Based in Silicon Valley, we are currently investing a $255 million fund – our third. Companies we’ve invested in include Box.net, BrightRoll, Everyday Health, ExactTarget, FrontBridge Technologies, HubSpot, NComputing, Omniture, uTest and Vitrue.

Where We Invest

We focus our investments in four broad technology sectors: SaaS, cloud, mobile and Internet. Within these large sectors, we focus on the particular markets we’ve identified as great startup opportunities. This ensures that we’re informed and prepared when we meet with entrepreneurs in these markets. Throughout this site, we try to make our areas of interest clear, while also keeping an open mind to new and intriguing insights from entrepreneurs.

When We Invest

We like to finance startups that want to grow into long-term companies that matter. By the time we invest, a company should have completed its product and validated its vision by attracting early revenue-generating customers. We make exceptions for companies where there is strong customer adoption or usage that provides a clear proxy for subsequent revenue growth, but we are looking for companies that are ready to scale – as our name reflects. This great post from Steve Blank discusses scaling, or more importantly, not scaling until you are ready. The evidence is clear that premature scaling has caused the death of many early stage companies.

Once a company is ready to scale, the value we bring to the table as investors and board members stems from our backgrounds as sales and marketing executives in our target industries. We have operated and invested in game-changing companies that have grown quickly and have made a difference in peoples’ lives.

Dollars and Cents

The size of our investments ranges from $3 million to $20 million, with an average of about $12 million over the life of an investment. We always take a board or observer seat in our portfolio companies. We add value where we can, while at the same time making sure that we let the CEO drive. Our value comes from our experiences taking products to market and growing revenue. We help companies recruit and partner, we benchmark companies against other winners we’ve seen, and we host events to help our portfolio companies network and leverage each other.

Our Approach

We enjoy what we do and take it seriously. The entrepreneurs we back have committed to building successful companies and pursuing their dreams. The investors who have backed us have entrusted us with their hard-earned capital. And we also put our own capital on the line. For all these reasons, we want to win. We believe that success in this business requires a combination of vision and conviction about the future, coupled with an objective realism about progress towards that goal. We don’t always get it right, but we get up every day determined to keep getting better.

We value involvement with the wider community in which we work. Our partner Kate Mitchell is a member and former chairperson of the National Venture Capital Association Board. In addition, many ScaleVP members work with entrepreneur and industry organizations.