Norwest Venture Partners (Norwest) is an American venture and growth equity investment firm. The firm targets early to late-stage venture and growth equity investments across several sectors, including

cloud computing Cloud computing is "a paradigm for enabling network access to a scalable and elastic pool of shareable physical or virtual resources with self-service provisioning and administration on-demand," according to International Organization for ...

and

information technology Information technology (IT) is a set of related fields within information and communications technology (ICT), that encompass computer systems, software, programming languages, data processing, data and information processing, and storage. Inf ...

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the Global network, global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a internetworking, network of networks ...

, SaaS, business and financial services, 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 ...

. Headquartered 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 ...

, Norwest has offices in

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

and subsidiaries in

Mumbai Mumbai ( ; ), also known as Bombay ( ; its official name until 1995), is the capital city of the Indian state of Maharashtra. Mumbai is the financial capital and the most populous city proper of India with an estimated population of 12 ...

, India and Tel Aviv, Israel. The firm has funded more than 700 companies since inception.

History

Northwest Venture Fund, a

private equity Private equity (PE) is stock in a private company that does not offer stock to the general public; instead it is offered to specialized investment funds and limited partnerships that take an active role in the management and structuring of the co ...

and

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 ...

affiliate of Norwest Corporation, was founded in

Minneapolis Minneapolis is a city in Hennepin County, Minnesota, United States, and its county seat. With a population of 429,954 as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the state's List of cities in Minnesota, most populous city. Locat ...

in 1961. It later merged with

Wells Fargo Wells Fargo & Company is an American multinational financial services company with a significant global presence. The company operates in 35 countries and serves over 70 million customers worldwide. It is a systemically important fi ...

in 1998. The Northwest Growth Fund grew under the leadership of CEO Robert Zicarelli, including the opening of an office 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 ...

. Zicarelli retired in 1988 and was succeeded by Daniel Haggerty who retired in the 1990s. George J, Still, Jr. (now partner emeritus) and Promod Haque took over as managing partners in 1994. Norwest's main LP is

(and Norwest Corporation before Wells Fargo merged with Norwest). In January 2016, the firm announced Norwest Venture Partners XIII, a $1.2B fund, and Wells Fargo was the sole investor in this fund. In February 2018, the firm announced Norwest Venture Partners XIV, a $1.5B fund, in which Wells Fargo is a major investor. In November 2019, the firm announced Norwest Venture Partners XV, a $2B fund, bringing its total capital under management to $9.5B. In December 2021, the firm announced Norwest Venture Partners XVI, a $3B fund, bringing its total capital under management to $12.5B. In April 2024, the firm announced NVP XVII, LP, a $3B fund, bringing Norwest's total capital under management to $15.5B.

Investments

Notable investments for Norwest include: Adaptive Insights, Avetta, Casper, Dairy Queen, Cray Dave, Kendra Scott, Opendoor, Plaid,

Spotify Spotify (; ) is a List of companies of Sweden, Swedish Music streaming service, audio streaming and media service provider founded on 23 April 2006 by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon. , it is one of the largest providers of music streaming services ...

Uber Uber Technologies, Inc. is an American multinational transportation company that provides Ridesharing company, ride-hailing services, courier services, food delivery, and freight transport. It is headquartered in San Francisco, California, a ...

, Talkspace, Udemy, and Vuori.

Recognition

*Inc. Founder Friendly Investors *VCJ 50: The Top Venture Fundraisers of 2021 *Top 25 Private Equity Firms for Growth Companies *Private Equity International 300

References

Norwest Venture Partners forms new early-stage fund
San Jose Business Journal, April 17, 2006

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 ...

, July 17, 2002
Old Money Chasing the New; Seeing Windfalls, Big Banks Finance Start-Ups Again
The New York Times, December 24, 1999

External links

* {{Merchant banking private equity groups Companies based in Palo Alto, California Financial services companies established in 1961 Venture capital firms of the United States 1961 establishments in Minnesota

History

Investments

Recognition

See also

References

External links