Top 10 Venture Capital Firms in America

culled from:bankingsense.com

When it comes to venture capital firms, the best in the business are never decided on the basis of their past performance. The ranks of venture capital firms are based on their connections to other high ranking firms. In the US, most of the top ten venture capital firms and top ten venture capital funds are based in California. This gold rush in California is nothing new either. 2014 has been an extremely good year for venture capital firms and their investors. The suspicions of an oncoming drought have been completely eradicated and venture capital business is looking as lucrative as ever because of the performance of venture capital firms in 2014.

The following are top 10 venture capital firms in America based on InvestorRank that investors should look towards in the year to come:

1. Andreessen Horowitz – This venture capital firm is worth $4 billion and has its headquarters in California’s Menlo Park. It was founded by Ben Horowitz and Mark Andreessen in 2009. Bloomberg L.P. and Michael Ovitz are investors in Andreessen Horowitz. In 2014, $50 million were invested by this firm in Buzzfeed.

2. Sequoia Capital – The headquarters of this venture capital firm are in California’s Menlo Park as well and that is where it was founded in 1972 by Don Valentine. The specialization of this firm lies in private companies in the area of growth investments, early stage investments, start-up investments, seed capital investment and incubation.

3. Accel Partners – Accel is not just a venture capital firm but it is also a growth equity firm with offices in China, India, London, NYC, California and Palo Alto. It was founded by Jim Swartz and Arthur Patterson in the year 1983. Rob Glaser of RealNetworks joined the firm in 2010 and the company broadened its horizons to mobile technology services, social media and digital media.

4. Benchmark Capital – This venture capital firm is pretty popular as it has funded the startup of Instagram, Snapchat, Uber and Twitter. It also invested in eBay in the year 1997 and made about $5 billion from the investment by 1999. Other great investments by the firm include Red Hat, Juniper Networks, Ariba, Proofpoint, Demandforce, Yelp, Zendesk, Zipcar and Zillow.

5. Union Square Ventures – USV is a venture capital firm based in NY and, as on January 2014, the assets managed by the firm total up to $650 million. Its early investments in Tumblr, Twitter and Zynga formed the basis of the company’s popularity. The founder of the firm is Fred Wilson.

6. General Catalyst Partners – GCP was founded in the year 2000 in Massachusetts. Its offices are in NYC, California and Palo Alto. The firm focuses on XIR/Growth and early stage investments. Companies like Warby Parker, Datalogix, HubSpot, Airbnb, Stripe and Snapchat had investments from GCP.

7. New Enterprise Associates – NEA was founded by Frank Bonsal, Chuck Newhall and Richard Kramlich in 1977 and is known for its investments in development stages of companies.

8. Kleiner Perkins – KPCB has its headquarters in California’s Menlo Park. It has been touted as the most established and largest venture capital firms by WSJ. It was founded in 1972 by Brook Byers, Frank Caulfield, Tom Perkins and Eugene Kleiner. Its top investments include WebMD, Zynga and Sun Microsystems.

9. Khosla Ventures – Khosla Ventures was founded by Vinod Khosla in 2004 and is also KPCB’s general partner. It is based in California’s Menlo Park and specializes in early stage ventures in the field of clean technology, silicon technology, mobile services, computing and internet.

10. Greylock Partners – This is one of the oldest firms in venture capital and was founded in the year 1965 by Dan Gregory and Bill Elfers. Its offices are in India, Israel, Cambridge (US) and Bay Area. The firm focuses on semiconductor, enterprise software, enterprise infrastructure, and consumer and services.

The surprising thing is that Greylock, which finds itself at the bottom, is a veteran venture capital firm and Andreessen Horowitz, at the top, is one of the newest firms.