Shasta Ventures is an early-stage

venture capital Venture capital (VC) is a form of private equity financing provided by firms or funds to start-up company, startup, early-stage, and emerging companies, that have been deemed to have high growth potential or that have demonstrated high growth in ...

investment firm located in

Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that is a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical area of the Santa Clara Valley ...

that invests in enterprise and technology consumer startups. It is located on Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park.

Funds

Shasta's second fund of US$250 million included Nest Labs, which almost all by itself repaid the entire fund when it was sold to

Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...

for $3.2 billion. Shasta's third fund of $265 million was announced in September 2011. The fourth fund, of $300 million, was announced in June 2014.

Investment philosophy

Shasta was originally focused on companies in the consumer technology space, with then managing director Tod Francis calling Mint.com a "classic Shasta" investment in September 2011. In September 2013, Rob Coneybeer of Shasta, the new managing director, said that he was betting big on hardware startups, citing

Moore's Law Moore's law is the observation that the Transistor count, number of transistors in an integrated circuit (IC) doubles about every two years. Moore's law is an observation and Forecasting, projection of a historical trend. Rather than a law of ...

-style continued performance improvements making opportunities for new hardware possible.

Companies

Mint.com

Shasta Ventures was an early investor in Mint.com, an online personal finance management service that was bought in September 2009 by financial software company Intuit for US$170 million in cash. An article by Alexia Tsotsis for ''

TechCrunch TechCrunch is an American global online newspaper focusing on topics regarding high tech, high-tech and Startup company, startup companies. It was founded in June 2005 by Archimedes Ventures, led by partners Michael Arrington and Keith Teare. I ...

'' quoted Shasta's managing director Tod Francis as using the phrase "Classic Shasta" to describe Shasta's investment in Mint.com.

Nest Labs

Shasta Ventures and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers were the only investors in the Series A round for Nest Labs (the home automation company) in September 2010. When

later bought Nest Labs for US$3.2 billion in January 2014, Shasta had a net gain of about $200 million, enough to pay out "almost all" of the $250 million Shasta II fund.

Other investments

Shasta has invested in a number of other companies such as

Anaplan Anaplan is a business planning software company headquartered in Miami, Florida Florida ( ; ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It borders the Gulf of Mexico to the west, ...

, Brandcast, Entelo, Leanplum, Nextdoor, Lithium Technologies, Logoworks, Zuora, Tally Technologies, Spiceworks
Stealth Security
and VoloMetrix.

Controversy

In August 2019 partner Doug Pepper left the firm, potentially triggering a " key-man" event

References

External links

* {{official website Financial services companies established in 2004 Venture capital firms of the United States