Startups

Lead Edge Capital just closed on $950 million from a whopping 500 investors

Comment

Image Credits: Mitchell Green

Lead Edge Capital, a software-focused venture firm with one office in New York and another in California, was founded just 11 years ago. Yet it’s already managing $3 billion in assets through a process that founder Mitchell Green half-kiddingly refers to as “rinse and repeat.”

As he describes its model, Lead Edge raises money from wealthy, networked individuals, then claws its way into companies, helps them, turns them into valuable references, and when those companies sell or go public, the firm raises more money from people who like the firm’s returns.

It sounds simple, but it isn’t, says Green, who cut his teeth as an associate at Bessemer Venture Partners and at a Tiger Fund-affiliate called Eastern Advisors.

Managing 500 investors, which is now the case, is “harder than it looks.”

That’s true even with two partners: Brian Neider, who first crossed paths with Green at Bessemer, and Nimay Mehta, who joined the firm in 2011. That’s true despite a dozen employees who Green says are “zero to five years out of college” and cold-call companies all day.

It’s a lot of work, even with four investors who are also operating partners and who, in that capacity, sometimes serve as board members on behalf of Lead Edge. These are former eBay president Lorrie Norrington, former NetSuite CFO Ron Gill, former Dell CFO Jim Schneider and former Dell president Paul Bell. (“If you’ve already got a couple of VCs on your board,” says Green, “I think the company gets more benefit from putting operators on the board.”)

Not that anyone is complaining. On the contrary, Lead Edge has been having a very good run, which explains how its fund sizes have so quickly ballooned, from a $52 million debut vehicle to a $138 million fund, a $290 million fund, a $520 million vehicle and now a $950 million fifth fund. (Lead Edge also spins up special purpose vehicles on the side one to two times a year when it wants an especially big bite of a certain company.)

Almost everything you need to know about SPACs

Some of its largest returns by dollars have come via Alibaba’s IPO, Spotify’s IPO and the sale of Duo Security to Cisco, companies on which it made big bets. Green has said the firm invested $300 million into Alibaba in the years leading up to its IPO; more than $150 million into Spotify in the years leading up to its IPO; and more than $90 million into Duo.

This year is proving gainful for Lead Edge’s backers, too, thanks to the recent direct listing of Asana and the sale of Signal Sciences to Fastly.

That’s saying nothing about the Alibaba affiliate Ant Group, into which Lead Edge has poured $160 million over the years and that’s now expected to become the world’s largest IPO (although the offering has been delayed for now by China’s securities regulator).

Given these wins, it’s maybe unsurprising that the firm’s investor base would continue to build on itself, and in the process turn into a highly competitive advantage for the firm, according to Green.

Indeed, when asked how Lead Edge differentiates itself from other growth-stage investors, he cites the firm’s pool of backers, which includes former Xerox CEO Anne Mulcahy, former Charles Schwab CEO David Pottruck and former ESPN CEO Steve Bornstein, among the hundreds of other individuals who’ve written checks to Lead Edge that range from $250,000 to $50 million.

While he won’t say who some of the biggest of those investors are in terms of dollars committed, he has no qualms in crediting them collectively with the firm’s success — or going out of his way to keep them happy. Last night, for example, he played host to some of them at his Southern California home. He doesn’t seem to mind it.

“People want us for our LP network,” says Green. “That’s what we’re known for, 100%.”

Jack Ma’s fintech giant Ant starts IPO process in Hong Kong and Shanghai

More TechCrunch

Silo, a Bay Area food supply chain startup, has hit a rough patch. TechCrunch has learned that the company on Tuesday laid off roughly 30% of its staff, or north…

Food supply chain software maker Silo lays off ~30% of staff amid M&A discussions

Featured Article

Meta’s new AI council is composed entirely of white men

Meanwhile, women and people of color are disproportionately impacted by irresponsible AI.

6 hours ago
Meta’s new AI council is composed entirely of white men

If you’ve ever wanted to apply to Y Combinator, here’s some inside scoop on how the iconic accelerator goes about choosing companies.

Garry Tan has revealed his ‘secret sauce’ for getting into Y Combinator

Indian ride-hailing startup BluSmart has started operating in Dubai, TechCrunch has exclusively learned and confirmed with its executive. The move to Dubai, which has been rumored for months, could help…

India’s BluSmart is testing its ride-hailing service in Dubai

Under the envisioned framework, both candidate and issue ads would be required to include an on-air and filed disclosure that AI-generated content was used.

FCC proposes all AI-generated content in political ads must be disclosed

Want to make a founder’s day, week, month, and possibly career? Refer them to Startup Battlefield 200 at Disrupt 2024! Applications close June 10 at 11:59 p.m. PT. TechCrunch’s Startup…

Refer a founder to Startup Battlefield 200 at Disrupt 2024

Social networking startup and X competitor Bluesky is officially launching DMs (direct messages), the company announced on Wednesday. Later, Bluesky plans to “fully support end-to-end encrypted messaging down the line,”…

Bluesky now has DMs

The perception in Silicon Valley is that every investor would love to be in business with Peter Thiel. But the venture capital fundraising environment has become so difficult that even…

Peter Thiel-founded Valar Ventures raised a $300 million fund, half the size of its last one

Featured Article

Spyware found on US hotel check-in computers

Several hotel check-in computers are running a remote access app, which is leaking screenshots of guest information to the internet.

9 hours ago
Spyware found on US hotel check-in computers

Gavet has had a rocky tenure at Techstars and her leadership was the subject of much controversy.

Techstars CEO Maëlle Gavet is out

The struggle isn’t universal, however.

Connected fitness is adrift post-pandemic

Featured Article

A comprehensive list of 2024 tech layoffs

The tech layoff wave is still going strong in 2024. Following significant workforce reductions in 2022 and 2023, this year has already seen 60,000 job cuts across 254 companies, according to independent layoffs tracker Layoffs.fyi. Companies like Tesla, Amazon, Google, TikTok, Snap and Microsoft have conducted sizable layoffs in the first months of 2024. Smaller-sized…

11 hours ago
A comprehensive list of 2024 tech layoffs

HoundDog actually looks at the code a developer is writing, using both traditional pattern matching and large language models to find potential issues.

HoundDog.ai helps developers prevent personal information from leaking

The changes are designed to enhance the consumer experience of using Google Pay and make it a more competitive option against other payment methods.

Google Pay will now display card perks, BNPL options and more

Few figures in the tech industry have earned the storied reputation of Vinod Khosla, founder and partner at Khosla Ventures. For over 40 years, he has been at the center…

Vinod Khosla is coming to Disrupt to discuss how AI might change the future

AI has already started replacing voice agents’ jobs. Now, companies are exploring ways to replace the existing computer-generated voice models with synthetic versions of human voices. Truecaller, the widely known…

Truecaller partners with Microsoft to let its AI respond to calls in your own voice

Meta is updating its Ray-Ban smart glasses with new hands-free functionality, the company announced on Wednesday. Most notably, users can now share an image from their smart glasses directly to…

Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses now let you share images directly to your Instagram Story

Spotify launched its own font, the company announced on Wednesday. The music streaming service hopes that its new typeface, “Spotify Mix,” will help Spotify distinguish its own unique visual identity. …

Why Spotify is launching its own font, Spotify Mix

In 2008, Marty Kagan, who’d previously worked at Cisco and Akamai, co-founded Cedexis, a (now-Cisco-owned) firm developing observability tech for content delivery networks. Fellow Cisco veteran Hasan Alayli joined Kagan…

Hydrolix seeks to make storing log data faster and cheaper

A dodgy email containing a link that looks “legit” but is actually malicious remains one of the most dangerous, yet successful, tricks in a cybercriminal’s handbook. Now, an AI startup…

Bolster, creator of the CheckPhish phishing tracker, raises $14M led by Microsoft’s M12

If you’ve been looking forward to seeing Boeing’s Starliner capsule carry two astronauts to the International Space Station for the first time, you’ll have to wait a bit longer. The…

Boeing, NASA indefinitely delay crewed Starliner launch

TikTok is the latest tech company to incorporate generative AI into its ads business, as the company announced on Tuesday that it’s launching a new “TikTok Symphony” AI suite for…

TikTok turns to generative AI to boost its ads business

Gone are the days when space and defense were considered fundamentally antithetical to venture investment. Now, the country’s largest venture capital firms are throwing larger portions of their money behind…

Space VC closes $20M Fund II to back frontier tech founders from day zero

These days every company is trying to figure out if their large language models are compliant with whichever rules they deem important, and with legal or regulatory requirements. If you’re…

Patronus AI is off to a magical start as LLM governance tool gains traction

Link-in-bio startup Linktree has crossed 50 million users and is rolling out the beta of its social commerce program.

Linktree surpasses 50M users, rolls out its social commerce program to more creators

For a $5.99 per month, immigrants have a bank account and debit card with fee-free international money transfers and discounted international calling.

Immigrant banking platform Majority secures $20M following 3x revenue growth

When developers have a particular job that AI can solve, it’s not typically as simple as just pointing an LLM at the data. There are other considerations such as cost,…

Unify helps developers find the best LLM for the job

Response time is Aerodome’s immediate value prop for potential clients.

Aerodome is sending drones to the scene of the crime

Granola takes a more collaborative approach to working with AI.

Granola debuts an AI notepad for meetings