San Francisco, California-based global venture capital and growth capital investor Bessemer Venture Partners (BVP) has announced the close of two new funds, adding $3.3B (approx €2.72B) capital for investing in promising technology companies at their early and following growth stages.
Two new funds – BVP XI, BVP Century II
Bessemer’s eleventh flagship fund, BVP XI, and its second opportunity fund, BVP Century II collectively closed this €2.72M capital.
With the BVP XI fund, the firm plans to focus on early-stage investments, starting with Seed and Series A investments, as well as helping companies at every stage of their growth. As for the Century II fund, it is aimed at investing in growth-stage companies as well as include both follow-on rounds for existing portfolio companies and in the new ones.
BVP continues to expand with a leadership team of 21 partners and over 45 investors, advisors, and platform team members present all over the world – Silicon Valley, San Francisco, Seattle, New York, Boston, London, Tel Aviv, Bangalore, and Beijing.
Bessemer Partner Byron Deeter says, “Our partners work one-on-one with our CEOs, but they also benefit from the growing scale and support from our entire platform. With our new funds and expanded partnership, Bessemer is even better equipped to help the best entrepreneurs – across all stages, sectors, and geographies – build incredible companies.”
In October 2018, the firm had announced to bring $1.85B (approx €1.52M) for its tenth flagship VC fund – BVP X.
BVP welcomes 5 new partners
The VC firm welcomed five new partners, including Jeff Blackburn, who joins Bessemer Venture Partners from Amazon, alongside the promotion of existing Bessemer investors Mary D’Onofrio, Mike Droesch, Tess Hatch, and Andrew Hedin.
A brief about Jeff Blackburn and his role at BVP
Blackburn joins Bessemer after a 22-year career at Amazon, where he joined the e-commerce giant after its IPO. At Amazon, he was spearheading the company’s growth in the core marketplace business and expansion across Amazon Advertising, Prime Video, Amazon Music, and Amazon Studios.
Prior to joining Bessemer, Blackburn served as senior VP of worldwide business development and oversaw dozens of Amazon’s minority investments and more than a hundred acquisitions across all business lines including retail, Kindle, Echo, Alexa, FireTV, advertising, music, streaming audio & video, and Amazon Web Services. He holds a BA degree from Dartmouth College and an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business.
About Bessemer Venture Partners
Bessemer Venture Partners is an early-stage venture capital firm. It has a portfolio of more than 200 companies, and claims to help visionary entrepreneurs lay strong foundations to create companies that matter, and supports them through every stage of their growth.
The firm has backed more than 130 IPOs, including Shopify, Yelp, LinkedIn, Skype, LifeLock, Twilio, SendGrid, DocuSign, Wix, and Fiverr.