Wikipedia

Freestyle Capital

Freestyle Capital is an early-stage venture capital firm based in San Francisco, California.[1] General Partners Dave Samuel and Jenny Lefcourt are both entrepreneurs who entered venture capital after founding multiple companies.[2] The firm was founded in 2009 and typically invests in 10-12 companies per year with an average investment between $1.5 million to $3 million.[3] Previous investments include Intercom, Patreon, Narvar, Digit, Betterup, Airtable and Snapdocs.[2]

Freestyle Capital
Company typePrivate
IndustryVenture Capital
Founded2009
FounderDave Samuel
Josh Felser
Headquarters
San Francisco, California
,
U.S.
Key people
Dave Samuel, Co-Founder and General Partner
Jenny Lefcourt, General Partner
Websitefreestyle.vc

History edit

Freestyle was founded in 2009 by Dave Samuel and Josh Felser.[4] Prior to Freestyle, Felser and Samuel founded two companies:[2] Spinner, which they sold to AOL in 1999 for $320 million,[5][6] and Grouper (later renamed Crackle), which they sold to Sony Corp. in 2006 for $65 million.[1]

In 2011, Freestyle announced a formal fund of $27 million.[1] Freestyle raised its second fund of $40 million in 2013 and their third fund of $60 million in 2015.[2]

Jenny Lefcourt joined Freestyle toward the end of Fund II and became an equal partner at the close of Fund III.[2] Notable investments from the first three funds include Intercom, Patreon, Narvar, Digit, Wag, Betterup, Airtable and Snapdocs.[2][7]

In 2017, Freestyle raised $90 million for its fourth fund.[2]

According to the firm’s website, Josh Felser stepped down as full-time general partner in the summer of 2020 to focus his efforts on companies that foster a more resilient planet.

In March 2022, Freestyle closed its sixth fund at $130 million, making it the firm’s largest fund to date. The fund was raised in a month from existing investors.[3]

Partners edit

Dave Samuel earned his bachelor degree from MIT.[4] In 1996, Samuel founded and was the CEO of Spinner, one of the first online radio services, which was acquired by AOL for $320 million in 1999. In 2004, he co-founded Crackle, one of the first internet video services, which was acquired by Sony Pictures Entertainment for $65 million in 2006.[1] In addition to his work at Freestyle, Samuel is the founder and chairman of tech toilet seat company Brondell Inc.[8]

Jenny Lefcourt earned her B.S. in economics from Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania,[9] and attended the Stanford Graduate School of Business. In 1998 she left Stanford to found WeddingChannel.com, which was acquired by The Knot, and Bella Pictures, which was acquired by CPI Corp (now defunct).[10] In 2014, Lefcourt joined Freestyle and was promoted to general partner in 2015.[11] She is also a founding member and board member of All Raise,[12] and an angel investor in Discord, Minted and Main Street Hub.[13] Lefcourt was named to the Forbes “Midas Brink List” in 2021[13] and the "Midas Seed List" in 2022,[14] as well as Barron’s “100 Most Influential Women in U.S. Finance" for 2022.[15]

Notable Investments edit

As of March 2022, about 29% of current fund companies have a woman founder or co-founder.[3]

  • about.me – personal web hosting service, acquired by AOL in 2010.[16]
  • Airtable – spreadsheet-database collaboration service.[17]
  • Alphadraft – daily fantasy sports provider, acquired by FanDuel in 2015.[18]
  • Autodesk – architecture, engineering and entertainment software developer.[19]
  • backtype – SaaS social media analytics service, acquired by Twitter in 2011.[20]
  • BetterUp – mobile-based leadership platform.[21]
  • Buildingconnected - construction bid-management platform, acquired in 2018 by Autodesk.[19]
  • Clypd – video ad-targeting service, acquired by AT&T’s Xandr in 2019.[22]
  • Digit – personal finance software,[23] acquired in 2021 by consumer lender Opportun.[24]
  • Daily - provider of API for easy video integration.[25]
  • Ease – human resources and benefits administration software.[citation needed]
  • Embark Veterinary – dog genetics company.[26]
  • Fi - smart dog collar company.[27]
  • figure eight – data annotation company, acquired by Appen in 2019 for $300 million.[28]
  • Goinstant – co-browsing software, sold to Salesforce.com in 2012 for $70 million.[29]
  • Impermium – cybersecurity provider, acquired in 2019 by Google.[30]
  • indextank – real-time-hosted search, acquired in 2011 by LinkedIn.[31]
  • Intercom – business messaging software for sales, marketing and support.
  • Joyride – podcast player, acquired by Google.
  • Launchkit – toolkit for mobile app development, acquired in 2016 by Google.[32]
  • leo – messaging app, acquired in 2015 by Lyft.[33]
  • Narvar – post-purchase software for order tracking, messaging and returns.[34]
  • Opsmatic – DevOps monitoring tool, acquired in 2015 by New Relic.[35]
  • Patreon – membership platform for creators to run a subscription service.[36]
  • payable – payment platform, acquired in 2107 by Stripe.[37]
  • Rangeme – platform for consumer packaged goods, acquired in 2017 by Efficient Collaborative Retail Marketing (ECRM).[38]
  • Snapdocs – digital loan closing platform.[7]
  • Snappytv – video clip platform, acquired in 2014 by Twitter.[39]
  • Superside (formerly Konsus) - outsourced design platform.[40]
  • Tenor (formerly riffsy) – GIF keyboard and search engine, acquired in 2018 by Google.[41]
  • Thatch – travel creator business tools provider.[42]
  • Typekit – cloud-based font site, acquired in 2011 by Adobe[43]
  • Well – communication platform for patients and healthcare organizations[44]

References edit

  1. ^ a b c d Yuliya Chernova, "Seed Investor Freestyle Capital Churning Out Exits," The Wall Street Journal, December 31, 2014.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g Ryan Lawler, "Freestyle Capital raised a new $90 million fund and promoted Jenny Lefcourt to general partner," TechCrunch, April 10, 2017.
  3. ^ a b c Mascarenhas, Natasha (March 31, 2022). "For Freestyle's newest fund, the growth hack is staying the same". TechCrunch. Retrieved April 27, 2022.
  4. ^ a b Leena Rao, "Sweat Equity: From Co-Founders To Co-Investors, Freestyle.VC Invests More Than Just Cash," TechCrunch, July 13, 2013.
  5. ^ "HI-TECH'S NEW DAY". Newsweek. 10 April 2005. Retrieved 4 August 2019.
  6. ^ "America Online Acquires Leading Internet Music Brands -- Spinner.Com, Winamp and SHOUTcast". WarnerMedia. 1 June 1999. Retrieved 4 August 2019.
  7. ^ a b Schubarth, Cromwell (8 November 2019). "The Funded: 6 Bay Area startups score over $100M at week's end". Silicon Valley Business Journal. Retrieved 27 April 2019.
  8. ^ Benny Evangalista, "Bottom line means more to this firm," San Francisco Chronicle, February 7, 2005.
  9. ^ How to Pitch Your Startup to a Venture Capitalist, Knowledge at Wharton, 22 March 2018, retrieved 17 May 2021
  10. ^ Rao, Leena (30 May 2014). "WeddingChannel Co-Founder Jenny Lefcourt Joins Freestyle". TechCrunch. Retrieved 7 July 2019.
  11. ^ Wilhelm, Alex (2 April 2015), Freestyle Capital Locks Down $60M For Its Third Fund, Adds Jenny Lefcourt As Its Third Partner, TechCrunch, retrieved 17 May 2015
  12. ^ Sonnemaker, Tyler (2 May 2020). "Venture capitalists reveal the startups that changed everything in the past decade". Business Insider. Retrieved 21 May 2021.
  13. ^ a b "The Midas Brink List: Meet Venture Capital's Up-And-Comers For 2021". Forbes. 13 April 2021. Retrieved 21 May 2021.
  14. ^ "The Midas Seed List". Forbes. 14 April 2022. Retrieved 2 May 2022.
  15. ^ "Jenny Lefcourt". 100 Most Influential Women in US Finance. Barron’s. 15 April 2022. Retrieved 20 April 2022.
  16. ^ frommer, Dan (20 December 2010). "About.Me CEO Tony Conrad: Here's Why I Sold My Company To AOL So Quickly". Business Insider. Retrieved 21 July 2019.
  17. ^ Bertoni, Steven (15 November 2018). "Move Slow and Make Things: Airtable's Howie Liu Built A $1B Software Giant Emphasizing Substance Over Speed". Forbes. Retrieved 12 May 2021.
  18. ^ Grubb, Jeff (24 September 2015). "FanDuel acquires AlphaDraft to get into esports". VentureBeat. Retrieved 27 July 2019.
  19. ^ a b Miller, Ron (20 December 2018). "Autodesk adds to construction software biz with acquisition of BuildingConnected for $275M". TechCrunch. Retrieved 16 July 2019.
  20. ^ Dugan, Lauren (5 July 2011). "Twitter Acquires Social Media Analytics Company BackType". Adweek. Retrieved 27 July 2019.
  21. ^ Clark, Kate (12 June 2019). "BetterUp raises $103M to fast-track employee learning and development". TechCrunch. Retrieved 12 May 2021.
  22. ^ Dang, Sheila (17 October 2019). "AT&T's Xandr purchases TV advertising company clypd: source". Reuters. Retrieved 27 April 2021.
  23. ^ "The Weekly Notable Startup Funding Report: 10/7/19". AlleyWatch. 7 October 2019. Retrieved 12 May 2021.
  24. ^ "Oportun buying challenger bank Digit for $213 million". American Banker. 16 November 2021. Retrieved 20 April 2022.
  25. ^ Hall, Christine (10 November 2021). "Daily grabs another $40M so developers can add video, audio features to any product". TechCrunch. Retrieved 22 April 2022.
  26. ^ Maffei, Lucia (26 July 2021). "SoftBank Vision Fund 2 leads $75M round in dog DNA testing startup". Boston Business Journal. Retrieved 5 May 2022.
  27. ^ Chen, I-Chun (25 February 2021). "Fi fetches $30M in funds to expand its GPS-enabled 'smart' dog collar". New York Business Journal. Retrieved 22 April 2022.
  28. ^ Ha, Anthony (10 March 2019). "Appen acquires Figure Eight for up to $300M, bringing two data annotation companies together". TechCrunch. Retrieved 16 July 2019.
  29. ^ Spencer E. Ante, "Salesforce.com to Buy GoInstant," The Wall Street Journal, July 9, 2012.
  30. ^ Kim-Mai Cutler, "Spam-Fighting Startup Impermium Joins Google, Discontinues Third-Party Services," TechCrunch, January 15, 2019.
  31. ^ Rao, Leena (11 October 2011). "LinkedIn Buys Real-Time, Hosted Search Startup IndexTank". TechCrunch. Retrieved 4 August 2019.
  32. ^ yeung, ken (27 July 2016). "Google acquires LaunchKit, will discontinue hosted mobile development services". VentureBeat. Retrieved 16 July 2019.
  33. ^ Buhr, Sarah (26 June 2015). "Lyft Acqui-Hires The Team From Messaging App Leo To Improve Location And Other Features". TechCrunch. Retrieved 27 July 2019.
  34. ^ Kolodny, Lora (23 June 2016). "Narvar raises $22 million to help internet retailers deliver physical goods without frustrating customers". TechCrunch. Retrieved 27 April 2021.
  35. ^ Novet, Jordan (5 November 2015). "New Relic buys devops monitoring tool Opsmatic". VentureBeat. Retrieved 27 July 2019.
  36. ^ Peckham, Eric (12 February 2019). "The Founding Story of Patreon". TechCrunch. Retrieved 27 April 2021.
  37. ^ Lawler, Ryan (26 July 2017). "Stripe acquires Payable to help on-demand businesses manage 1099 tax reporting". TechCrunch. Retrieved 16 July 2019.
  38. ^ Mitchell, Sue (7 June 2017). "Windfall for investors as RangeMe sold to US marketing company". Financial Review. Retrieved 21 July 2019.
  39. ^ Spangler, Todd (19 June 2014). "Twitter Acquires SnappyTV to Bring More TV Content to Social Network". Variety. Retrieved 16 July 2019.
  40. ^ Ha, Anthony (5 September 2019). "Newly renamed Superside raises $3.5M for its outsourced design platform". TechCrunch. Retrieved 22 April 2022.
  41. ^ Chaykowski, Kathleen (27 March 2018). "Google To Acquire Startup Tenor As Mobile GIF-Sharing Explodes". Forbes. Retrieved 16 July 2019.
  42. ^ Hall, Christine (30 August 2021). "Thatch using $3M round to put travel creators on the map". TechCrunch. Retrieved 5 May 2022.
  43. ^ Takahashi, Dean (3 October 2011). "Adobe acquires cloud font site Typekit as part of larger creative cloud service offering". VentureBeat. Retrieved 21 July 2019.
  44. ^ Hackett, Mallory (25 November 2020). "Well Health pulls in $45M and welcomes a new senior vice president". Mobile Health News. Retrieved 27 April 2021.

External links edit

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