110-578: AH Capital Management, LLC (commonly known as Andreessen Horowitz , or a16z ) is an American privately held venture capital firm, founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz . The company is headquartered in Menlo Park, California . As of April 2023, Andreessen Horowitz ranks first on the list of venture capital firms by assets under management , with $ 42 billion as of May 2024. Andreessen Horowitz invests in both early-stage start-ups and established growth companies . Its investments span
220-516: A capitalist , is a person who makes capital investments in companies in exchange for an equity stake . The venture capitalist is often expected to bring managerial and technical expertise, as well as capital, to their investments. A venture capital fund refers to a pooled investment vehicle (in the United States, often an LP or LLC ) that primarily invests the financial capital of third-party investors in enterprises that are too risky for
330-509: A static web hosting service for blogs , project documentation, and books. All GitHub Pages content is stored in a Git repository as files served to visitors verbatim or in Markdown format. GitHub is integrated with Jekyll static website and blog generator and GitHub continuous integration pipelines. Each time the content source is updated, Jekyll regenerates the website and automatically serves it via GitHub Pages infrastructure. Like
440-446: A $ 12 million Series A round for Bounce, a marketplace for consumers to access underutilized space in local businesses. In May 2022, the firm announced the launch of its largest fund to date at $ 4.5 billion. The fund is set to focus on cryptocurrency and blockchain technologies. The firm stated that $ 1.5 billion was allocated to seed investments while the remaining $ 3 billion would be earmarked for venture investments. In August 2022,
550-409: A Campus Expert, applicants must complete an online training course with multiple modules to develop community leadership skills. GitHub also provides some software as a service (SaaS) integrations for adding extra features to projects. Those services include: GitHub Sponsors allows users to make monthly money donations to projects hosted on GitHub. The public beta was announced on May 23, 2019, and
660-740: A Series A funding round in Applied Intuition , a software company specializing in products for autonomous vehicles (AVs), and Marc Andreessen joined the Applied Intuition board. In 2019 the firm provided $ 15.3 million in Series A funding to Substack , some of which went to bringing high-profile writers into that network. In June 2019 the firm also invested in a $ 9.2 million Series A round in AnyRoad , an experiential marketing platform, and David Ulevitch from Andreessen Horowitz joined
770-406: A cloud provider and has been available as of November 2011 . In November 2020, source code for GitHub Enterprise Server was leaked online in an apparent protest against DMCA takedown of youtube-dl . According to GitHub, the source code came from GitHub accidentally sharing the code with Enterprise customers themselves, not from an attack on GitHub servers. In 2008, GitHub introduced GitHub Pages,
880-559: A community, platform and business. Under Microsoft, the service was led by Xamarin 's Nat Friedman , reporting to Scott Guthrie , executive vice president of Microsoft Cloud and AI. Nat Friedman resigned November 3, 2021; he was replaced by Thomas Dohmke. There have been concerns from developers Kyle Simpson, JavaScript trainer and author, and Rafael Laguna, CEO at Open-Xchange over Microsoft's purchase, citing uneasiness over Microsoft's handling of previous acquisitions, such as Nokia's mobile business and Skype . This acquisition
990-459: A consequence, most venture capital investments are done in a pool format, where several investors combine their investments into one large fund that invests in many different startup companies. By investing in the pool format, the investors are spreading out their risk to many different investments instead of taking the chance of putting all of their money in one start up firm. Venture capital firms are typically structured as partnerships ,
1100-653: A decade later in 1994. The advent of the World Wide Web in the early 1990s reinvigorated venture capital as investors saw companies with huge potential being formed. Netscape and Amazon (company) were founded in 1994, and Yahoo! in 1995. All were funded by venture capital. Internet IPOs—AOL in 1992; Netcom in 1994; UUNet, Spyglass and Netscape in 1995; Lycos, Excite, Yahoo!, CompuServe, Infoseek, C/NET, and E*Trade in 1996; and Amazon, ONSALE, Go2Net, N2K, NextLink, and SportsLine in 1997—generated enormous returns for their venture capital investors. These returns, and
1210-514: A digital health company, and Apeel Sciences , a food science business. In 2017, the firm invested in Sigma, Health IQ, Asimov, and Cadre . In 2018, the firm raised $ 300 million for a dedicated cryptocurrency fund. It has also invested in Imply, Smartcar , PeerStreet, CryptoKitties , Dfinity, Earnin , Pindrop , Tenfold, and Very Good Security. In September 2018, Andreessen Horowitz participated in
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#17327800569841320-573: A finance background. Venture capitalists with an operational background ( operating partner ) tend to be former founders or executives of companies similar to those which the partnership finances or will have served as management consultants. Venture capitalists with finance backgrounds tend to have investment banking or other corporate finance experience. Although the titles are not entirely uniform from firm to firm, other positions at venture capital firms include: The average maturity of most venture capital funds ranges from 10 years to 12 years, with
1430-437: A fund, the investors have a fixed commitment to the fund that is initially unfunded and subsequently "called down" by the venture capital fund over time as the fund makes its investments. There are substantial penalties for a limited partner (or investor) that fails to participate in a capital call . It can take anywhere from a month to several years for venture capitalists to raise money from limited partners for their fund. At
1540-595: A healthcare technology company. In October 2021, A16z led the round to Raise $ 150M Series B at $ 3B Valuation in Vietnamese studio Sky Mavis, the developer of crypto-based online game Axie Infinity . In December 2021, crowdfunding platform Kickstarter received a $ 100 million investment from a16z's crypto fund with the expectation that it would pivot to blockchain technology. The decision to pivot backfired, alienated many of Kickstarter's users, and ended up damaging its reputation. In March 2022, Andreessen Horowitz led
1650-555: A later time. In addition, GitHub supports the following formats and features: GitHub's Terms of Service do not require public software projects hosted on GitHub to meet the Open Source Definition . The terms of service state, "By setting your repositories to be viewed publicly, you agree to allow others to view and fork your repositories." GitHub Enterprise is a self-managed version of GitHub with similar functionality. It can be run on an organization's hardware or
1760-581: A process known as "generating deal flow," where they reach out to their network to source potential investments. The study also reported that few VCs use any type of financial analytics when they assess deals; VCs are primarily concerned about the cash returned from the deal as a multiple of the cash invested. According to 95% of the VC firms surveyed, VCs cite the founder or founding team as the most important factor in their investment decision. Other factors are also considered, including intellectual property rights and
1870-577: A registered user account, users can have discussions, manage repositories, submit contributions to others' repositories, and review changes to code . GitHub began offering limited private repositories at no cost in January 2019 (limited to three contributors per project). Previously, only public repositories were free. On April 14, 2020, GitHub made "all of the core GitHub features" free for everyone, including "private repositories with unlimited collaborators." The fundamental software that underpins GitHub
1980-803: A return of over 1200 times its investment and an annualized rate of return of 101% to ARDC. Former employees of ARDC went on to establish several prominent venture capital firms including Greylock Partners , founded in 1965 by Charlie Waite and Bill Elfers; Morgan, Holland Ventures, the predecessor of Flagship Ventures, founded in 1982 by James Morgan; Fidelity Ventures, now Volition Capital, founded in 1969 by Henry Hoagland; and Charles River Ventures , founded in 1970 by Richard Burnes. ARDC continued investing until 1971, when Doriot retired. In 1972 Doriot merged ARDC with Textron after having invested in over 150 companies. John Hay Whitney (1904–1982) and his partner Benno Schmidt (1913–1999) founded J.H. Whitney & Company in 1946. Whitney had been investing since
2090-411: A role in managing entrepreneurial companies at an early stage, thus adding skills as well as capital, thereby differentiating VC from buy-out private equity, which typically invest in companies with proven revenue, and thereby potentially realizing much higher rates of returns. Inherent in realizing abnormally high rates of returns is the risk of losing all of one's investment in a given startup company. As
2200-416: A search engine are available for issue tracking. For version control, Git (and, by extension, GitHub) allows pull requests to propose changes to the source code. Users who can review the proposed changes can see a diff between the requested changes and approve them. In Git terminology, this action is called "committing" and one instance of it is a "commit." A history of all commits is kept and can be viewed at
2310-402: A significant portion of the companies' ownership (and consequently value). Companies who have reached a market valuation of over $ 1 billion are referred to as Unicorns . As of May 2024 there were a reported total of 1248 Unicorn companies. Venture capitalists also often provide strategic advice to the company's executives on its business model and marketing strategies. Venture capital is also
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#17327800569842420-510: A significant user of GitHub, using it to host open-source projects and development tools such as .NET Core , Chakra Core , MSBuild , PowerShell , PowerToys , Visual Studio Code , Windows Calculator , Windows Terminal and the bulk of its product documentation (now to be found on Microsoft Docs ). On June 4, 2018, Microsoft announced its intent to acquire GitHub for US$ 7.5 billion (~$ 8.96 billion in 2023). The deal closed on October 26, 2018. GitHub continued to operate independently as
2530-609: A special advisor to Andreessen Horowitz in June 2011. In September 2012, former Washington D.C. mayor Adrian Fenty was appointed Andreessen Horowitz's second special advisor. Fenty was hired to advise the firm's portfolio companies on working with local, state, and federal governments. In 2019, the firm applied to restructure as a registered investment adviser in order to have more freedom to take up riskier bets like cryptocurrency . In 2022, a16z announced GAMES FUND ONE, lead by partner Andrew Chen, its inaugural fund dedicated to building
2640-401: A statement denying Horvath's allegations. However, following an internal investigation, GitHub confirmed the claims. GitHub's CEO Chris Wanstrath wrote on the company blog, "The investigation found Tom Preston-Werner in his capacity as GitHub's CEO acted inappropriately, including confrontational conduct, disregard of workplace complaints, insensitivity to the impact of his spouse's presence in
2750-496: A subsidiary of Microsoft since 2018. It is commonly used to host open source software development projects. As of January 2023 , GitHub reported having over 100 million developers and more than 420 million repositories , including at least 28 million public repositories. It is the world's largest source code host as of June 2023 . Over five billion developer contributions were made to more than 500 million open source projects in 2024. The development of
2860-520: A successful exit within the required time frame (typically 8–12 years) that venture capitalists expect. Because investments are illiquid and require the extended time frame to harvest, venture capitalists are expected to carry out detailed due diligence prior to investment. Venture capitalists also are expected to nurture the companies in which they invest, in order to increase the likelihood of reaching an IPO stage when valuations are favourable. Venture capitalists typically assist at four stages in
2970-503: A time when the field of venture capitalism was contracting, the company raised another $ 650 million for a second venture fund. In less than two years, the firm was managing a total of $ 1.2 billion under the two funds. In May 2011, Andreessen ranked number 10 on the 2011 Forbes Midas List of Tech's Top Investors while he and Horowitz ranked number 6 on Vanity Fair ' s 2011 New Establishment List and number 1 on CNET 's 2011 most influential investors list. As of March 27, 2014,
3080-403: A total of 135,000 repositories. In 2010, GitHub was hosting 1 million repositories. A year later, this number doubled. ReadWriteWeb reported that GitHub had surpassed SourceForge and Google Code in total number of commits for the period of January to May 2011. On January 16, 2013, GitHub passed the 3 million users mark and was then hosting more than 5 million repositories. By the end of
3190-523: A variant known as "Speed Venturing", which is akin to speed-dating for capital, where the investor decides within 10 minutes whether he wants a follow-up meeting. In addition, some new private online networks are emerging to provide additional opportunities for meeting investors. This need for high returns makes venture funding an expensive capital source for companies, and most suitable for businesses having large up-front capital requirements , which cannot be financed by cheaper alternatives such as debt. That
3300-424: A way in which the private and public sectors can construct an institution that systematically creates business networks for the new firms and industries so that they can progress and develop. This institution helps identify promising new firms and provide them with finance, technical expertise, mentoring , talent acquisition, strategic partnership, marketing "know-how", and business models . Once integrated into
3410-491: A website that enables designers to market royalty-free digital images . The illustration GitHub chose was a character that Oxley had named Octopuss. Since GitHub wanted Octopuss for their logo (a use that the iStock license disallows), they negotiated with Oxley to buy exclusive rights to the image. GitHub renamed Octopuss to Octocat, and trademarked the character along with the new name. Later, GitHub hired illustrator Cameron McEfee to adapt Octocat for different purposes on
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3520-469: Is Git itself, written by Linus Torvalds , creator of Linux. The additional software that provides the GitHub user interface was written using Ruby on Rails and Erlang by GitHub, Inc. developers Wanstrath, Hyett, and Preston-Werner. The primary purpose of GitHub is to facilitate the version control and issue tracking aspects of software development. Labels, milestones, responsibility assignment, and
3630-436: Is attractive for new companies with limited operating history that are too small to raise capital in the public markets and have not reached the point where they are able to secure a bank loan or complete a debt offering . In exchange for the high risk that venture capitalists assume by investing in smaller and early-stage companies, venture capitalists usually get significant control over company decisions, in addition to
3740-418: Is crucial for startups to kickstart their journey and attract further investment in subsequent funding rounds. Typical venture capital investments occur after an initial " seed funding " round. The first round of institutional venture capital to fund growth is called the Series A round . Venture capitalists provide this financing in the interest of generating a return through an eventual "exit" event, such as
3850-418: Is different. Venture capital funds are generally three in types: Some of the factors that influence VC decisions include: Within the venture capital industry, the general partners and other investment professionals of the venture capital firm are often referred to as "venture capitalists" or "VCs". Typical career backgrounds vary, but, broadly speaking, venture capitalists come from either an operational or
3960-510: Is indicated on the gist page. GitHub launched a new program called the GitHub Student Developer Pack to give students free access to more than a dozen popular development tools and services. GitHub partnered with Bitnami , Crowdflower , DigitalOcean , DNSimple, HackHands , Namecheap , Orchestrate, Screenhero, SendGrid , Stripe , Travis CI , and Unreal Engine to launch the program. In 2016, GitHub announced
4070-414: Is most commonly the case for intangible assets such as software, and other intellectual property, whose value is unproven. In turn, this explains why venture capital is most prevalent in the fast-growing technology and life sciences or biotechnology fields. If a company does have the qualities venture capitalists seek including a solid business plan, a good management team, investment and passion from
4180-508: Is often credited with the introduction of the term "venture capitalist" that has since become widely accepted. During the 1960s and 1970s, venture capital firms focused their investment activity primarily on starting and expanding companies. More often than not, these companies were exploiting breakthroughs in electronic, medical, or data-processing technology. As a result, venture capital came to be almost synonymous with financing of technology ventures. An early West Coast venture capital company
4290-424: Is required by law. This includes keeping public repositories services, including those for open source projects, available and accessible to support personal communications involving developers in sanctioned regions. Developers who feel that they should not have restrictions can appeal for the removal of said restrictions, including those who only travel to, and do not reside in, those countries. GitHub has forbidden
4400-412: Is substantially different from raising debt or a loan. Lenders have a legal right to interest on a loan and repayment of the capital irrespective of the success or failure of a business. Venture capital is invested in exchange for an equity stake in the business. The return of the venture capitalist as a shareholder depends on the growth and profitability of the business. This return is generally earned when
4510-505: Is usually used for larger projects. Tom Preston-Werner débuted the feature at a Ruby conference in 2008. Gist builds on the traditional simple concept of a pastebin by adding version control for code snippets, easy forking, and TLS encryption for private pastes. Because each "gist" is its own Git repository, multiple code snippets can be contained in a single page, and they can be pushed and pulled using Git. Unregistered users could upload Gists until March 19, 2018, when uploading Gists
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4620-695: The Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) in 1974, corporate pension funds were prohibited from holding certain risky investments including many investments in privately held companies. In 1978, the US Labor Department relaxed certain restrictions of the ERISA, under the " prudent man rule " , thus allowing corporate pension funds to invest in the asset class and providing a major source of capital available to venture capitalists. The public successes of
4730-570: The Svalbard Global Seed Vault . The archive contained the code of all active public repositories, as well as that of dormant but significant public repositories. The 21 TB of data was stored on piqlFilm archival film reels as matrix (2D) barcode ( Boxing barcode ), and is expected to last 500–1,000 years. The GitHub Archive Program is also working with partners on Project Silica, in an attempt to store all public repositories for 10,000 years. It aims to write archives into
4840-1065: The Wallenbergs , the Vanderbilts , the Whitneys , the Rockefellers , and the Warburgs were notable investors in private companies. In 1938, Laurance S. Rockefeller helped finance the creation of both Eastern Air Lines and Douglas Aircraft , and the Rockefeller family had vast holdings in a variety of companies. Eric M. Warburg founded E.M. Warburg & Co. in 1938, which would ultimately become Warburg Pincus , with investments in both leveraged buyouts and venture capital. The Wallenberg family started Investor AB in 1916 in Sweden and were early investors in several Swedish companies such as ABB , Atlas Copco , and Ericsson in
4950-779: The general partners of which serve as the managers of the firm and will serve as investment advisors to the venture capital funds raised. Venture capital firms in the United States may also be structured as limited liability companies , in which case the firm's managers are known as managing members. Investors in venture capital funds are known as limited partners . This constituency comprises both high-net-worth individuals and institutions with large amounts of available capital, such as state and private pension funds , university financial endowments , foundations, insurance companies, and pooled investment vehicles, called funds of funds . Venture capitalist firms differ in their motivations and approaches. There are multiple factors, and each firm
5060-744: The 1930s, founding Pioneer Pictures in 1933 and acquiring a 15% interest in Technicolor Corporation with his cousin Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney . Florida Foods Corporation proved Whitney's most famous investment. The company developed an innovative method for delivering nutrition to American soldiers, later known as Minute Maid orange juice and was sold to The Coca-Cola Company in 1960. J.H. Whitney & Company continued to make investments in leveraged buyout transactions and raised $ 750 million for its sixth institutional private-equity fund in 2005. One of
5170-531: The 90 companies in its portfolio, and 66 start-ups through its funding of Y Combinator 's Start Fund. The company invested $ 100 million in GitHub , which netted over $ 1 billion for the fund when GitHub was acquired by Microsoft for $ 7.5 billion. In 2013, Andreessen Horowitz invested in Clinkle , Coinbase , Databricks , Lyft , Oculus VR , PagerDuty , Pixlee, Ripple , Soylent , Swiftype and uBiome . In 2014,
5280-863: The AnyRoad board. In 2020, the firm led a $ 150 million Series G round in Roblox , a social video game platform for children. In April 2020, the firm led a $ 50 million Series D round in Figma , a vector graphics editor and prototyping tool. Also in April 2020, the firm raised $ 515 million for a second cryptocurrency-focused fund. In May 2020, the firm made a $ 12 million Series A investment in Clubhouse ($ 10 million in primary capital plus $ 2 million toward purchasing shares), an audio-chat social networking app valued at nearly $ 100 million as of December 2020. In January 2021,
5390-489: The GitHub platform began on October 19, 2007. The site was launched in April 2008 by Tom Preston-Werner , Chris Wanstrath , P. J. Hyett and Scott Chacon after it had been available for a few months as a beta release . Its name was chosen as a compound of Git and hub . GitHub, Inc. was originally a flat organization with no middle managers, instead relying on self-management . Employees could choose to work on projects that interested them ( open allocation ), but
5500-665: The Washington Post, by September 2024, the firm had lost $ 288 million on its Twitter investment. Andreessen Horowitz partners work on behalf of all its portfolio companies, an approach modeled after the Hollywood talent agency, Creative Artists Agency . In 2010, the company hired Margit Wennmachers , a marketing executive at the partner level. As of 2011, the firm had maintained a database of designers, coders, and executives and used it to help fill positions at its start-ups. Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers became
5610-493: The amount of capital invested). Venture capital investors sought to reduce the size of commitments they had made to venture capital funds, and, in numerous instances, investors sought to unload existing commitments for cents on the dollar in the secondary market . By mid-2003, the venture capital industry had shriveled to about half its 2001 capacity. Nevertheless, PricewaterhouseCoopers' MoneyTree Survey shows that total venture capital investments held steady at 2003 levels through
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#17327800569845720-578: The blogging platform Medium , Samsara , Improbable, Honor, Inc., OpenBazaar , a blockchain startup, and nootropics and biohacking company Nootrobox . In 2016, the firm led an $ 8.1 million Series A round in Everlaw, a legal technology company, and led a $ 3.5 million Series Seed round in RapidAPI, an API connection platform for developers. Also in 2016, the firm invested $ 2 million in Cardiogram,
5830-461: The business network, these firms are more likely to succeed, as they become "nodes" in the search networks for designing and building products in their domain. However, venture capitalists' decisions are often biased, exhibiting for instance overconfidence and illusion of control, much like entrepreneurial decisions in general. Before World War II (1939–1945) venture capital was primarily the domain of wealthy individuals and families. J.P. Morgan ,
5940-639: The changing conditions, corporations that had sponsored in-house venture investment arms, including General Electric and Paine Webber either sold off or closed these venture capital units. Additionally, venture capital units within Chemical Bank and Continental Illinois National Bank , among others, began shifting their focus from funding early stage companies toward investments in more mature companies. Even industry founders J.H. Whitney & Company and Warburg Pincus began to transition toward leveraged buyouts and growth capital investments. By
6050-463: The chief executive set salaries. In 2014, the company added a layer of middle management in response to serious harassment allegations against its senior leadership. As a result of the scandal, Tom Preston-Werner resigned from his position as CEO. GitHub was a bootstrapped start-up business , which in its first years provided enough revenue to be funded solely by its three founders and start taking on employees. In July 2012, four years after
6160-405: The company selling shares to the public for the first time in an initial public offering (IPO), or disposal of shares happening via a merger, via a sale to another entity such as a financial buyer in the private equity secondary market or via a sale to a trading company such as a competitor. In addition to angel investing , equity crowdfunding and other seed funding options, venture capital
6270-444: The company was founded, Andreessen Horowitz invested $ 100 million in venture capital with a $ 750 million valuation. In July 2015 GitHub raised another $ 250 million (~$ 314 million in 2023) of venture capital in a series B round . The lead investor was Sequoia Capital , and other investors were Andreessen Horowitz , Thrive Capital , IVP (Institutional Venture Partners) and other venture capital funds. The company
6380-413: The company's development: Because there are no public exchanges listing their securities, private companies meet venture capital firms and other private-equity investors in several ways, including warm referrals from the investors' trusted sources and other business contacts; investor conferences and symposia; and summits where companies pitch directly to investor groups in face-to-face meetings, including
6490-506: The course of the decade. The growth of the industry was hampered by sharply declining returns, and certain venture firms began posting losses for the first time. In addition to the increased competition among firms, several other factors affected returns. The market for initial public offerings cooled in the mid-1980s before collapsing after the stock market crash in 1987, and foreign corporations, particularly from Japan and Korea , flooded early-stage companies with capital. In response to
6600-497: The emergence of the independent investment firms on Sand Hill Road , beginning with Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia Capital in 1972. Located in Menlo Park, California , Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia and later venture capital firms would have access to the many semiconductor companies based in the Santa Clara Valley as well as early computer firms using their devices and programming and service companies. Kleiner Perkins
6710-451: The end of the 1980s, venture capital returns were relatively low, particularly in comparison with their emerging leveraged buyout cousins, due in part to the competition for hot startups, excess supply of IPOs and the inexperience of many venture capital fund managers. Growth in the venture capital industry remained limited throughout the 1980s and the first half of the 1990s, increasing from $ 3 billion in 1983 to just over $ 4 billion more than
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#17327800569846820-706: The firm announced it would be investing about $ 350 million in Flow , the latest organization begun by WeWork founder Adam Neumann . The purported aim of Flow is to create a branded product in the housing market with consistent community features, reimagining how real estate works in the US. The decision was met with some criticism due to Neumann's previous business issues in his time at WeWork. The firm committed to $ 400 million in equity investment towards acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk that completed in October 2022. According to
6930-547: The firm led a $ 100 million Series B for the audio-chat social networking app Clubhouse , reportedly valuing it at $ 1 billion. In April 2021, it led a $ 220 million Series D for mobile banking and fintech company Current. In July 2021, the firm led a $ 100 million Series A for the NFT marketplace OpenSea , reportedly valuing it at $ 1.5 billion. In September 2021, the firm led an $ 18 million Series A fundraise in Pearl Health,
7040-577: The firm led a $ 57 million Series B round in the A/B testing startup Optimizely . That same year the company invested in several more companies, including Tanium for $ 90 million, BuzzFeed , and Forward Networks. In 2015, the firm invested $ 40 million in Stack Exchange , $ 2.8 million in Distelli, and $ 80 million in cloud-based CAD software company Onshape . Also in 2015 Andreessen Horowitz invested in
7150-673: The firm managed $ 4 billion in assets after the closing of its fourth fund at $ 1.5 billion. In addition to Andreessen and Horowitz, the firm's general partners include John O'Farrell , Scott Weiss , Jeff Jordan , Peter Levine , Chris Dixon , Vijay Pande , Martin Casado , Andrew Chen and Sriram Krishnan . In March 2019, it was reported that Andreessen Horowitz was opening an office in San Francisco . In January 2022, Andreessen Horowitz raised $ 9 billion for its venture capital , growth-stage and biotech-focused vehicles. As of May 2024,
7260-497: The firm manages $ 42 billion in assets. In 2009, Andreessen Horowitz made its two first investments: one in business management SaaS developer Apptio and the other in Skype stock. According to Horowitz, the investment was seen as risky by other experts in the field who believed the company would be crippled by ongoing intellectual property litigation and direct competitive attacks from Google and Apple . The company's founders viewed
7370-505: The first half of the 20th century. Only after 1945 did "true" venture capital investment firms begin to emerge, notably with the founding of American Research and Development Corporation (ARDC) and J.H. Whitney & Company in 1946. Georges Doriot , the "father of venture capitalism", along with Ralph Flanders and Karl Compton (former president of MIT ) founded ARDC in 1946 to encourage private-sector investment in businesses run by soldiers returning from World War II. ARDC became
7480-407: The first institutional private-equity investment firm to raise capital from sources other than wealthy families. Unlike most present-day venture capital firms, ARDC was a publicly traded company. ARDC's most successful investment was its 1957 funding of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), which would later be valued at more than $ 355 million after its initial public offering in 1968. This represented
7590-551: The first steps toward a professionally managed venture capital industry was the passage of the Small Business Investment Act of 1958 . The 1958 Act officially allowed the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) to license private "Small Business Investment Companies" (SBICs) to help the financing and management of the small entrepreneurial businesses in the United States. The Small Business Investment Act of 1958 provided tax breaks that helped contribute to
7700-420: The first year of being online, GitHub had accumulated over 46,000 public repositories, 17,000 of which were formed in the previous month. At that time, about 6,200 repositories had been forked at least once, and 4,600 had been merged. That same year, the site was used by over 100,000 users, according to GitHub, and had grown to host 90,000 unique public repositories, 12,000 having been forked at least once, for
7810-525: The first year: it pledges to cover payment processing costs and match sponsorship payments up to $ 5,000 per developer. Furthermore, users can still use similar services like Patreon and Open Collective and link to their websites. In July 2020, GitHub stored a February archive of the site in an abandoned mountain mine in Svalbard , Norway, part of the Arctic World Archive and not far from
7920-504: The founders, a good potential to exit the investment before the end of their funding cycle, and target minimum returns in excess of 40% per year, it will find it easier to raise venture capital. There are multiple stages of venture financing offered in venture capital, that roughly correspond to these stages of a company's development. In early stage and growth stage financings, venture-backed companies may also seek to take venture debt . A venture capitalist or sometimes simply called
8030-686: The future of the games industry. In 2023, the firm announced that it is establishing a cryptocurrency-investment entity in London, United Kingdom. Venture capital Venture capital ( VC ) is a form of private equity financing provided by firms or funds to startup , early-stage, and emerging companies, that have been deemed to have high growth potential or that have demonstrated high growth in terms of number of employees, annual revenue, scale of operations, etc. Venture capital firms or funds invest in these early-stage companies in exchange for equity , or an ownership stake. Venture capitalists take on
8140-577: The healthcare, consumer, cryptocurrency, gaming, fintech , education and enterprise IT (including cloud computing , security, and software as a service ) industries. Between 2006 and 2010, Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz actively invested in technology companies . Separately, and together, they invested $ 4 million in 45 start-ups including Twitter . During this time, the two became known as " super angel " investors. On July 6, 2009, Andreessen and Horowitz launched their venture capital fund with an initial capitalization of $ 300 million. In November 2010, at
8250-420: The initial stages of funding for a startup company, typically occurring early in its development. During a seed round, entrepreneurs seek investment from angel investors , venture capital firms, or other sources to finance the initial operations and development of their business idea. Seed funding is often used to validate the concept, build a prototype, or conduct market research . This initial capital injection
8360-806: The investment as a success following Skype's sale to Microsoft in May 2011 for $ 8.5 billion. In 2010, Andreessen Horowitz invested $ 10 million in cloud company Okta while leading its Series A Round. In 2011, Andreessen Horowitz invested $ 80 million in Twitter, becoming the first venture firm that held stock in all four of the highest-valued, privately held social media companies at the time: Facebook , Groupon , Twitter , and Zynga . Andreessen Horowitz has also invested in Airbnb , Lytro , Jawbone, Belly , Foursquare , Stripe and other high-tech companies. In 2012, Andreessen Horowitz invested in 156 companies, including
8470-411: The investment professionals served as general partner and the investors, who were passive limited partners , put up the capital. The compensation structure, still in use today, also emerged with limited partners paying an annual management fee of 1.0–2.5% and a carried interest typically representing up to 20% of the profits of the partnership. The growth of the venture capital industry was fueled by
8580-551: The investors invest with equal terms; or (2) asymmetric —where different investors have different terms. Typically asymmetry is seen in cases where investors have opposing interests, such as the need to not have unrelated business taxable income in the case of public tax-exempt investors. The decision process to fund a company is elusive. One study report in the Harvard Business Review states that VCs rarely use standard financial analytics. First, VCs engage in
8690-536: The launch of the GitHub Campus Experts program to train and encourage students to grow technology communities at their universities. The Campus Experts program is open to university students 18 years and older worldwide. GitHub Campus Experts are one of the primary ways that GitHub funds student-oriented events and communities, Campus Experts are given access to training, funding, and additional resources to run events and grow their communities. To become
8800-433: The media through a spokesperson, saying: GitHub is subject to US trade control laws, and is committed to full compliance with applicable law. At the same time, GitHub's vision is to be the global platform for developer collaboration, no matter where developers reside. As a result, we take seriously our responsibility to examine government mandates thoroughly to be certain that users and customers are not impacted beyond what
8910-421: The molecular structure of quartz glass platters, using a high-precision petahertz pulse laser, i.e. one that pulses a quadrillion (1,000,000,000,000,000) times per second. In March 2014, GitHub programmer Julie Ann Horvath alleged that founder and CEO Tom Preston-Werner and his wife, Theresa, engaged in a pattern of harassment against her that led to her leaving the company. In April 2014, GitHub released
9020-412: The performance of the companies post-IPO, caused a rush of money into venture capital, increasing the number of venture capital funds raised from about 40 in 1991 to more than 400 in 2000, and the amount of money committed to the sector from $ 1.5 billion in 1991 to more than $ 90 billion in 2000. The bursting of the dot-com bubble in 2000 caused many venture capital firms to fail and financial results in
9130-598: The possibility of a few years of extensions to allow for private companies still seeking liquidity. The investing cycle for most funds is generally three to five years, after which the focus is managing and making follow-on investments in an existing portfolio. This model was pioneered by successful funds in Silicon Valley through the 1980s to invest in technological trends broadly but only during their period of ascendance, and to cut exposure to management and marketing risks of any individual firm or its product. In such
9240-409: The project accepts waitlist registrations. The Verge said that GitHub Sponsors "works exactly like Patreon " because "developers can offer various funding tiers that come with different perks, and they'll receive recurring payments from supporters who want to access them and encourage their work" except with "zero fees to use the program." Furthermore, GitHub offers incentives for early adopters during
9350-422: The rest of GitHub, it includes free and paid service tiers. Websites generated through this service are hosted either as subdomains of the github.io domain or can be connected to custom domains bought through a third-party domain name registrar . GitHub Pages supports HTTPS encryption. GitHub also operates a pastebin -style site called Gist , which is for code snippets , as opposed to GitHub proper, which
9460-477: The rise of private-equity firms. During the 1950s, putting a venture capital deal together may have required the help of two or three other organizations to complete the transaction. It was a business that was growing very rapidly, and as the business grew, the transactions grew exponentially. Arthur Rock , one of the pioneers of Silicon Valley during his venturing the Fairchild Semiconductor
9570-413: The risk of financing start-ups in the hopes that some of the companies they support will become successful. Because startups face high uncertainty, VC investments have high rates of failure. Start-ups are usually based on an innovative technology or business model and often come from high technology industries such as information technology (IT) or biotechnology . Pre-seed and seed rounds are
9680-716: The round to raise $ 450 million at a $ 4B Valuation in Yuga Labs (known for Bored Apes). In October 2022, it was reported that the US Securities and Exchange Commission were investigating Yuga Labs , due to concerns that sales of their digital assets violated US investment laws. In March 2022, the firm led $ 27 million Series A for the Rutter, a universal API for commerce data. In March 2022, a16z with Lux Capital co-led an $ 90 million round of Los Angeles–based machine-parts start-up Hadrian Automation. In April 2022, a16z led
9790-503: The sale bolstered interest in competitors: Bitbucket (owned by Atlassian ), GitLab and SourceForge (owned by BIZX, LLC) reported that they had seen spikes in new users intending to migrate projects from GitHub to their respective services. In September 2019, GitHub acquired Semmle , a code analysis tool. In February 2020, GitHub launched in India under the name GitHub India Private Limited. In March 2020, GitHub announced that it
9900-494: The second quarter of 2005. Although the post-boom years represent just a small fraction of the peak levels of venture investment reached in 2000, they still represent an increase over the levels of investment from 1980 through 1995. As a percentage of GDP, venture investment was 0.058% in 1994, peaked at 1.087% (nearly 19 times the 1994 level) in 2000 and ranged from 0.164% to 0.182% in 2003 and 2004. The revival of an Internet -driven environment in 2004 through 2007 helped to revive
10010-466: The sector to decline. The Nasdaq crash and technology slump that started in March 2000 shook virtually the entire venture capital industry as valuations for startup technology companies collapsed. Over the next two years, many venture firms had been forced to write-off large proportions of their investments, and many funds were significantly " under water " (the values of the fund's investments were below
10120-411: The site provides social networking -like functions such as feeds, followers, wikis (using wiki software called Gollum ), and a social network graph to display how developers work on their versions (" forks ") of a repository and what fork (and branch within that fork) is newest. Anyone can browse and download public repositories, but only registered users can contribute content to repositories. With
10230-490: The standard capital markets or bank loans . These funds are typically managed by a venture capital firm, which often employs individuals with technology backgrounds (scientists, researchers), business training and/or deep industry experience. A core skill within VCs is the ability to identify novel or disruptive technologies that have the potential to generate high commercial returns at an early stage. By definition, VCs also take
10340-578: The state of the economy. Some argue that the most important thing a VC looks for in a company is high-growth. GitHub GitHub ( / ˈ ɡ ɪ t h ʌ b / ) is a developer platform that allows developers to create, store, manage and share their code. It uses Git software, which provides distributed version control of access control , bug tracking , software feature requests, task management , continuous integration , and wikis for every project. Headquartered in California , it has been
10450-424: The time when all of the money has been raised, the fund is said to be closed and the 10-year lifetime begins. Some funds have partial closes when one half (or some other amount) of the fund has been raised. The vintage year generally refers to the year in which the fund was closed and may serve as a means to stratify VC funds for comparison. From an investor's point of view, funds can be: (1) traditional —where all
10560-569: The use of VPNs and IP proxies to access the site from sanctioned countries, as purchase history and IP addresses are how they flag users, among other sources. On December 4, 2014, Russia blacklisted GitHub.com because GitHub initially refused to take down user-posted suicide manuals. After a day, Russia withdrew its block, and GitHub began blocking specific content and pages in Russia. On December 31, 2014, India blocked GitHub.com along with 31 other websites over pro- ISIS content posted by users;
10670-652: The venture capital environment. However, as a percentage of the overall private-equity market, venture capital has still not reached its mid-1990s level, let alone its peak in 2000. Venture capital funds, which were responsible for much of the fundraising volume in 2000 (the height of the dot-com bubble ), raised only $ 25.1 billion in 2006, a 2% decline from 2005 and a significant decline from its peak. The decline continued till their fortunes started to turn around in 2010 with $ 21.8 billion invested (not raised). The industry continued to show phenomenal growth and in 2020 hit $ 80 billion in fresh capital. Obtaining venture capital
10780-466: The venture capital industry in the 1970s and early 1980s (e.g., Digital Equipment Corporation , Apple Inc. , Genentech ) gave rise to a major proliferation of venture capital investment firms. From just a few dozen firms at the start of the decade, there were over 650 firms by the end of the 1980s, each searching for the next major "home run". The number of firms multiplied, and the capital managed by these firms increased from $ 3 billion to $ 31 billion over
10890-544: The venture capitalist "exits" by selling its shareholdings when the business is sold to another owner. Venture capitalists are typically very selective in deciding what to invest in, with a Stanford survey of venture capitalists revealing that 100 companies were considered for every company receiving financing. Ventures receiving financing must demonstrate an excellent management team, a large potential market, and most importantly high growth potential, as only such opportunities are likely capable of providing financial returns and
11000-454: The website and promotional materials; McEfee and various GitHub users have since created hundreds of variations of the character, which are available on The Octodex . Projects on GitHub can be accessed and managed using the standard Git command-line interface; all standard Git commands work with it. GitHub also allows users to browse public repositories on the site. Multiple desktop clients and Git plugins are also available. In addition,
11110-567: The workplace, and failure to enforce an agreement that his spouse should not work in the office." Preston-Werner subsequently resigned from the company. The firm then announced it would implement new initiatives and trainings "to make sure employee concerns and conflicts are taken seriously and dealt with appropriately." On July 25, 2019, a developer based in Iran wrote on Medium that GitHub had blocked his private repositories and prohibited access to GitHub pages. Soon after, GitHub confirmed that it
11220-557: The year, the number of repositories was twice as great, reaching 10 million repositories. In 2015, GitHub opened an office in Japan, its first outside of the U.S. On February 28, 2018, GitHub fell victim to the third-largest distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack in history, with incoming traffic reaching a peak of about 1.35 terabits per second. On June 19, 2018, GitHub expanded its GitHub Education by offering free education bundles to all schools. From 2012, Microsoft became
11330-516: Was Draper and Johnson Investment Company, formed in 1962 by William Henry Draper III and Franklin P. Johnson, Jr. In 1965, Sutter Hill Ventures acquired the portfolio of Draper and Johnson as a founding action. Bill Draper and Paul Wythes were the founders, and Pitch Johnson formed Asset Management Company at that time. It was also in the 1960s that the common form of private-equity fund , still in use today, emerged. Private-equity firms organized limited partnerships to hold investments in which
11440-497: Was acquiring npm , a JavaScript packaging vendor, for an undisclosed sum of money. The deal was closed on April 15, 2020. In early July 2020, the GitHub Archive Program was established to archive its open-source code in perpetuity. GitHub's mascot is an anthropomorphized "octocat" with five octopus-like arms . The character was created by graphic designer Simon Oxley as clip art to sell on iStock ,
11550-446: Was in line with Microsoft's business strategy under CEO Satya Nadella , which has seen a larger focus on cloud computing services, alongside the development of and contributions to open-source software. Harvard Business Review argued that Microsoft was intending to acquire GitHub to get access to its user base, so it can be used as a loss leader to encourage the use of its other development products and services. Concerns over
11660-452: Was now blocking developers in Iran , Crimea , Cuba , North Korea , and Syria from accessing private repositories. However, GitHub reopened access to GitHub Pages days later, for public repositories regardless of location. It was also revealed that using GitHub while visiting sanctioned countries could result in similar actions occurring on a user's account. GitHub responded to complaints and
11770-446: Was restricted to logged-in users, reportedly to mitigate spamming on the page of recent Gists. Gists' URLs use hexadecimal IDs, and edits to Gists are recorded in a revision history , which can show the text difference of thirty revisions per page with an option between a "split" and "unified" view. Like repositories, Gists can be forked, "starred", i.e., publicly bookmarked, and commented on. The count of revisions, stars, and forks
11880-549: Was the first venture capital firm to open an office on Sand Hill Road in 1972. Throughout the 1970s, a group of private-equity firms, focused primarily on venture capital investments, would be founded that would become the model for later leveraged buyout and venture capital investment firms. In 1973, with the number of new venture capital firms increasing, leading venture capitalists formed the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA). The NVCA
11990-533: Was then valued at approximately $ 2 billion. As of 2023, GitHub was estimated to generate $ 1 billion in revenue. The GitHub service was developed by Chris Wanstrath , P. J. Hyett , Tom Preston-Werner , and Scott Chacon using Ruby on Rails , and started in February 2008. The company, GitHub, Inc., was formed in 2007 and is located in San Francisco. On February 24, 2009, GitHub announced that within
12100-401: Was to serve as the industry trade group for the venture capital industry. Venture capital firms suffered a temporary downturn in 1974, when the stock market crashed and investors were naturally wary of this new kind of investment fund. It was not until 1978 that venture capital experienced its first major fundraising year, as the industry raised approximately $ 750 million. With the passage of
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