Have you heard of BloomReach? They’re building something big—big data marketing applications, to be exact—and today they announced a $25 million round led by NEA with return backers Lightspeed and Bain Capital Ventures. And while I suspect this company will become a very big story in its own right, this investment also feels like part [...]

“Big VC funds fail to deliver big returns. We have no funds in our portfolio that have raised more than $500m and returned more than 2x our capital after fees.” Kauffman Foundation, 2012 “Small funds have a better performance profile than large funds.” Silicon Valley Bank, 2009 Many smart venture capital observers have lamented the [...]

Note: this post was originally published as a guest column on GigaOm on Sept. 15, 2012 The many benefits Platform as a Service (PaaS) bring to the enterprise are well known and well publicized — chief among them the ability for developers to build applications faster than ever before. But as this space begins to [...]

Today we announced our investment in Desire2Learn, one of the largest and fastest growing cloud learning platforms for the education industry. The $80 million financing is the first ever for the company and is one of the largest investments we’ve made out of our new $2.6 billion fund. Over $1 trillion is spent on K-12 [...]

Dear Venture Conversations: My VC hates the name of my company. Should I change it? If your VC normally offers sound advice and hates the name for longer than one board meeting, it’s possible you have a naming mishap on your hands. In the absence of graver or more immediate threats to your company’s well-being, [...]

NEA has always sought to invest in disruptive companies that anticipate and address new market needs, and the explosion of data in various parts of the enterprise has been an important focus in recent years, as exemplified by our investments in Data Domain (acquired by EMC), Fusion IO (FIO), and Vertica (acquired by HP). Most [...]

Today SAY Media, the leading vertical media channel and publishing platform, announced that it has raised a $27 million round of financing led by NEA. Already a major force in the rapidly transforming digital media space, SAY currently reaches 400 million people around the world through its media services and technology platforms and has over [...]

Today Sony announced that it will acquire Gaikai, the fastest interactive cloud gaming delivery network. Often referred to as “Netflix for gaming,” Gaikai has revolutionized the delivery of high-fidelity, two-way interactive streaming content by leaping the latency gap, allowing users to get the same experience instantly through a web browser as on a local gaming [...]

If you asked most people today, they would probably agree with the notion that a college sophomore can develop technology or launch a business that can transform an entire industry and define a generation. Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg have already blazed that trail. But often, just when those student entrepreneurs are ready to take [...]

The most successful investors will tell you, there is much to be learned from the entrepreneurs and startup executives with whom we work on a daily basis. About drive. About passion. And about the grueling task of finding and keeping really good people who share that drive and that passion. While talking shop about this [...]