Top 20 Venture Capital Firms in San Francisco California

8 Jul 2021 • 10 min read

In today’s modern world where technology is becoming more evident and most things are eventually switching into digital, more businesses in different sectors are also becoming perceptible in the market. Entrepreneurs keep on discovering many business ideas, products and services. However, some of these smart ideas and innovations remain as abstract ideas or some are not pushing through the final output due to lack of capital. This usually happens to startups and small companies producing their new products. That’s where venture capital (VC) enters the business frame.

Take it from the word itself “capital”, these VCs are offering financial support to growing businesses with nurturing ideas and revolutionary products and services. These firms finance startups to get thorough research about their ideas, to produce and market their products; and to grow their companies in their niche. In return with providing capital, VCs cut and gain the financial benefits of their portfolio company.

Top 20 Venture Capital Firms in San Francisco, California

San Francisco, California is one of the regions with multiple numbers of startups and entrepreneurs. That's why numerous successful VC firms are being established in the city, waiting for new startup companies to invest in. Below are some of the top VC in San Francisco, CA.

ABS Capital

ABS Capital is a venture capital and private equity firm in Sausalito, San Francisco, CA with offices in Hunt Valley, MD and Washington, DC. They are investing in businesses operating under information and communications technology sectors, as well as in education and health care fields. With their main focus on the visions and realities that can contribute well to the company's growth. The VC firm has been funding and helping various startups grow to their fullest potential, for more than 30 years.

Advanced Technology Ventures

Advanced Technology Ventures is a bi-coastal venture capital firm and private equity firm in Menlo Park, CA offering early to late-stage venture and seed-stage startups. They are providing investment to businesses under the bio-pharmaceuticals and medical industry, as well as cleantech, consumer technology, ICT, and infrastructure sectors. Other areas that they invest in are the Mobile, Security and Software industries. Some of the notable companies they have invested in are Actifio, Aquion Energy and Thrasos.

Since it was founded in 1979, ATV has been providing financial support to emerging growing startups and entrepreneurs turning them into market leaders in their niche.

Greylock Partners

Greylock Partners is a venture capital and private equity firm founded in 1965 and based in Menlo Park, California. The VC firm provides funds to growing entrepreneurs and early-stage to late-stage startup companies with business operations in consumer and enterprise software sectors. Their team of professionals is not only providing investment but also bringing unique domain knowledge, wide access to specialists, and effective strategies to help their portfolio companies reach their full potential.

Greylock funds new startups and companies with big potentials in the market, some of them include Airbnb, AppDynamics, Apptio, Arista Networks (NYSE: ANET), Cloudera, Docker, Dropbox, Facebook (Nasdaq: FB), LinkedIn (NYSE: LNKD), Medium, Nextdoor, Palo Alto Networks (NYSE: PANW), Pandora (NYSE: P), Pure Storage, and Workday (NYSE: WDAY).

Menlo Ventures

Menlo Ventures is based in Menlo Park, CA providing investment for early to late-stage, and seed to growth stages startups for more than 44 years. Their main target is those startup companies related to consumer, enterprise, and life science technologies with great emphasis on AI/Robotics, Cybersecurity, Infrastructure, FinTech, Life Sciences/Digital Health, Saas and Utilitarian Consumer.

For more than 44 years of helping founders, they have managed to finance over 70 public companies in their target sectors. Some of the notable companies that they have back up are Gilead, Roku, Siri, and Uber. With their dedication and full support, they have grown a portfolio that includes 160+ M&A.

AllegisCyber

AllegisCyber is a venture capital and private equity firm based in San Francisco, California. The VC firm is investing in early-stage to late-stage companies producing cybersecurity software, programs and tech-enabled products that provide disruptive strategies that can resolve issues in the fast-pacing cybersecurity field.

They use its integrated cybersecurity investment platform and have a reliable and strategic partnership with advanced cybersecurity start-up studio DataTribe to offer the founders a justifiable competitive advantage. AllegisCyber’s main goal is to find the best cybersecurity startups that can protect the global technology infrastructure from the potential major cyberattacks that may possibly happen in the future.

Spark Capital

Spark Capital is a venture capital and private equity firm headquartered in San Francisco, CA with offices in Boston and New York City. They fund early-stage to late-stage and seed-stage startups. The VC firm invests across all sectors but their main focus is those founders producing and developing products and services associated with consumer, commerce, FinTech, frontier, software, and media sectors. Some of the companies included in their portfolio are Affirm, Carta, Cruise, Cameo, Discord, Grammarly, Oculus, Plaid, Postmates, Slack, Snapchat, Trello, Tumblr, Twitter, Wayfair and many more to mention.

Lightspeed Venture Partners

Lightspeed Venture Partners is a multi-venture capital and private equity firm based in Menlo Park, CA providing financial support and expertise to startups and emerging companies with business operations in various sectors in the United States, Europe, Israel, China, and India. But they focus on big data, bitcoin, biotechnology, cleantech, consumer, e-commerce, cloud solutions, enterprise technology, financial technology, information technology, media, mobile, networking, and software.

The VC firm focuses on early-stage, later-stage, seed stage, expansion stage as well as incubation with specialization in debt financing for startups and growing companies. They also have offices in Beijing, China; Shanghai, China; New Delhi, India; and Herzelia Pituach, Israel.

Benchmark Venture Capital

Benchmark is a venture capital and private equity firm in San Francisco, CA offering disruptive investment to early-stage startups and growth companies. The VC's main focus is to accelerate the growth of companies developing game-changing products and services in enterprise software, infrastructure, mobile, marketplaces and social sectors. The VC firm seeks to build and transform every startup into a market leader.

Since 1995, they have invested in more than 250 early-stage startups. Some of Benchmark’s current portfolio for early-stage venture investments includes Uber, Snapchat, Tinder, Stitch Fix, Elastic and Cyanogen; and recent IPOs and acquisitions such as Twitter, Instagram, Yelp, League of Legends, Jasper, OpenTable, New Relic, Hortonworks, GrubHub, Zendesk and Zillow.

First Round Venture Capital

First Round is a venture capital firm in San Francisco, CA with offices in New York and Philadelphia. The VC firm focuses on creating and transforming small entrepreneurs and startups into global market leaders. They have great emphasis on early-stage, late-stage, and seed-stage investment to startups and companies engaged with enterprise, consumer, hardware, fintech and healthcare but they are still open to other sectors. Some of its notable invested tech companies are Notion, Roblox, Square, Uber, and Warby Parker.

Aside from the funds, they also provide their portfolio companies with various products and services that may help them establish their companies and develop their full potential.

Y Combinator Venture Capital

Y Combinator is a venture capital & private equity firm based in Mountain View, California. They are investing in a wide variety of startups twice every year. They work intensively and share their expertise with the companies that typically last for three months. During these months, each company is given the chance to present its products to a carefully chosen audience to refine and establish its final products. The VC firm guides the companies and provides them with enough resources to reach their highest potentials.

Since its founding in 2005, they have managed to back up diverse 3, 000 startups with over 6,000 founders in the community and over $300B of investment. Y Combinator is considered one of the most successful VCs in Silicon Valley.

Alloy Ventures

Alloy Ventures is a venture capital firm in Palo Alto, CA offering funds to early-stage, and late-stage startups and companies based in the United States. Their main investment interest is in the areas of cleantech, information technology, and life sciences.

For more than 30 years in the venture capital field, they have managed to bring extensive networks of professionals, offer market-leading experiences to its invested companies in different niches such as diagnostics, laboratory instrumentation and medical devices, mobile, software, and semiconductors.

Some of their notable investments include Amgen, AMCC, Applied Biosystems, Aspect Communications, CV Therapeutics, IDEC Pharmaceuticals, Nuance Communications, Octel, PMC-Sierra, Red Brick Systems, Remedy, and Verity.

Azure Capital Partners

Azure Capital Partners is a venture capital firm and private equity firm with a great focus on early-stage, late-stage, post-seed stage and growth capital investments. They invest in companies operating in Canada, particularly in Calgary, Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver as well as North America, Silicon Valley, and the United States.

The VC firm has a huge interest in the areas of internet and information technology with a great focus on communications services and equipment, communications applications, digital media, infrastructure technologies, media, mobile, mobility solutions, and software, web, and other related web properties. Azure Capital Partners’ main goal is to discover, invest in and help fresh information technology-based companies that have big potential in turning into transformational companies.

True Ventures

True Ventures is a venture capital and private equity firm based in Palo Alto, CA providing early-stage, and late-stage investment to technology startups. They also offer seed and Series A financing to various entrepreneurs engaged with tech-enable products and services. Particularly, the VC firm seeks to invest in the areas of consumer devices, education, infrastructure, media, mobile, and software.

Since it was established True Ventures has managed to back up and scale over 300 companies. The company is composed of the most passionate and experienced investment team, with its large number of partners, special advisors and other staff helping in the operation.

Bay Partners

Bay Partners is a California-based venture capital and private equity firm that funds information technology and healthcare businesses. But they are also open to other areas like Enterprise Software, Semiconductors and other Software. They are interested in early-stage venture, late-stage venture, and seed-stage investment. Bay Partners is one of the first venture firms based in Silicon Valley. Since its founding in 1976, the company has invested into more than 250 startups within the information technology and healthcare sector. For almost 40 years, they have been driving success to their portfolios. Their team is composed of pioneers from Silicon Valley, and is passionate about funding a variety of big companies like Informatica, Geoworks, Shiva and Brocade.

Delphin Ventures

Delphi Ventures is one of the first Canada-based venture capital and private equity firms that focuses in life sciences sectors. It was based in San Mateo, CA. For more than 30 years in the VC field, they have been funded and helped many companies operating in life sciences and health sectors, particularly investing in biotechnology and medical devices. Delphi Venture also made it possible for the companies to expand therapeutic access for their patients needing less invasive procedures. For three decades over 100 of their portfolio companies have completed an initial public offering and some have been acquired by top healthcare corporations.

Silver Lake

Silver Lake is one of the largest technology investment firms in the world. The venture capital firm is headquartered in Menlo Park, CA but it has a team of professionals based in Asia, Europe and North America with more than $83 billion in combined assets under management and committed capital. The VC firm's portfolio companies can generate more than $196 billion of revenue yearly while providing employment to more than 448,000 people globally. The main interest of Silver Lake is investing in technology, technology-enabled and tech-related startups and growth companies. Other areas of their focus are Healthcare, IT, Mobile and Cloud Computing. Some of the company's notable Investments: Cast & Crew, Global Blue, BlackLine

Redpoint Ventures

Redpoint Ventures partners is a venture capital and private equity firm based in Menlo, CA but has offices in San Francisco, Beijing and Shanghai. They are engaging with and funding visionary founders and growing business. Particularly, they focus at providing early to late-stage, seed, and growth stages investment to startups and entrepreneurs operating within consumer and enterprise sectors. But they are also funding other areas such as Cloud Computing, Consumer Media and Infrastructure, Digital Media, Mobile Wireless Platforms, SaaS, and On-Demand Software. Some of their portfolio companies are BitGo, Expensify, Payable, Stripe, and Zuora.

Redpoint is not only investing but helping businesses refine their existing approaches or create new ideas to scale their business and make them revolutionary market leaders.

Khosla Ventures

Khosla Ventures is a venture capital and private equity firm based in Menlo Park, CA that seeks to invest in early-stage, and late-stage startups and companies with great focus on biotechnology, clean technology, computing, environmentally friendly tech, internet, mobile, and silicon tech sectors. Other areas of their interest are advertising, agriculture, big data, consumer, enterprise, education, food, financial services, health, semiconductors, sustainable energy, and robotics.

Aside from the financial assistance, the VC firm also provides strategic advice to revolutionary founders developing game-changing technologies. They don't see themselves as the "capital" provider but rather a company that leverages good partnerships to create a team of specialists, founders, and passionate entrepreneurs and hit success altogether.

Opus Capital

Opus Capital Ventures is an investment firm based in Menlo Park, CA, focusing on early-stage technology startups and companies. They provide early-stage, late-stage and seed investment for more than two decades in companies working within Enterprise Application Software, Enterprise Infrastructure, Internet, Semiconductors, and Wireless tech sectors.

With their long years and history of success in the field, they arrived with more than 80 successful outcomes (including 50 IPOs). Some of Opus Capital Ventures’ successful portfolio companies include Adaptec, AirGate PCS, BlueNile, Brocade, Ciena, DoubleClick, Electronics for Imaging, FedEx, Genesys, Harmonic, Informatica, Kidaro and Vantive.

137 Ventures

137 Ventures is one of the leading growth stage capital venture firms based in San Francisco, CA with an innovative secondary investment structure. They seek to invest in startups and companies working within Curated Web, Analytics, and Advertising sectors. Some of their notable companies included in their portfolios are Evenbrite. SpaceX, Spotify, and many more.

137 Ventures is more than a capital provider but also a custom liquidity solutions provider to founders, entrepreneurs and early employees of growth-stage private technology companies. Aside from that, they also leverage their team and networks to provide proper guidance and approaches that bring success. Since its founding year, 137 Ventures has been participating in primary direct equity financing rounds.

Final Thoughts

Indeed, choosing the right capital ventures suited to your niche is a bit challenging, especially if you’re new to this stuff. But, if you are looking for a successful venture capital that can fund your business, you will never go wrong in this city. San Francisco, California is known to be a home of a wide array of venture capitals supporting diverse sectors with unique funding styles, strategies and management. The area is composed of well-established VC firms with long years of experience so you will surely get the best investors. If you are still undecided who to choose, you can go back to our page to check our list of top Venture Capital firms in San Francisco, California.