Founded in 1995 by Bob Kagle, Bruce Dunlevie, Andy Rachleff, Kevin Harvey and Val Vaden as a deliberate counter-model to hierarchical VC firms: equal partners, equal economics. Its $6.7M investment in eBay in 1997, which grew to roughly $5B, made it famous and was chronicled in the book "eBoys".
Concentrated early-stage (Series A), board-heavy, deliberately small funds (~$425M) with no junior investors, no operating staff and equal partnership economics.
Consumer internet, marketplaces, enterprise software, infrastructure
eBay, Uber, Twitter, Snap, Instagram, WeWork, Discord, Dropbox
eBay IPO, Uber IPO, Twitter IPO, Snap IPO, Instagram (via $1B Facebook acquisition)
All general partners split fees and carry equally regardless of seniority, a structure essentially unchanged since 1995, and the firm has famously refused to scale fund size.
| Company | Rounds | Invested |
|---|---|---|
| Cerebras Systems Hardware | 2 rounds | $2.1B |
| Legora LegalTech | 2 rounds | $750M |
| Chainalysis Web3 | 1 round | $170M |
| Starcloud SpaceTech | 1 round, 1 led | $170M |
| DeepL AI | 1 round | $100M |
| Exa AI | 1 round, 1 led | $85M |
| Cambly EdTech | 1 round, 1 led | $60M |
| Gumloop SaaS B2B | 1 round, 1 led | $50M |
| Sorare Web3 | 1 round, 1 led | $40M |
| Pax AI | 1 round, 1 led | $40M |
| Leya legal_tech | 2 rounds, 1 led | $35.5M |
| Numeral Fintech | 1 round | $35M |
| Stytch Cybersecurity | 1 round | $30M |
| Mercor HR Tech | 1 round, 1 led | $30M |
| Greptile DevTools | 1 round, 1 led | $30M |
| 11x.ai saas_b2b | 1 round, 1 led | $24M |
| Fomo Web3 | 1 round, 1 led | $17M |