Go to any venture capitalist's website and they will have a bragging page with their portfolio. Usually not just their current investments but also (especially) major exits. Bessemer Venture Partners is no different. Here is their top exits page. If you think that the name Bessemer sounds like something to do with steel-making, you'd be right. It was set up as a venture arm of Carnegie and named after the Bessemer converter, a British-invented process for making steel (now obsolete). It was set up in 1911, way before the words "venture capital" had ever passed anyone's lips. But as they say on their website: Bessemer Venture Partners is perhaps the nation's oldest venture capital firm, tracing our roots back to the Carnegie Steel empire. This long and storied history has afforded our firm an unparalleled number of opportunities to completely screw up. Bessemer is one of the few companies brave enough to have an anti-portfolio, the investments that they turned down that turned out to be huge: eBay came to pitch. "Stamps? Coins? Comic books? You've got to be kidding," thought Cowan. "No-brainer pass." Facebook? Yup, they missed them, too. Jeremy Levine spent a weekend at a corporate retreat in the summer of 2004 dodging persistent Harvard undergrad Eduardo Saverin's rabid pitch. Finally, cornered in a lunch line, Jeremy delivered some sage advice: "Kid, haven't you heard of Friendster? Move on. It's over!" FedEx. They passed. Not just once...seven times. More recently, they missed Tesla. In 2006 Byron Deeter met the team and test-drove a roadster. He put a deposit on the car, but passed on the negative margin company telling his partners, "It's a win-win. I get a great car and some other VC pays for it!" The company passed $30B in market cap in 2014. Byron recently paid full price for his Model X. Then there's OVP (they call themselves OVP Venture Partners, but that sounds like overkill on the VP bit. Then again, I worked for VaST Systems Technology, so who am I to talk?). They have a missed deals page. One of their missed deals was in our industry even, Mentor Graphics in 1983. But my favorite is this one: A guy walks into your office in the late 1980’s and says he wants to open a chain of retail shops selling a commodity product you can get anywhere for 25 cents, but he will charge 2 dollars. Of course, you listen politely, and then fall off your chair laughing when he leaves. Howard Shultz didn’t see this as humorous. And we didn’t make 500 times our money. Howard Shultz, in case you don't recognize the name, is the founder (and current CEO) of Starbucks. And the crown jewel of them alll: Bessemer's partner, Cowan’s college friend, rented her garage out to a couple of guys. In 1999 and 2000. whenever he came over, she tried to introduce him to “these two really smart Stanford students writing a search engine.” Students? A new search engine? In the most important moment ever for Bessemer’s anti-portfolio, Cowan asked her, How can I get out of this house without going anywhere near your garage? Yes, those two students were Larry and Sergey. They missed Google offered on a plate. Bessemer's anti-portfolio page is here . OVP's deals missed page is here . Previous: Linley Gwennap: Specialization Spurs Processor Innovation![]()
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