MEET THE CRV TEAM

Saar Gur

650.687.5600

Email

Saar is passionate about discovering and growing early-stage companies and focuses on CRV’s consumer and internet investments.  Saar currently sits on the boards of Progress Financial, Magnetic, Wonderhill, Altius and Blippy (incubated at CRV), and was involved in CRV’s seed investment in social games company LilGreenPatch (acquired by Playdom), Viki and Storenvy. Saar was also involved with CRV’s investments in Twitter and Scribd.

Areas of greatest interest

Products that customers LOVE

Social Media
E-commerce
Broadband Entertainment
Local
Consumer Finance

Prior Angel Investments

Admob (acquired by Google)
Flixster (acquired by Warner Bros.)
RockYou
Xobni
Voicestar (acquired by Marchex)

Past Lives

Prior to joining CRV, Saar was a co-founder of Brightroll, the world’s leading Internet video advertising network Saar was also the co-founder of Carebadges.com (acquired by Facebook Causes) and remains an active advisor to Causes.  Previously, Saar was VP of Customer Acquisition, and responsible for the P&L of Adteractive, a leading performance-based marketing company with over $120m in revenues achieved with no outside capital. Most recently, Saar launched FounderDating, an endeavor aimed at helping talented entrepreneurs find co-founders and compelling business ideas.

What he does for fun

When Saar is not working with tech entrepreneurs, he loves kitesurfing, helping his wife with her offline food business, and spending time with his newborn son.

Joined CRV

2007

Education

MBA, Stanford University
BS, Biochemistry, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Current Projects
Updates

Links

Honors

 

Press

  • 01/27/2012

    TechCrunch: Bringing A Startup Together: FounderDating Launches Matching Site, Expands To NY, Boston, LA   more

  • 11/15/2011

    Saar Gur in a Forbes Video: How Recruiters Are Finding Top Talent   more

  • 10/26/2011

    Sincerely on Gigaom: Sincerely secures $3M funding, debuts greeting card line   more

  • 10/26/2011

    Sincerely on TechCrunch: Sincerely Raises $3 Million To Deliver Real-World Postcards, Holiday Cards On The…   more

  • 10/26/2011

    Sincerely on Mashable: Never Mind Apple: Sincerely Raises $3 Million for Cards Competitor   more

  • 10/26/2011

    Sincerely on CNET: Mobile postcard startup Sincerely finally hot, now that Apple is a rival   more

  • 10/20/2011

    Viki on TechCrunch: $20M In International Video Site ViKi   more

  • 09/15/2011

    Saar Gur in The Wall Street Journal: Start-Ups Gain Financing Leverage   more

  • 06/24/2011

    OneLogin Raises $1.5M For Enterprise Cloud-Based Identity Platform   more

  • 06/13/2011

    Magnetic in iMedia Connection: 5 new (and powerful) targeting methods   more

  • 05/04/2011

    LikeALittle on TechCrunch: Investors Don’t Just Like LikeALittle A Little, They Like It A Lot   more

  • 05/04/2011

    Flixter on TechCrunch: Warner Bros. Acquires Social Movie Site Flixster (And Rotten Tomatoes)   more

  • 05/04/2011

    RPX Announces Pricing of Initial Public Offering   more

  • 02/02/2011

    Millennial Media Named Runner Up for Best Enterprise Application Crunchie   more

  • 02/02/2011

    Viki Wins Crunchie for Best International Startup   more

  • 01/27/2011

    Storenvy in TechCrunch: Storenvy Finds A Number Of Impressive Buyers For Its $1.5 Million Round   more

  • 01/17/2011

    Forbes:  Where Are The Techies? Snow Kiting!   more

  • 12/08/2010

    Viki in The Los Angeles Times: ViKi: Making online video speak in tongues   more

  • 12/08/2010

    ViKi on TechCrunch: ViKi Raises $4.3 Million from VC All-Stars to Translate the World’s Video   more

  • 11/23/2010

    Progress Financial in the LA Times: Start-up makes small loans to low-income Latino immigrants   more

  • 11/17/2010

    Altius Education Raises $18.6 Million in Series B Funding to Fuel Growth   more

  • 10/26/2010

    Blippy on TechCrunch: Sephora Smelt It, Blippy Dealt It. Fragrance Retailer Takes Shopping Social   more

  • 10/22/2010

    Wonderhill on VentureBeat: Kabam acquires social game developer WonderHill   more

  • 10/21/2010

    TechCrunch: Unsubscribe.com Raises $2.1 Million To Help People Get To InBox Zero   more

  • 10/06/2010

    Blippy on TechCrunch: Blippy Users Sharing More Than $500K In Purchases Per Day   more

  • 09/22/2010

    Saar Gur in the Wall Street Journal: Web Start-Up Values Soar   more

  • 08/13/2010

    CRV Partner Saar Gur Chosen for Reuters/Venture Capital Journal’s Top 10 VCs Under 36   more

  • 07/19/2010

    Magnetic on AdExchanger.com: Peralta Joins Search Retargeting Company Magnetic As COO   more

  • 07/19/2010

    Magnetic Bolsters Executive Team by Adding Mike Peralta as COO   more

  • 07/08/2010

    Progreso Financiero Closes $28 Million in New Funding from Madrone Capital and Greylock Partners to…   more

  • 06/16/2010

    Magnetic on paidContent:  Re-Targeter Magnetic Raises $5 Million First Round   more

  • 06/16/2010

    Magnetic on paidContent:  Re-Targeter Magnetic Raises $5 Million First Round   more

  • 04/22/2010

    Blippy on TechCrunch:  August Capital And CRV Spend $11.2 Million At Blippy. Valuation Now $46.2…   more

  • 04/22/2010

    Blippy in The New York Times: What Danger Do Blippy and Swipely Pose to Amazon?   more

  • 04/22/2010

    Blippy in The New York Times: For Web’s New Wave, Sharing Details Is the Point   more

  • 04/01/2010

    Blibby on TechCrunch: Blippy Does An End Run, Harnesses Gmail OAuth To Re-Enable Amazon Support   more

  • 03/10/2010

    Blippy on TechCrunch: Blippy Gets A Facebook-Inspired Redesign And An Important New Privacy Feature   more

  • 03/08/2010

    Blippy on NPR: Blippy.com Shares Intimate Financial Details   more

  • 03/05/2010

    Blippy in LA Times: Blippy.com gives the world a peek inside your wallet—and that’s the…   more

  • 02/22/2010

    Blippy in Financial Times: New social sites post more personal information   more

  • 02/03/2010

    Blippy in TechCrunch: Stephen Colbert: Blippy Is More Exciting Than Going Through Old Receipts   more

  • 01/25/2010

    Blippy in TIME: Public Spending   more

  • 01/25/2010

    Blippy in CNN: Blippy tells the world what you buy   more

  • 01/25/2010

    Founder Dating: It’s Not What You Think   more

  • 01/20/2010

    Blippy in TechCrunch: Facebook Beacon Done Right? Retailers Start Embracing Blippy.   more

  • 01/20/2010

    Progress Financial in The Wall Street Journal: FDIC:Banks Not Regularly Used By More Than 25%…   more

  • 01/20/2010

    Progress Financial in San Francisco Chronicle: 25% of U.S. households have limited bank access   more

  • 01/20/2010

    Progress Financial in Bloomberg: Gutierrez Says Progreso Has Made Over 30,000 Loans: Venture   more

  • 01/20/2010

    Blippy in The Next Web: The Purchase Sharing Tool Blippy Is Now Open – Lands…   more

  • 01/20/2010

    Blippy in All Things D: Blippy Opens to Public and Scores High-Profile Investors–Including Twitter’s Evan…   more

  • 01/20/2010

    Blippy in TechCrunch: Blippy Shows Its Own Funding On Blippy. And Now Everyone Can See.   more

  • 01/14/2010

    Wall Street Journal - Are You Ready to Tweet Credit and Debit Card Purchases?   more

Events

  • 08/23/2011

    FounderDating - Bay Area Summer Event    more

  • 07/08/2010

    Saar Gur will be speaking at Marketing in the Digital Media Age Event in Palo Alto on July 8th (Palo Alto, CA)    more

  • 02/23/2010

    Saar wil be speaking on a panel at LeadCon (Las Vegas)    more

  • 02/09/2010

    Saar will be at Seattle FounderDating (Seattle)    more

  • 01/28/2010

    Saar will be at San Francisco FounderDating (San Francisco)    more

  • 01/08/2010

    Saar will be at the Crunchies where CRV was nominated for Best VC Firm

  • 01/08/2010

    Saar will be speaking at the Carnegie Mellon Silicon Valley Trek at Plug n Play

  • 06/06/2009

    Volunteer with Saar at the HandsOn Bay Area VentureOut event    more

  • 05/12/2009

    Join Saar Gur at Social Games Meetup where he is presenting “Generating Wealth in Social Games” (San Francisco, CA)    more

  • 04/22/2009

    Join Saar Gur at AdSpace 2009 where he will be on the Advisory Board (San Francisco, CA)

  • 03/04/2009

    Join Saar Gur at LeadsCon where he will be a panelist on The Future of Lead Generation - Getting to 2.0 (Las Vegas, NV)

  • 10/02/2008

    Join Saar Gur at STARTonomics (San Francisco, CA)

  • 09/09/2008

    Join Saar Gur at Game Developers Conference 09 where he will be moderating a panel on raising financing for your startup. (San Francisco, CA)

  • 04/22/2008

    Join Saar Gur at Leads Con where he will be moderating the startup showcase (Las Vegas, NV)

  • 04/22/2008

    Join Saar Gur at Web 2.0 - moderating a panel on Facebook applications (San Francisco, CA)

  • 02/27/2008

    Open Social Platforms: the Economics of Information Flow Featuring Hal Varian (Palo Alto, CA)