IVP

IVP was founded by Reid W. Dennis in 1980. When IVP announced its 18th fund in 2024, it mourned Dennis as “a venture capital legend” and gave his dates as 1926–2024.⁠[1]

Todd Chaffee joined IVP in 2000 after six years at Visa and went on to lead investments in later-stage companies such as CoinbaseCoinbaseCoinbase is a U.S. operator of crypto asset trading platforms, founded in 2012 by Brian Armstrong and Fred Ehrsam, whose listed parent is Coinbase Global, Inc.; it went public through a direct listing on Nasdaq (ticker COIN) in April 2021 and joined the S&P 500 in May 2025. It provides crypto trading, custody, staking, and stablecoin-related services, launched USDC with Circle, develops the Ethereum layer-2 network Base, and acquired the crypto options exchange Deribit in 2025; its venture investing operates as Coinbase Ventures.Open the full entry, Compass, Klarna, Kayak, Omniture, Pandora and Twitter, many of which later went public.⁠[2]

IVP’s first European investment was in Helsinki-based MySQL in 2006; the company was later acquired by Sun Microsystems for about $1 billion.⁠[3]

In 2008, IVP closed its $600 million 12th fund. Dennis, then 82, still attended partners’ meetings once a week and had been a partner in every earlier fund.⁠[4]

Institutional Venture Partners XIII, L.P. made its first sale on June 30, 2010 and raised a total of $750 million from 91 investors; the managers of its general partner were Todd C. Chaffee, Norman A. Fogelsong, Stephen J. Harrick, J. Sanford Miller and Dennis B. Phelps.⁠[5]

Fund XIV made its first sale on June 14, 2012 and raised $1 billion from 99 investors, with Jules A. Maltz newly listed among the managers of the general partner.⁠[6]

Fund XV made its first sale on April 21, 2015 and raised $1.4 billion from 159 investors, with Somesh Dash and Eric Liaw newly listed as managing directors of the general partner.⁠[7]

Fund XVI made its first sale on September 20, 2017 and raised $1.5 billion from 181 investors; the filing gives IVP’s address on Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park.⁠[8]

In May 2020, Chaffee said IVP was then investing its 16th fund and that he would not make new investments from the next fund.⁠[2]

On June 17, 2020, Institutional Venture Partners XVII, L.P. filed a Form D with the SEC listing an indefinite offering amount and no sale yet; the managers of its general partner included Chaffee, Dash, Harrick, Liaw, Thomas Loverro, Maltz, Miller and Phelps.⁠[9]

In November 2020, online events platform Hopin raised a $125 million Series B co-led by existing investor IVP and Tiger Global; its CEO put the valuation at $2.125 billion.⁠[10]

In November 2020, Ajay Vashee, Dropbox’s former CFO, who spent eight years there and helped take it public in 2018, was announced as joining IVP in January 2021; IVP had led Dropbox’s Series B round.⁠[11]

In January 2023, AI translation company DeepL confirmed a fundraise at a €1 billion valuation led by new backer IVP, with Bessemer Venture Partners, Atomico and WiL participating.⁠[12]

On August 14, 2023, IVP announced its first office outside the Bay Area, in London; Eric Liaw relocated there with his family and Alex Lim returned to IVP as a general partner. European exits or IPOs it cited included Supercell, UiPath, Wise and MySQL.⁠[13]

In January 2024, AI search company PerplexityPerplexityPerplexity is a San Francisco–based artificial intelligence company founded in 2022, known for its “answer engine” that gives answers with cited sources, and it has also launched products such as the Comet browser.Open the full entry raised $73.6 million in a Series B round led by IVP, with existing backers including NEA, valuing it at about $520 million.⁠[14]

Fund XVIII made its first sale on October 6, 2022; an amended Form D signed on March 19, 2024 shows $1.6 billion raised from 128 investors, with Ajay Vashee and Catherine Wilhelm added among the managers of the general partner.⁠[15]

On March 20, 2024, IVP announced the 18th fund in a post, describing AI as “a sweeping technological shift”; its general partners were then Somesh Dash, Eric Liaw, Ajay Vashee, Cack Wilhelm, Steve Harrick, Tom Loverro and Alex Lim.⁠[1]

In April 2024, Liaw said IVP has no managing partner or CEO; former general partners Chaffee, Norm Fogelsong and Sandy Miller had become advisory partners.⁠[3]

On December 2, 2025, IVP announced its partnership with Kalshi, the prediction-market company built by Tarek MansourTarek MansourTarek Mansour is an American entrepreneur and the co-founder and CEO of Kalshi, a prediction market and event contract trading platform. After graduating from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he founded Kalshi with Luana Lopes Lara in 2018; the company was designated a contract market by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) in 2020 and began offering U.S. election contracts in 2024 following litigation.Open the full entry and Luana Lopes Lara.⁠[16]

In December 2025, software delivery platform Harness raised a $240 million Series E led by Goldman SachsGoldman SachsGoldman Sachs is an American financial services group headquartered in New York whose businesses include investment banking, securities trading, asset management, and wealth management. It traces its origins to the commercial paper business Marcus Goldman founded in 1869; it listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 1999 under the ticker GS and became a bank holding company in 2008. David Solomon serves as chairman and chief executive officer.Open the full entry at a $5.5 billion post-money valuation, including a $40 million tender offer with participation from IVP, Menlo Ventures and Unusual Ventures.⁠[17]

On February 3, 2026, IVP announced its partnership with the founding team of presentation company Gamma.⁠[18]

On May 13, 2026, IVP announced that Shravan Narayen had become its newest general partner.⁠[19]

On June 3, 2026, IVP announced its partnership with Mikey Shulman and the team at AI music company Suno.⁠[20]

On September 29, 2026, Institutional Venture Partners XIX, L.P. filed a Form D listing an indefinite offering amount and no sale yet; the related persons named were Somesh Dash, Stephen Harrick, Eric Liaw, Thomas Loverro, Ajay Vashee, Alexander Lim, Dennis Phelps and Catherine Wilhelm.⁠[21]

As of October 2026, IVP’s website says its track record spans five decades and that it backs just about 10 breakout companies a year at critical inflection points.⁠[22]

Companies listed in its website portfolio include AnthropicAnthropicAnthropic is an artificial intelligence research and product company founded in 2021 that develops the Claude models, assistant, and tools such as Claude Code, and operates as a public benefit corporation. Dario Amodei and Daniela Amodei are its co-founders, and its research covers model safety, interpretability, and steerability.Open the full entry, Perplexity, Robinhood, Coinbase, Datadog, CrowdStrikeCrowdStrikeCrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. is a cybersecurity company headquartered in Austin, Texas, co-founded in 2011 by George Kurtz and Dmitri Alperovitch. It sells subscription services for endpoint protection, threat intelligence, identity and cloud security through its cloud-native Falcon platform and a single lightweight sensor, and listed on Nasdaq in 2019 under the symbol CRWD. On July 19, 2024, a content update to its Falcon sensor caused large numbers of Windows systems around the world to crash.Open the full entry, Figma, Slack, Dropbox, Snap, Uber, Netflix, Supercell and Hims & Hers.⁠[23]

IVP: Official website: https://www.ivp.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[22]

X: Official account: https://x.com/ivp (opens in a new window)⁠[22]

LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry: Official account: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ivpvc/ (opens in a new window)⁠[22]