Sierra Ventures is an American

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 ...

firm based in

San Mateo, California San Mateo ( ) is the most populous city in San Mateo County, California, United States, on the San Francisco Peninsula. It is part of the San Francisco Bay Area metropolitan region, and is located about south of San Francisco. San Mateo border ...

. It targets

startups A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an Entrepreneurship, entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship includes all new businesses including self-employment and businesses tha ...

in sectors including enterprise tech,

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of re ...

cybersecurity Computer security (also cybersecurity, digital security, or information technology (IT) security) is a subdiscipline within the field of information security. It consists of the protection of computer software, systems and networks from thr ...

and

healthcare Health care, or healthcare, is the improvement or maintenance of health via the preventive healthcare, prevention, diagnosis, therapy, treatment, wikt:amelioration, amelioration or cure of disease, illness, injury, and other disability, physic ...

. Sierra Ventures’ CXO Advisory Board is composed of more than seventy-five Fortune 1000 CIOs, CTOs, CMOs, and CISOs and has advised portfolio companies since 2006.

History

The firm was founded by Peter Wendell in 1982 in

Menlo Park, California Menlo Park ( ) is a city at the eastern edge of San Mateo County, California, San Mateo County in the San Francisco Bay Area of California, United States. It is bordered by San Francisco Bay on the north and east; East Palo Alto, California, Eas ...

. Early investments included

Healtheon Healtheon was a dot-com company founded by James H. Clark and Pavan Nigam. The company's mission was to "use the power of computing and the Internet to revolutionize the healthcare industry, stripping away its inefficiencies and inequities and str ...

Intuit Intuit Inc. is an American multinational business software company that specializes in financial software. The company is headquartered in Mountain View, California, and the CEO is Sasan Goodarzi. Intuit's products include the tax preparati ...

, Micromuse, and StrataCom. The firm is run by managing directors Mark Fernandes, Tim Guleri, and Ben Yu and is based in San Mateo, California. In 2024, the firm added a 4th managing partner, Shashank Saxena.

Investments

, Sierra Ventures had invested over $2 billion. The firm focuses on Seed and Series A-stage companies with a typical investment between $1 and $3.5 million for seed and $4 and $8 million for a Series A. Sierra Ventures’ CXO Advisory Board, a group of Global 1000 Chief Information, Technology, Data, Security, and other technology focused Officers and IT executives, advises on the firm's strategic investment decisions. The board also counsels portfolio companies on how to scale and adapt as necessary. Sierra Ventures is currently investing out of its thirteenth fund, which is focused on early-stage software startups and closed in 2023 with $265 million. The firm's previous two funds closed at $215 million and $170 million. Some notable past investments include:

References

{{Reflist Financial services companies established in 1982 Venture capital firms of the United States Companies based in San Mateo, California