Charles River Ventures

Charles River Ventures (CRV) is a venture capital firm focused on early-stage investments in technology. The firm was founded in 1970 to commercialize research that came out of MIT. Its name comes from the Charles River that starts in Hopkinton and divides Boston and Cambridge.

CRV
TypePrivate
IndustryVenture capital
Founded1970
HeadquartersCambridge, Massachusetts, United States
ProductsInvestments
Total assets$4.3 billion
Number of employees
20+
Websitewww.crv.com

History

The firm has raised over $4.3 billion since inception across 18 funds. Upon closing of the 16th fund, the firm rebranded to CRV.[1] Prior to that, CRV XV, closed in February 2012 with $375 million of investor commitments.[2] CRV's 14th fund raised $320 million of commitments.[3]

In 2013, it purchased a large portion of the Pebble Smartwatch for 15 million dollars and is credited as the primary reason why Pebble was sold to Fitbit in December 2016. This netted Charles River Ventures nearly 40 million dollars.[4]

Among CRV's portfolio companies are Airtable, Amgen, Aveksa,[5] Blippy, Cascade Communications, ChipCom, Ciena Corporation, ClassPass, Continental Cablevision, Crushpath, DoorDash, Drift, Earbits, Fiksu, iBasis, Netezza, OneLogin,[6] Parametric Technology Corporation, PillPack, Ring, SimpliVity, Sonus Networks, SpeechWorks, Stella,[7] Stratus Technologies, Sybase,[8] Twitter, Udacity, Vignette Corporation, Yammer,[9] and Zendesk.[10]

References
  1. Lawler, Ryan. "Now That Charles River Ventures Has Closed Its 16th Fund, It Wants To Be Called CRV". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2016-07-15.
  2. Charles River Raises A $375M Fifteenth Fund For Early Stage Investing. peHUB, February 28, 2012
  3. Charles River Ventures Raises $320 Million For Its Fourteenth Fund. TechCrunch, March 30, 2009
  4. Orlowski, Andrew. "Who killed Pebble? Easy: The vulture capitalists". www.theregister.co.uk.
  5. McBride, Ryan. "Investors Back Growing Bay State Software Firms Aveksa and Apparent Networks in Pair of Series C Financings". xconomy. Retrieved 5 April 2013.
  6. Gage, Deborah (October 3, 2013). "OneLogin Picks Up $13 Million to Manage Online Corporate Identities". Wall Street Journal.
  7. "This week in N.Y.C. funding news: Ellevest, Ripple, KeyMe - New York Business Journal". Retrieved 2016-09-16.
  8. Sybase President Gains The Confidence of Apple. The New York Times, August 25, 1987
  9. Geron, Tomio. "Before $1.2 Billion Deal, Yammer Was Side Project: Largest Investor George Zachary". www.forbes.com.
  10. Konrad, Alex. "Charles River Ventures Wins Big On Zendesk's IPO, But For Boston Venture It's Bittersweet". www.forbes.com.
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