New Enterprise Associates

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New Enterprise Associates (NEA)
Private
Industry Venture capital
Founded 1977
Founder Richard C. Kramlich, Chuck Newhall, Frank Bonsal
Headquarters Sand Hill Road
Menlo Park, California &
Chevy Chase, Maryland
Number of locations
9
Total assets Increase$18 billion
Website www.nea.com

New Enterprise Associates (NEA) is an American worldwide venture capital firm. NEA focuses on a variety of investment stages, ranging from seed stage through growth stage. NEA invests across a broad array of industry sectors. With over $18 billion in AUM, NEA ranks as the world's largest venture capital firm.[1][2][3][2][4][5]

The Firm

The firm is headquartered in Menlo Park, California, and Washington, D.C.,[3] and has additional offices in Baltimore, Bangalore, Beijing, Boston, Mumbai, New York and Shanghai.[6]

Since its founding, NEA invested in over 650 companies, and realized nearly 500 liquidity events (with close to 200 portfolio company IPOs and 300 portfolio company acquisitions),[2] making NEA one of the most prolific and successful venture capital firms in the world.

History

The firm was founded in 1977 by Richard C. (Dick) Kramlich, Chuck Newhall and Frank Bonsal.[7] Kramlich had worked with noted venture capitalist Arthur Rock beginning 1969 and Frank Bosnal had been an investment banker at Alex. Brown & Sons where he focused on IPOs for startup companies.[7] Chuck Newhall had previously managed an investment fund for T. Rowe Price in the 1970s. The firm was founded with offices on both the East Coast and the West Coast. Among the firm's first investments was 3Com, which NEA backed along with Mayfield Fund and Jack Melchor in 1981.[8]

The first NEA investment fund had only $16 million of capital. The firm's second fund raised $45 million and the third fund collected $125 million of commitments from investors in 1984. The firm continued to grow steadily throughout the 1980s and early 1990s raising $900 million from 1987 through 1996 across NEA's next four funds.[7] Beginning with NEA-8 in 1998, the firm greatly increased the size of its investment funds. NEA's tenth fund had $2.3 billion of investor commitments in 2000. After raising a more modest $1.1 billion in 2004 for the firm's eleventh fund, NEA was able to raise $2.3 billion and $2.5 billion for its next two funds, respectively.[9] In 2010, NEA launched its thirteenth investment fund with $2.5 billion of investor capital. In 2012, NEA closed its fourteenth investment fund with $2.6 billion of investor capital.[2][5] In 2015, NEA closed its fifteenth investment fund with $3.1 billion in investor capital - the largest venture capital fund ever raised.

Today, NEA ranks as the world’s largest venture capital firm, and has more than $18 billion in assets under management across 15 funds, including a $3.1 billion fifteenth fund closed in 2015.[5]

Investments

Among the firm's investments are 3com, Appian, Bloom Energy, Braintree, Boingo Wireless, Box, CareerBuilder, Climate Corporation, Coursera, Cvent, Diapers.com, Duolingo, Fusion-io, Groupon, Gilt Groupe, Houzz, Juniper Networks, The Learning Company, Lot18, Macromedia, MongoDB, MuleSoft, Nicira, Opower, Pentaho, Salesforce.com, ScienceLogic, SMIC, Spreadtrum, Swiftype, Tableau Software, TiVo, Topera Medical, Vonage, WebMD, Workday, and ZeroFOX.[10]

References

External links