Index Ventures Announces New Partners and $1.25B to Back Seed, Venture and Growth Stage Companies
Shardul Shah appointed partner, Dick Costolo joins as venture partner; Index marks 5 years in San Francisco and 20 years since founding.
SAN FRANCISCO & LONDON – Following last month’s appointment of former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo as venture partner, Index Ventures today announces the promotion of Shardul Shah to partner. Shardul and Dick join Danny Rimer, Mike Volpi and Ilya Fushman as partners in the U.S.
Index Ventures today also confirms that it has closed its eighth venture fund, raising $550 million for seed and venture investments, following its third growth fund ($700 million) for later stage companies raised in 2015. Now marking five years in San Francisco and 20 years since its founding in Europe, Index will continue to invest in disruptive startups led by the best and most ambitious founders in the U.S., Europe and Israel.
Over the past 20 years, we've been fortunate to have partnered with some of the most visionary entrepreneurs," said Danny Rimer, who opened Index’s London office in 2002 and its San Francisco base in 2011. "With three new partners and two new funds added in less than a year, we’re eager to work with the next generation of founders and welcome their companies to the Index family.
Index's portfolio includes companies in 24 countries. These businesses generated combined revenues of $9.2 billion in 2015, employ 35,000 people and are currently recruiting for 2,700 new positions.
During the past two years, eight companies in Index’s portfolio went public, including Pure Storage, King, Just Eat and Hortonworks, while many others expanded significantly, including Adyen, BlaBlaCar, Funding Circle, Deliveroo, Slack and Sonos. Seven out of 10 Index’s investments originated at Seed or Series A (55% when excluding Seed) and Index continues to invest in its portfolio companies in later stages as they develop.
Shardul Shah joined Index in 2008 as an associate and worked at each of Index’ European offices before moving to San Francisco three years ago. His main focus has been on security, devops and enterprise software companies. “The need for speed requires enterprises to transform their tooling and how they enable teams to make decisions,” said Shah. “In that context, I look forward to working with some exciting entrepreneurs to build great companies.”
About Index Ventures
Index Ventures is a multi-stage venture capital firm founded to support the best and most ambitious entrepreneurs, wherever they emerge. With a global network and headquarters in London and San Francisco, Index has teamed up with founders in the U.S., Europe and Israel who are building the world’s next great companies.
New Index partners:
Dick Costolo
Dick Costolo is a Venture Partner at Index Ventures and the Chief Executive and co-founder of a startup that is reimagining the path to personal fitness. Dick was most recently Chief Executive of Twitter from 2010 to 2015. Prior to joining Twitter, Dick co-founded and ran three startups, including FeedBurner, which was acquired by Google in 2007. The former improv comedian has been a consultant on HBO’s “Silicon Valley” and currently sits on the boards of Patreon and IfOnly. Dick holds a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor as well as an honorary Doctor of Laws degree. He currently lives in Marin County with his family.
Shardul Shah
Shardul Shah is a Partner at Index Ventures and focuses on security, devops and enterprise software. He currently works with entrepreneurs at Datadog, SourceClear, Nginx, Minio, DoubleDutch, Outbrain and one stealth security company. He has also supported investments in Adallom (acquired by Microsoft), Lacoon (acquired by CheckPoint), Koality (acquired by Docker), Moleskine, Squarespace and Dropbox. Prior to Index, Shardul was an associate at Summit Partners. He holds a B.A. in Economics and a B.A. in Biology, with a specialization in Immunology, from the University of Chicago. He currently lives in San Francisco.
Published — Feb. 3, 2016
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