a venture capital firm which focused on investments in information technology, communications, and healthcare/biotechnology companies....

 (BEDCO), one of the earliest bi-coastal venture capital firms in the US, which dissolved in 1996. One of the contributing factors in the dissolution was the departure of three of the three founders of Polaris. The three founders, left BEDCO in 1995 and began raising their first independent venture capital fund.

Among, its investments are Advanced Inhalation Research, Akamai Technologies

Akamai Technologies

Akamai Technologies, Inc. is an Internet content delivery network headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US.The company was founded in 1998 by then-MIT graduate student Daniel M. Lewin, and MIT Applied Mathematics professor Tom Leighton...

, Allaire Corporation

Allaire Corporation

Allaire Corporation was a computer software company founded by Jeremy and JJ Allaire in Minnesota, later headquartered in Cambridge, then Newton, Massachusetts...

, Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, 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...

, Aspect Medical Systems, Avici, Berkeley Systems

Berkeley Systems

Berkeley Systems was a San Francisco Bay Area software company co-founded in 1987 by Wes Boyd and Joan Blades. It made money early on by performing contract work for the National Institutes of Health, specifically in making modifications to the Macintosh so that it could be used by partially...

, Centra Software, Classifieds 2000, Conductus, deCODE genetics

Decode Genetics

deCODE genetics, Inc. is a biopharmaceutical company based in Reykjavík, Iceland. The company was founded in 1996 to identify human genes associated with common diseases using population studies, and apply the knowledge gained to guide the development of candidate drugs...

, Exchange.com, Heavy.com

Heavy.com

Heavy.com is a broadband entertainment website founded in 1999 in New York City. The site was founded by David Carson and Simon Assaad in the wake of the popularity of their first series of video shorts, Behind the Music that Sucks...

, Internet Brands

Internet Brands

Internet Brands is a new media company based in El Segundo, California that operates online media, community, and e-commerce sites in vertical markets. The company also develops and licenses internet software and social media applications....

, Jibjab

JibJab

JibJab is a digital entertainment studio based in Venice, California. Founded in 1999 by Evan and Gregg Spiridellis, it was noticed during the 2004 US presidential election when their video of George W. Bush and John Kerry singing "This Land is Your Land" became a hit. The company creates,...

, Mariner Health Group, Matrics, Momenta Pharmaceuticals, Paradigm Genetics, Powersoft

Sybase

Sybase, an SAP company, is an enterprise software and services company offering software to manage, analyze, and mobilize information, using relational databases, analytics and data warehousing solutions and mobile applications development platforms....

, PSCI, Recurly

Recurly

Recurly is a software as a service company that provides recurring billing management as an outsourced service. Founded in September, 2009 and made available as a public beta in January, 2010. Companies with subscription business models commonly encounter errors from payment gateways, acquiring...

, SolidWorks

SolidWorks

SolidWorks is a 3D mechanical CAD program that runs on Microsoft Windows and is being developed by Dassault Systèmes SolidWorks Corp., a subsidiary of Dassault Systèmes, S. A. . SolidWorks is currently used by over 1.3 million engineers and designers at more than 130,000 companies worldwide...

, turntable.fm

Turntable.fm

Turntable.fm is a social media website that allows users to interactively share music. The website is run by Billy Chasen, who started it in January 2011, using revenue generated by his previous start-up to fund Turntable.fm. The service allows users to create "rooms," which other users can join...

, and Watermark Software.

Investment funds

Since 1995, Polaris has raised five venture capital funds with over $2.6 billion of investor commitments. To date, all of the Polaris funds have been above average performers for their respective vintage years. Polaris Venture Partners V, which was closed in 2006, raised $1 billion of investor commitments.

• 1996 - $80m - Polaris Venture Partners
• 1998 - $175m - Polaris Venture Partners II
• 2000 - $470m - Polaris Venture Partners III
• 2002 - $900m - Polaris Venture Partners IV
• 2006 - $1000m - Polaris Venture Partners V

External links

• Polaris Venture Partners