Baseline Ventures is a

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 that focuses on

seed In botany, a seed is a plant structure containing an embryo and stored nutrients in a protective coat called a ''testa''. More generally, the term "seed" means anything that can be Sowing, sown, which may include seed and husk or tuber. Seeds ...

and growth-stage investments in technology companies. The company was the first seed investor in

Instagram Instagram is an American photo sharing, photo and Short-form content, short-form video sharing social networking service owned by Meta Platforms. It allows users to upload media that can be edited with Social media camera filter, filters, be ...

, an early investor of

Twitter Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, image ...

and has been called "one of Silicon Valley's most successful — and smallest — investment firms" by ''

Forbes ''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine founded by B. C. Forbes in 1917. It has been owned by the Hong Kong–based investment group Integrated Whale Media Investments since 2014. Its chairman and editor-in-chief is Steve Forbes. The co ...

''. It is headquartered in

Jackson, Wyoming Jackson is a resort town in Teton County, Wyoming, United States. The population was 10,760 at the 2020 census, up from 9,577 in 2010. It is Teton County's only incorporated municipality and county seat, and it is the largest incorporated town ...

. The company's founder and Managing Partner, Steve Anderson, was recognized on '' Fortune's'' 2012 list of "50 Businesspeople of the Year" and included on the ''Forbes'' Midas List from 2012 to 2020.

History

Anderson founded Baseline in 2006. He previously worked for

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers Kleiner Perkins, formerly Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB), is an American venture capital firm which specializes in investing in incubation, early stage and growth companies. Since its founding in 1972, the firm has backed entrepreneur ...

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

eBay eBay Inc. ( , often stylized as ebay) is an American multinational e-commerce company based in San Jose, California, that allows users to buy or view items via retail sales through online marketplaces and websites in 190 markets worldwide. ...

and

Starbucks Starbucks Corporation is an American multinational List of coffeehouse chains, chain of coffeehouses and Starbucks Reserve, roastery reserves headquartered in Seattle, Washington. It was founded in 1971 by Jerry Baldwin, Zev Siegl, and Gor ...

. Anderson has a

Master of Business Administration A Master of Business Administration (MBA) is a professional degree focused on business administration. The core courses in an MBA program cover various areas of business administration; elective courses may allow further study in a particular ...

from

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

and has invested in companies founded by Stanford alumni including

Kevin Systrom Kevin Systrom (born December 30, 1983) is an American computer programmer and entrepreneur. He co-founded Instagram, along with Mike Krieger. Systrom was included on the list of America's Richest Entrepreneurs Under 40 2016. Under Systrom as CE ...

and

Mike Krieger Michel Krieger (born March 4, 1986) is a Brazilian entrepreneur and software engineer who co-founded Instagram along with Kevin Systrom, and served as its CTO. During Krieger's tenure as CTO, Instagram's user base expanded from a few million to 1 ...

; Katrina Lake of Stitch Fix; and Jeff Seibert of

Crashlytics Crashlytics was a Boston, Massachusetts-based software company founded in May 2011 by entrepreneurs Wayne Chang and Jeff Seibert. Crashlytics helps collecting, analyzing and organizing app crash reports. Its main product is a software develo ...

Acquisitions and investments

Baseline Ventures has invested in software and web companies that include

Weebly Weebly, a subsidiary of Block, Inc., is an American web hosting and web development company based in San Francisco, California. Founded in 2006 by David Rusenko, Chris Fanini, and Dan Veltri, the company offers WYSIWYG website creation service ...

OMGPop OMGPop, stylized as OMGPOP and formerly known as i'minlikewithyou or iilwy, was an independent flash game studio. In 2013, it was purchased by Zynga Inc. History OMGPop was based in SoHo, in New York City. The company received seed funding from ...

, ExactTarget and

Heroku Heroku is a cloud platform as a service (PaaS) supporting several programming languages. As one of the first cloud platforms, Heroku has been in development since June 2007, when it supported only the Ruby programming language, but now also suppo ...

was acquired by Facebook for $1 billion in 2012. Later that year, Baseline-backed

was acquired by

Zynga Zynga Inc. () is an American video game developer and Video game publisher, publisher known for its social video game services. It was founded in April 2007, with headquarters in San Mateo, California. The company primarily focuses on mobile an ...

for approximately $200 million.

Salesforce.com Salesforce, Inc. is an American cloud-based software company headquartered in San Francisco, California. It provides applications focused on sales, customer service, marketing automation, e-commerce, analytics, artificial intelligence, and appl ...

acquired

for $212 million in 2010.

References

{{Reflist, 3

External links

Official site
Venture capital firms of the United States Financial services companies established in 2006