The Venture Codex

Participated · Series C · Jan 2016

Big Switch Networks builds intelligent, automated and flexible networks for data center and cloud customers. The company offers two primary solutions: Big Monitoring Fabric, a network packet broker for pervasive security and monitoring of data center and cloud traffic, and Big Cloud Fabric, a switching fabric that supports choice of switching hardware for OpenStack, VMware, container and big data use cases. Leadership includes Founder Kyle Forster and CEO Douglas Murray. The company has offices in Tokyo, Melbourne, London and Istanbul in addition to its Santa Clara base. It has raised over $120M in total funding and plans to use new capital to drive further sales and product expansion. Big Switch Networks is a Santa Clara-based provider of hyperscale-inspired networking technologies for data centers. Its products include Big Monitoring Fabric, a next-generation network monitoring fabric, and Big Cloud Fabric, a data center fabric built using whitebox or britebox switches and an SDN controller. The Big Cloud Fabric is targeted at new data center pods such as OpenStack private cloud, VMware NSX, big data, and VDI. The company is led by CEO Douglas Murray and was founded by Kyle Forster. It serves customers across the US, APAC and EMEA in verticals including tech, financial services, government, service providers, and higher education. The company intends to use the new funds to continue to drive adoption and has secured $94M in total funding since 2010. Big Switch Networks builds software-defined networking products that provide an open architecture with a common data model, controller and open APIs. Its platform is based on the OpenFlow standard and aims to turn the data center into a programmable, software-driven stack. The company describes a three-tier architecture that works northbound with the application tier and southbound with the data plane tier. Big Switch has developed an ecosystem of providers including Juniper Networks, Arista and F5, alongside newer vendors such as Piston Cloud and Cloudscaling. Financially, it recently raised $6.5 million from Intel Capital, bringing total funding to $45 million from investors including Goldman Sachs, Index Ventures, Khosla Ventures and Redpoint. The company competes against legacy incumbents like Cisco and evolving rivals such as VMware and Dell following VMware's acquisition of Nicira. Big Switch Networks provides a platform-independent SDN architecture that leverages industry standards and open APIs to enable network programmability and data center network virtualization. Its open SDN approach has fostered an ecosystem of physical and virtual switching partners and accelerated development of networking applications. Products are in customer trials today, and the company reports it has been generating revenue since inception. The company intends to use new funding to expand engineering, sales, and marketing teams and to hire additional top-tier talent to meet demand for production-ready SDN solutions. Management positions the platform as a disruptive alternative to closed, proprietary networking systems and aims to broaden industry adoption. Founded in March 2010, Big Switch previously closed a $14M Series A and continues to develop its open ecosystem to address datacenter networking limitations. Big Switch Networks is building a platform to virtualize enterprise networks based on the OpenFlow standard. The company plans to commercialize network virtualization technologies derived from Stanford University research to give network owners better control and optimization capabilities. It aims to become the 'VMware of networking for the private cloud'. Big Switch has joined the newly formed Open Networking Foundation to promote OpenFlow and other SDN technologies. The ONF was created by large network operators including Deutsche Telekom, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Verizon, and Yahoo. The company was co-founded by Guido Appenzeller and Kyle Forster, and its board includes industry veterans such as Mark Leslie, Bill Meehan, Shirish Sathaye, and Mike Volpi.

Participated · Series A · Mar 2015

91APP is a Taipei-based startup that helps small merchants launch mobile e-commerce apps by building iOS and Android apps and offering a web-based backend for inventory and content management. The platform includes standard commerce features plus extras such as location-based push notifications, Facebook integration, in-app loyalty cards for O2O promotions, and analytics to track product performance. The company claims about 1,000 brands use its platform and says merchants can set up apps in a few hours, making it faster and less expensive than developing in-house. 91APP monetizes through a setup fee of a few hundred U.S. dollars and by taking a 2.5–5% cut of transactions processed through the apps. Founder Steven Ho has prior exits (bid.com.tw to eBay and Monday Tech to Yahoo), reflecting founder experience in e-commerce. The company is focused on expansion into Southeast Asia to target mobile-first internet users and grow its merchant base.

Participated · Equity · Dec 2013

Zenverge is a Santa Clara, California–based fabless semiconductor company that develops advanced content networking ICs built around its patented ZEN architecture. Its ICs are deployed in operator gateways, media servers and cloud infrastructure to enable pay-TV services and a ubiquitous TV Everywhere experience. The company supports streaming of live and recorded content to tablets, smartphones, game consoles and streaming clients, as well as seamless wireless TV and optimized DVR storage. Led by CEO Amir Mobini, Zenverge focuses on content networking solutions for home media gateways and related digital media devices. The company closed an $11M financing to support a revenue ramp and to enhance its portfolio of content networking ICs for the home media gateway market. Zenverge is a Santa Clara, California-based fabless semiconductor company focused on Advanced Content Networking ICs built around its patented ZEN architecture. The company describes the ZEN architecture as a core technology for next-generation digital media devices. Led by CEO Amir Mobini, Zenverge closed a financing (amount undisclosed) to support its growth. The company intends to use the funds to accelerate deployment of media gateways through its list of tier-1 operators. Zenverge also plans to accelerate its roadmap of higher-performance ICs and lower-cost system solutions. No operating metrics or revenue figures were disclosed in the article. Zenverge develops Advanced Media ICs built around the patented ZEN architecture to power next‑generation digital media devices such as HDTVs, Blu‑ray recorders, set‑top boxes, multimedia NAS devices, headless gateways, media streamers and movers, portable device adapters, PCs and network video equipment. Led by CEO Amir Mobini, the company supplies silicon targeted at cable, telco and satellite markets and intends to develop unified solutions for those markets. Following the financing, Zenverge plans to use the proceeds to accelerate support and growth, expand adoption of its existing products, develop unified solutions for cable, telco and satellite markets with Entropic, and continue its development activities. The company is headquartered in Cupertino, California. Its core product strategy centers on the ZEN architecture as the foundation for its Advanced Media IC lineup. No operating metrics were disclosed in the article. Zenverge develops Advanced Media integrated circuits for consumer and professional applications. The company is headquartered in Cupertino, California. It closed a $30M Series C round to support growth. Zenverge will use the new capital to ramp production and expand marketing and development activities. The funding is intended to broaden the company’s product offerings. Ken Lawler of Battery Ventures joined the company’s board in conjunction with the financing.

Led · Series C · May 2011

Crown Bioscience develops platform technologies to support oncology and metabolic-disease drug discovery and translational research. Founded in 2006 and led by Dr. Jean-Pierre Wery, the company offers platforms including HuPrime®, HuKemia®, HuBase™, HuMark™, HuTrial™ and HuSignature™. It operates in China (Beijing and Jiangsu Taicang), the United Kingdom (Precos, Ltd. in Nottingham) and the United States (North Carolina), with business offices in Boston, Princeton, RTP, Phoenix, Milan and Shanghai. The company closed a $26.55 million Series D financing to fund expansion of its platforms. The financing closed on April 25 and was led by Lilly Asia Ventures Fund II L.P. Crown positions these investments to scale its platform offerings and better support drug development partners. Crown Bioscience provides oncology R&D partnership and services to the biopharmaceutical industry, helping partners identify promising compounds and develop biomarker and patient‑stratification strategies. The company deploys capabilities across target validation, protein engineering, fragment‑based drug design, medicinal/computational chemistry, formulation, DMPK, quantitative biology, pharmacology and biomarker discovery. It acts as an external drug discovery engine to complement partners' internal R&D efforts. Led by co‑founder and CEO Alex Wu, Crown Bioscience serves global partners and maintains offices in Santa Clara, Indianapolis, Beijing and Taicang. The company plans to expand services in integrated cancer drug discovery and translational oncology and to pursue new initiatives in other therapeutic areas. Financially, the company recently closed a US$28.8m Series C financing.