Company attributes
Venture Capital Firm attributes
Other attributes
CRV, formerly known as Charles River Ventures, is a bi-coastal venture capital firm founded in 1970 that is headquartered in Palo Alto, California and has offices in Cambridge, Massachusetts. CRV is named after the Charles River located in Boston, Massachusetts, and was initially headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts before relocating its headquarters to San Francisco, California. The firm focuses on investing in early-stage startups in the fields of enterprise, consumer, and deep insight bioengineering. Charles River Ventures rebranded to CRV in 2014 shortly after raising their 16th investment fund.
The company invests in ideas and startups using the concept of equality with the entrepreneurs leading each company. As per CRV's manifesto, partnerships are built with equal title, pay, carry, and votes with every investment. The partners of the firm will form deal teams where a few partners asses companies and decide if they want to pitch the company to the rest of the CRV team. If a deal team decides to pitch a company to the rest of the CRV partners, any CRV partner that takes out their mobile device for any reason during a pitch is fined $10,000.
Notable investments found in CRV's portfolio include Twitter, Zendesk, Amgen, Hubspot, Equallogic, Yammer, Airtable, Bird, Millennial Media, Netezza, EqualLogic, and Parametric Technologies.CRV added growth ventures to the company in 2018 in an attempt to invest in exclusive companies as they mature. From 2004 to 2014 CRV had 8 exits with over $1 billion valuations or above, and as of August 2019 the firm has made a total of 479 investments, 121 lead investments, and 121 exits. CRV has made 657 investments and 260 exits since the company was founded in 1970.
In 2017 CRV raised their first dedicated growth equity fund worth $400 million that was led by General Atlantic. In 2018 CRV chose to scrap their dedicated growth equity fund, and raise their 17th fund worth $600 million with $150 million for allocation into growth equity. After CRV scraped their dedicated growth equity fund and completed raising their 17th investment fund they released the following public statement:
CRV is one of first firms in country to raise a 17th fund and we are incredibly honored by the support from the two audiences that matter most: Entrepreneurs and LPs. The new fund allows us to execute on our continued early-stage focus but with an additional mandate to invest in very selective growth opportunities we believe can drive venture returns.
