Charles Rivers Ventures

INVEST

Investing in Visionary Entrepreneurs

At CRV, our approach to investing is simple: we seek out visionary entrepreneurs, and give them the support they need to build great companies from the ground up.

Meet our Team

team member GD (Ram) Ramkumar Max Gazor Hassan Ahmed Devdutt Yellurkar Jack Genest Sarah Reed Mike Zak Rick Burnes Ted Dintersmith Chris Baldwin George Zachary Bruce Sachs Saar Gur Jon Auerbach Izhar Armony Bill Tai

Mike Zak

BUILD

Great Entrepreneurs Build Great Companies 

We focus on highly charged industry sectors which we believe are rich in opportunity. Take a look at our current portfolio of companies—ones we believe will define the future of these market categories: 

Communication & Technology

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  CRV Team

  Jon Auerbach

  Public Mobile

  Public Mobile offers unlimited talk and text at the same low price for everybody.

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  CRV Team

  Bruce Sachs

  iControl Networks

  Palo Alto-based iControl Networks is a venture-backed software and services company providing award-winning, mass-market solutions for the remote monitoring market, designed for residential and small-business use. iControl Networks partners with home security companies, Internet service providers and telecommunication companies to bring its award-winning solutions to market. Investors in iControl include Intel and Charles River Ventures. Visit http://www.icontrol.com.

  06/21/2011

  VentureBeat: Home energy network provider iControl raises $50M   more

  06/20/2011

  TechCrunch: iControl Lands Over $50M For Broadband Home Management Software   more

  06/20/2011

  peHUB: iControl Networks Inks $50M Series D   more

  06/20/2011

  SF Business Times: IControl Networks raises $50M for energy management   more

  06/09/2011

  GigaOM - The startup behind Comcast’s home service: iControl   more

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  CRV Team

  Bill Tai

  Sensr.net

  Setup a network camera and we’ll watch it for you. Check on it any time.

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  CRV Team

  Mike Zak

  Rive Technology

  Rive Technology, Inc is a Cambridge, Mass.-based start-up and developer of an advanced catalyst technology that makes the oil-to-gasoline conversion process more efficient.

  http://www.rivetechnology.com/

  12/15/2010

  Rive Technology on Xconomy: Rive Technology Raises $25M to Help…more

  08/03/2010

  Rive Technology and Grace Enter Joint Development and Commercialization Agreement   more

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Software & Services

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  Saar Gur

  Progress Financial

  Progress Financial Corporation is a consumer finance company that offers unsecured credit to Hispanics that lack established credit and banking relationships. Customers are hard working immigrants who have been in the US for 10 years and at the same job for 3.3 years. Under the brand name, Progreso Financiero, the company markets, sells and disburses $500 - $5000 loans in Spanish from a network of distribution points located inside large Hispanic supermarkets and high traffic malls. Currently locations are in the Bay Area, but the company has plans to expand rapidly to other parts of California and the United States. For more information, visit http://www.progressfin.com.

  11/23/2010

  Progress Financial in the LA Times: Start-up makes small loans…more

  07/08/2010

  Progreso Financiero Closes $28 Million in New Funding from Madrone…more

  01/20/2010

  Progress Financial in The Wall Street Journal: FDIC:Banks Not Regularly…more

  01/20/2010

  Progress Financial in San Francisco Chronicle: 25% of U.S. households…more

  01/20/2010

  Progress Financial in Bloomberg: Gutierrez Says Progreso Has Made Over…more

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  Spool

  Save articles and videos for later. Even offline. https://getspool.com/

  01/30/2012

  GigaOM: Spool’s next bet is on collaborative curation   more

  01/04/2012

  Spool on AllThingsD: Spool Raises Funding to Help You Take…more

  01/04/2012

  Spool on TechCrunch: Spool Raises $1 Million To Let You…more

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  Izhar Armony

  Aveksa

  Aveksa provides a comprehensive, enterprise-class, access governance, risk management and compliance solution. Aveksa automates the monitoring, reporting, certification and remediation of user entitlements and roles; enables role discovery and lifecycle management; and delivers unmatched visibility into the true state of user access rights. With Aveksa, business, security and compliance teams can effectively collaborate and enforce accountability. Our growing customer base includes leading Fortune 200 organizations in financial services, healthcare, transportation and manufacturing. For more information, go to http://www.aveksa.com.

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  Izhar Armony

  HubSpot

  HubSpot Inbound Marketing Software helps our 4,000+ customers generate traffic and leads through their websites, and convert more of those leads into customers.

  HubSpot software includes tools for: blogging, landing pages, lead nurturing, marketing analytics, content management, social media, SEO, CRM integration, email marketing, and more.

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Media & Entertainment

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  Jon Auerbach

  LiveGamer

  Live Gamer enables a complete marketplace solution for the player-to-player trading of virtual items. Through our partnerships with leading publishers and developers worldwide, players now have a convenient, secure, and reliable outlet to buy and sell virtual goods and objects. Only Live Gamer provides virtual trading the way it should be: Safe. Simple. In Game. For more information, visit http://www.livegamer.com.

  11/14/2011

  TechCrunch: Virtual Goods Gaming Marketplace Live Gamer Raises $8.5M   more

  10/08/2009

  Live Gamer doubles down on virtual goods with Twofish acquisition   more

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  George Zachary

  Millennial Media

  Millennial Media is the industry’s leading mobile media networks company—leveraging our quality advertising networks and extensive reach of the lucrative ‘millennial’ audience to define the mobile advertising industry.

  03/29/2012

  Congratulations to Milennial Media on their IPO   more

  01/05/2012

  Millennial Media on GigaOm: Mobile ad network Millennial Media files…more

  05/25/2011

  Millennial Media on TechCrunch: Millennial Media Acquires Mobile Data Startup…more

  02/02/2011

  Millennial Media Named Runner Up for Best Enterprise Application Crunchie   more

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  Saar Gur

  WonderHill

  WonderHill creates social games for you to play with your friends and family online. When building games, we think of the kind, clean, unspoiled spot down deep inside every one of us, that maybe the world has made us forget, and maybe our games can help to recall (paraphrasing Mr. Walt Disney). Our mission is to create the most happy and magical online games in the world.

  10/22/2010

  Wonderhill on VentureBeat: Kabam acquires social game developer WonderHill   more

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  Bill Tai

  Glyde

  Glyde has developed a next-generation ecommerce site that provides an easy and cheap way to buy, sell, and organize DVD movies, music CDs, video games, and books. http://www.glyde.com

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EMERGE

We Back Emerging Industry Leaders

RPX

SpotlightOn: RPX

RPX invests in broad patent portfolios to protect their large and small technology clients against lawsuits from patent trolling firms.  The result of such a rational solution?  Patent-holders are fairly compensated, while the technology industry spends more time innovating and less time litigating.

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ZenDesk

SpotlightOn: ZenDesk

Ever had a moment of Zen courtesy of customer service?  Didn’t think so.  Zendesk aims to change that.  CEO Mikkel Svane believes that by enabling companies to easily track all customer service interactions, they’re creating a simpler and more intimate relationship between company and customer that results in… well, moments of Zen. 

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SpiderCloud Wireless

SpotlightOn: SpiderCloud Wireless

The reason your indoor wireless coverage can be so spotty is because your carrier doesn’t want to spend the money to create a signal robust enough to reach indoors with the same data and voice reliability. SpiderCloud Wireless takes your carriers existing architecture, and extends its reach to your indoor area, making spotty indoor coverage a thing of the past.

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Scribd

SpotlightOn: Scribd

From start-up to world’s largest online library of original writing, Scribd has turned reading and publishing into an online social experience.  With over 50-million users, co-founders Trip Adler and Jared Friedman are well on their way to achieving their goal of making Scribd a top 20 website.

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Rive Technology

SpotlightOn: Rive Technology

They may look like ordinary grains of sand to the average eye, but Rive sees piles of cash in its revolutionary oil refining catalyst.  By helping oil refineries produce more gasoline and less asphalt from their crude, Rive increases refinery profits, while reducing their environmental impact.

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