Yelp was founded in San Francisco in July 2004 to connect people to great local businesses. We became Yelp's first institutional investor in 2005. Shortly after our investment, Yelp's team of about a dozen people moved into a shuttered stereo store on San Francisco's Mission street. The location had an unexpected upside: Yelp board meetings took place in a padded room once used to demo loud set ups, which ensured that those confidential conversations would not be overheard. Today, that seems like ancient history. Yelp went public in 2012 (NYSE: YELP) and now has active communities in 32 countries around the world.  With more than 90 million rich, local reviews, Yelp is the leading local guide for real word-of-mouth on everything from boutiques and mechanics to restaurants and dentists.

Pinterest is a visual bookmarking tool that helps you discover and save creative ideas. Their mission is to help people discover the things they love, and inspire them to go do those things in their daily lives.  When BVP led the Series A investment in 2011, Pinterest was just five people working—and sometimes sleeping—in a Palo Alto Apartment that had seen better days.  Today, more than 500 Pinterest employees work in offices around the world.  Bessemer has supported the company at every stage.  

Twilio makes communication easy and powerful. Twilio is a Communications Platform-as-a-Service providing Infrastructure APIs for developers and businesses to build scalable, communication apps in the cloud.  Since it was founded in 2007, over 700,000 web and mobile developers have used Twilio’s cloud-based platform to integrate voice, SMS and MMS capabilities into software applications.  Eager to help Jeff Lawson build the future of communications, Bessemer provided seed capital for Twilio and backed the company at every stage. In June 2016, Twilio went public (NYSE: TWLO).

OvaScience makes miracles happen. Founded in 2011, with the goal of improving the treatment of infertility, the company assembled a team of scientists, physicians and advisers that are recognized leaders in the field of reproductive medicine. In 2015, baby Zain Rajani was born.  Zain was the first baby born with the assistance of OvaScience's first product (AUGMENT) which increases the success of in vitro fertilization (IVF) and uses the mothers own cellular energy to revitalize her egg.  For Bessemer, backing the OvaScience founders in 2011 was an easy decision.   We’d funded Michelle Dipp, Christoph Westphal, and Rich Aldrich before.  (In fact, we’ve funded Christoph five times!)  OvaScience (NASDAQ: OVAS) became a public company in 2012.

Blue Apron makes incredible home cooking easy and fun with a subscription grocery service that delivers original recipes and fresh ingredients to customers nationwide.  BVP was eager to support our and former Bessemer colleague, Matt Salzberg, with seed capital to build Blue Apron. We backed the company at every stage and in June 2017, Blue Apron went public (NYSE: APRN).

Founded in 2011, Twitch is the world’s leading social video platform and community for gamers. Each month, more than 100 million community members gather to watch and talk about video games with more than 1.7 million broadcasters. Twitch’s video platform is the backbone of both live and on-demand distribution for the entire video game ecosystem. Bessemer first invested in Twitch in 2012 following the company’s pivot from JustinTV.  In 2014, Twitch was sold to Amazon for ~$1 billion. (NASDAQ: AMZN)

Fuze (fka ThinkingPhones) offers intelligent communications in the cloud.  An innovator in developing mobile-enabled, analytics-driven business communications, Fuze seamlessly unifies voice, text, and conferencing services on a single cloud platform.  Bessemer first partnered with Fuze in 2012 and continues to support the company and its vision.

Periscope changed how we see the world.  Periscope is a live video streaming app developed by Kayvon Beykpour and Joe Bernstein.  The idea for Periscope was born in 2013, as Kayvon traveled abroad. He was in Istanbul when protests broke out in Taksim Square. He turned to Twitter for real-time updates but, while he could read about the protests, he was frustrated not to see them. Motivated by that experience, Kayvon and Joe started the company in February 2014.  Two months later, we provided seed capital to fund development of the app. Before launching their product, Periscope was acquired by Twitter (January 2015).   Periscope was launched in March 2015 and now has over 10 million registered users and 40 years of video watched per day.

Snapdeal.com is India's largest e-commerce marketplace. The New Delhi-based company was started by Wharton grad Kunal Bahl, as part of the dual degree M&T Engineering and Business program at Penn, and Rohit Bansal, an alumnus of IIT Delhi in February 2010. Originally launched as a daily deals platform, the company expanded in 2011 to become an online marketplace focused on India.  Today, Snapdeal is the largest online marketplace in India offering an assortment of 10 million products across diverse categories from over 100,000 sellers, shipping to 5,000+ towns and cities in India.  In 2011, our India team made Bessemer’s first investment in Snapdeal and we’ve enjoyed watching it grow.

Wix.com is a leading cloud-based development platform with more than 70 millions of users and 1.6M subscribers. Wix makes it easy for everyone to create a beautiful, professional web and mobile presence with their HTML5  drag and drop web editor. Wix was founded in 2006 by Avishai Abrahami, his brother, Nadav, and Gig Kaplan. Bessemer led the first institutional investor round in the summer of 2007 and continued to support Wix through its IPO in November 2013 (NASDAQ: WIX).

Skybox Imaging is revolutionizing the use of satellite imagery and derived information products to improve the profitability of companies operating in the global economy and the welfare of societies around the world.  In August 2014, Skybox was acquired by Google, Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG).