Kevin Harvey (venture capitalist)

Kevin Harvey is a founding member of and general partner at Benchmark,[1] a Silicon Valley venture capital firm. He was ranked No. 27 on the 2011 Forbes Midas List[2] and was No. 59 in 2012.[3]

Kevin Harvey
Kevin Harvey
NationalityAmerican
Alma materRice University
OccupationVenture Capitalist
EmployerGeneral Partner at Benchmark

Education and Career

Harvey graduated in 1987 with a B.S.E.E. degree in engineering from Rice University.[4] While in college, he founded software company StyleWare,[5] which Apple later purchased[6] and continued to develop as ClarisWorks.

Harvey founded and was president of Approach Software, where he led the development of the first end-user client/server database for Microsoft Windows.[4] Lotus Development acquired Approach Software in 1993.[7]

In 1995, Harvey began his wine project planting vines in his backyard and making wine in his garage.[8] This lead him to become the founder of Rhys Vineyards in the Santa Cruz Mountains, where he had his first harvest in 2004.[9][10] Rhys Vineyards has produced award winning wines and wine critic Antonio Galloni has called it, "one of the finest wineries in the United States."[11]

In August, 2019, Kevin Harvey agreed to pay $3.76 million in penalties after his company bulldozed a protected wetland and filled in a stream bed to build a vineyard in Mendocino County. This settlement represents one of the largest ever involving water quality on the North Coast. The damage to the stream is so extreme that regulators determined the stream system to be beyond saving, and large portion of the fine will go towards improving two other nearby stream systems.[12]

Benchmark

At Benchmark, Harvey has invested in a number of companies that have gone to complete successful IPOs, including Red Hat[13] and Proofpoint.[14] He also led the firm’s investments in such companies as BOKU, Broadbase Software, Bytemobile (now part of Citrix Systems), CollabNet, CloudPassage, Eucalyptus Systems (acquired by HP),[15] Highlight (acquired by Pinterest),[16] Ingenio (acquired by AT&T), Kana (KANA), Metaweb (acquired by Google), MySQL (acquired by Sun Microsystems), oDesk, oFoto (acquired by Kodak), RemarQ Communities (acquired by Critical Path, Inc.), Rightscale, Tellme Networks (acquired by Microsoft), Terracotta, When.com (acquired by America Online), Zimbra (acquired by Yahoo!), and Minerva University.

Harvey serves on the boards of Upwork,[17] Rightscale,[18] Proofpoint,[19] and Minerva.[20]

References
  1. "Kevin Harvey". Bio. Spoke. Retrieved 23 August 2012.
  2. "#27 Kevin Harvey". The Midas List Tech's Top Investors. Forbes. Retrieved 23 August 2012.
  3. "#59 Benchmark Capital". The Midas List Tech's Top Investors. Forbes. Retrieved 23 August 2012.
  4. "Kevin Harvey". CrunchBase. TechCrunch. Retrieved 23 August 2012.
  5. "Kevin Harvey". People. Reuters. Retrieved 23 August 2012.
  6. "COMPANY NEWS; Apple Unit Buys Software Concern". The New York Times. 28 June 1988. Retrieved 23 August 2012.
  7. Rifkin, Glenn (9 June 1993). "BUSINESS TECHNOLOGY; Lotus Buys Approach Software for Its Data Base Program". The New York Times. Retrieved 23 August 2012.
  8. "Venture Capitalist Bottles California Pinots That Rival Burgundy". Bloomberg.com. 2015-03-20. Retrieved 2018-04-24.
  9. "Q&A With Kevin Harvey: Owner of Rhys Vineyards". Edible Silicon Valley. Retrieved 2018-04-24.
  10. "Venture capitalist pursues perfect pinot noir high atop San Mateo County". The Mercury News. 2010-10-29. Retrieved 2018-04-24.
  11. "Our guide to six of Silicon Valley's most stellar vineyards". THE SIX FIFTY. 2017-10-30. Retrieved 2018-04-24.
  12. "Vineyard tied to Bay Area tech millionaire to pay $3.7M in environmental penalties". Santa Rosa Press Democrat. 2019-08-03. Retrieved 2019-08-04.
  13. Asay, Matt (15 February 2008). "Benchmark adds open-source savvy Entrepreneurs in Residence". CNET. Retrieved 23 August 2012.
  14. Savitz, Eric (20 April 2012). "IPO Window Opens Wider: Nice Debuts For Proofpoint, Infoblox". Forbes. Retrieved 23 August 2012.
  15. "HP Just Made A Brilliant Move Against Amazon By Buying Eucalyptus Systems". Business Insider. Retrieved 2018-04-11.
  16. "Pinterest acquires the team behind Highlight and Shorts – TechCrunch". techcrunch.com. Retrieved 2018-04-26.
  17. "Freelance Marketplace Elance-oDesk Raises $30 Million, Says IPO Is Next". Recode. Retrieved 2018-04-26.
  18. "RightScale, Inc.: Board of Directors - Bloomberg". www.bloomberg.com. Retrieved 2018-04-26.
  19. "Proofpoint, Inc.: Board of Directors - Bloomberg". www.bloomberg.com. Retrieved 2018-04-26.
  20. "Board of Directors for 20 Best Funded Private US Edtech Companies - EdSurge News". EdSurge. 2017-07-26. Retrieved 2018-04-26.
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