Year in Review 2019
To our founders, leaders, and friends
With every new investment this year came a new beginning for Bessemer, including some exciting inflection points for our leaders and companies.
Looking back on 2019
- 5 IPOs: Pinterest, PagerDuty, Fiverr, Life360, and TeamViewer
- Notable highlights: Anaqua was acquired by Astorg, Dynamic Yield was acquired by McDonald’s, Habana Labs was acquired by Intel, SendGrid was acquired by Twilio, United Capital was acquired by Goldman Sachs, Verodinacquired by FireEye, and Viagogo entered an agreement to acquire StubHub.
- Over 30 new companies joined our portfolio
- $6 billion, total assets under management: In addition to BVP X, our $1.85 billion fund, we launched a $525 million growth fund. To lead Bessemer’s growth practice, we welcomed Elliott Robinson as our newest partner.
From the early days to IPO
From early-stage to growth, we’re honored to be part of our founders’ stories.
Bessemer’s backstory on Pinterest–from Series A to IPO: Jeremy Levine remembers meeting Ben and Evan in a small Palo Alto apartment on a rainy day before writing Pinterest’s Series A check.
How PagerDuty became the central nervous system for digital operations: Ethan Kurzweil shares what it was like to invest early in the DevOps category, and explains the forces that vaulted PagerDuty to market leadership.
Fiverr’s evolution into a global marketplace for digital services: Adam Fisher explains the marketplace dynamics that underpin Fiverr’s thriving freelancer economy and what made the company “crazy enough” to work.
Roadmaps
Our investors share their insights on a few roadmaps derived from our experiences working alongside entrepreneurs and companies we’ve advised over the last half-century:
Our growing community
We’re thankful for our community of leaders for sharing their learnings, best practices, and challenges with each other.
Joining us this year as mentors within our community, our executives-in-residenceshare their functional expertise and provide counsel for our founders and leaders.
At our fourth annual Cloud 100 Celebration, in partnership with Forbes, we recognized the top 100 founders and CEOs and toasted to the undeniable power of the cloud. Read more about Cloud 100.
Highlights and news from our companies
Looking ahead
These are some of the roadmaps and opportunities we are diving deeply into for 2020.
Ethan Kurzweil on gaming and e-sports
“Gaming is now one of the largest forms of entertainment in the United States, with more than $100B+ spent annually, surpassing other major mediums like television. It’s a new form of a social network where you can spend time hanging with friends and family, even outside of the constructs of ‘winning the game.’ With that in mind, we’re spending most of our time looking in three spaces: social identity, infrastructure, and new studios.”
Amit Karp on data infrastructure
“There is a desperate need to simplify the complex ‘plumbing’ required to organize and access data. This is especially true as cloud data lakes are used to store exponentially growing volumes of data and with the rising importance of accessing this data for almost every function in the enterprise.”
Brian Feinstein on vertical software
“Cloud maturity and mobile ubiquity have created conditions for software to revolutionize any industry. In 2020, we expect Bessemer portfolio companies like Procore, Shopify, Toast, ServiceTitan, Restaurant365, Weave, Mambu, and Disco transform how many vertical markets operate.”
Talia Goldberg on remote work
“Eliminating geography as a constraint to talent is a game-changer for businesses. Now that most knowledge workers can communicate and collaborate remotely, going to work is more of a state of being than a destination. Workplaces of the future will rely on new software and systems that reimagine team architectures and habits and reinvent operations to serve a global and distributed workforce.”
David Cowan on drones
“Drones are transforming how field workers safely and accurately survey job sites across industries in construction, agriculture, energy, and more. We see drone solutions and software as major opportunities in a $6 billion global market.”
Alex Ferrara on SaaS trends
“One of the most surprising acquisitions of 2019 was McDonald’s purchase of DynamicYield, a Bessemer portfolio company. I don’t think any of us would have predicted that the world’s most recognizable burger chain would be the ultimate buyer, and yet I don’t think this is an anomaly. In 2020, we’re going to see more non-traditional buyers acquire SaaS companies as businesses in every industry adopt the cloud as part of a broader digital transformation.”
To the next decade
We’re incredibly fortunate to partner with our founders, leaders, and friends. Thank you for sharing your journey with us.