20 Years of Betting Big on the Cloud: Cloudinary is Bessemer’s 100th Cloud Computing Investment
After 20 years of investing in “The Cloud”, today Bessemer is announcing our 100th cloud portfolio addition with our investment in Cloudinary, lead by my partner Adam Fisher. Cloudinary provides image and video management in the cloud for nearly 2,500 major retailers, ecommerce sites, media companies and Internet stalwarts. We have high hopes for this company led by experienced and disciplined founders, and are excited to welcome them to our cloud portfolio.
These days, betting big on cloud computing might seem a little obvious. But, the dominance of the cloud was not always a forgone conclusion. Many have doubted the legitimacy of the cloud, including the likes of Larry Ellison, who called the cloud “water vapor” and “nonsense” before Oracle acquired cloud-based RightNow Technologies for $1.5 billion in 2011. Now, after a decade of fighting on-premise hardware, cloud computing has won and is making way for the next big disruption in 2016: enterprise mobile.
As an early champion of the cloud, we’ve enjoyed a front row seat to the revolution. Today Bessemer has the largest cloud portfolio in the industry with significant 100 cloud investments to date.
- One of every four public cloud companies is BVP-Funded, representing 1/3 of the public cloud market cap.
- Of the 7 Cloud IPOs in 2015, 4 are BVP funded: Box, Mindbody, Instructure and Shopify
- To date, 23 BVP-funded companies have either gone public or been acquired delivering an average return of 8.1x on our investment. (Our top cloud exit in 1998 generated a 54x return, but we hope the best is still ahead!)
We have been extremely fortunate to work closely with many of the early cloud visionaries and to learn from their successes. (People like Adam Miller of Cornerstone on Demand, Jeff Wiener of LinkedIn, Aaron Levie of Box, Tobi Lutke of Shopify, and Avishai Abrahami of Wix, to name a few) And today, with the addition of Cloudinary to our portfolio, we can add Itai Lahan, Tal Lev-Ami and Nadav Soferman to that list of great cloud company founders. We are excited to welcome you to the BVP-Funded family and we are excited to learn from your success.
Mobility as a Service for The Digital Nomad/Remote worker. Converting Underutilized parking, retail, office and into assets of the future and reversing the homeless/affordability trend.
7yCloud for Dummies: Byron Deeter, great graphic and history of the cloud and of an exciting new edition - Cloudinary. I'm tuning in for more developments.
Seasoned entrepreneur & hands-on investor. Honoured to work with amazing Ukrainian & Polish entrepreneurs. Proud LSE alumnus.
8yI remember early cloud bielievers ... you were one of the few prepared to back it up with money - then considered rather risky, now it's a no-brainer ;-) I totally agree that "cloud computing has won and is making way for the next big disruption in 2016: enterprise mobile" It would be great if you could write a short article expanding on that ....
Business Leader, Board Director & Advocate; Head of Investment and Corporate Banking, Mizuho Americas
8yIncredible track record, congrats...enjoyed your CEO cloud summit presentation.
Providing the necessary expertise to your projects to manage success 🎯💰.
9yPersistent!