Bessemer Venture Partners Closes $3.3 Billion Across Two Funds; Welcomes Amazon.com Veteran Jeff Blackburn as Partner
26.2.2021 01:40:00 EET | Business Wire | Press release
Bessemer Venture Partners, a global early-stage venture capital firm, today announced the close of two new funds, adding $3.3 billion of capital for investing in promising technology companies at their early and subsequent growth stages.
Additionally, the firm welcomed five new partners, including Jeff Blackburn, who joins Bessemer Venture Partners from Amazon, alongside the promotion of existing Bessemer investors Mary D'Onofrio, Mike Droesch, Tess Hatch, and Andrew Hedin.
“Today marks an incredible milestone at Bessemer as we launch our latest and largest funds and add five exceptional investors into the partnership,” said Jeremy Levine, a partner in Bessemer’s New York office. “I’m proud to celebrate the success of Mary, Mike, Tess, and Andrew, and I am excited to welcome Jeff to the firm. Having known Jeff for 15 years, I’m a great admirer of his stunning track record as an innovator and leader paired with his deep humility. I know his peerless experience leading one of the world’s greatest tech and consumer brands will benefit our team and the many founders who partner with Bessemer.”
Blackburn joins Bessemer following a 22-year career at Amazon, first joining the e-commerce giant after its IPO and then spearheading its growth in the core marketplace business and expansion across Amazon Advertising, Prime Video, Amazon Music, and Amazon Studios. Most recently, Blackburn served as senior vice president of worldwide business development. He oversaw dozens of Amazon’s minority investments and more than a hundred acquisitions across all business lines – including retail, Kindle, Echo, Alexa, FireTV, advertising, music, streaming audio & video, and Amazon Web Services.
At Bessemer, he will apply his innovative mindset and considerable experience -- as an investor, operator, and leader – toward existing and future Bessemer portfolio companies.
“Having been part of Amazon for more than two decades, I’m excited to begin a new chapter helping customer-focused founders build breakthrough companies,” said Blackburn. "I’ve known the Bessemer team for many years and have long admired their strategic vision and success backing early-stage ventures."
Blackburn’s arrival and the promotions of D'Onofrio, Droesch, Hatch, and Hedin all coincide with the close of Bessemer’s eleventh flagship fund, BVP XI, and their second opportunity fund, BVP Century II. The majority of the $3.3 billion across both funds will focus on early-stage investments, consistent with the firm’s time-honored approach of starting with seed and Series A investments and sticking with companies at every stage of their growth.
The firm continues to expand with a leadership team of 21 partners and over 45 investors, advisors, and platform team members positioned all over the world – Silicon Valley, San Francisco, Seattle, New York, Boston, London, Tel Aviv, Bangalore, and Beijing.
Bessemer Partner Byron Deeter added: “Our partners work one-on-one with our CEOs, but they also benefit from the growing scale and support from our entire platform. With our new funds and expanded partnership, Bessemer is even better equipped to help the best entrepreneurs – across all stages, sectors, and geographies – build incredible companies.”
About Bessemer Venture Partners
Bessemer Venture Partners is a global early-stage venture capital firm. With a portfolio of more than 200 companies, Bessemer helps visionary entrepreneurs lay strong foundations to create companies that matter, and supports them through every stage of their growth. The firm has backed more than 130 IPOs, including Shopify, Yelp, LinkedIn, Skype, LifeLock, Twilio, SendGrid, DocuSign, Wix, and Fiverr. Bessemer's team of investors and partners are positioned all over the world in Silicon Valley, San Francisco, Seattle, New York, Boston, Tel Aviv, Bangalore, and Beijing.
https://www.bvp.com/
Follow @BessemerVP
To view this piece of content from cts.businesswire.com, please give your consent at the top of this page.
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210225006258/en/
Contact information
Media Contact
Karen Lee
press@bvp.com
About Business Wire
For more than 50 years, Business Wire has been the global leader in press release distribution and regulatory disclosure.
Subscribe to releases from Business Wire
Subscribe to all the latest releases from Business Wire by registering your e-mail address below. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Latest releases from Business Wire
Pure Lithium Receives Australian Patent for "Lithium Metal Anode and Battery"6.8.2026 23:49:00 EEST | Press release
Pure Lithium Corporation, a vertically integrated next-generation lithium metal battery technology company, today announced that the Australian patent office has granted the company a patent (AU2025271196) titled “Lithium metal anode and battery.” Australia mines roughly half of the world’s lithium, yet has no domestic battery production at all; every battery the country uses is imported. The granted patent is directed to ways in which Pure Lithium’s technology can change that. Rather than trying to catch up in lithium-ion, Australia can leapfrog the incumbent technology and establish a next-generation industry. As worldwide demand for batteries grows, every country capable of making batteries needs to be making them. That is Pure Lithium’s central goal: opening up markets around the world through battery technology that enables local, independent supply chains, keeping pace with demand and strengthening economies. China controls the lithium-ion battery supply chain and manufactures th
Vercel Appoints Amit Agarwal, Standard Template Labs CEO and former Datadog President, to Board of Directors6.8.2026 18:00:00 EEST | Press release
Vercel, the agentic infrastructure company, today announced the appointment of Amit Agarwal, former president of Datadog and founder and CEO of Standard Template Labs, an AI-first service management platform, to its board of directors. Agarwal brings 25 years of enterprise software experience and a track record of scaling a product-led company from its earliest days into one of the defining public software companies of the cloud era. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260806738617/en/ Amit Agarwal Agarwal joined Datadog in 2012 as its Chief Product Officer and was named President in 2022, overseeing product, corporate development, and go-to-market functions as the company grew past $2.5 billion in annual revenue. Across 13 years, including Datadog's 2019 IPO and its first years as a public company, Agarwal helped build one of the industry's most studied examples of product-led growth at enterprise scale. He conti
Laserfiche Launches Advanced Enterprise Security to Deliver Multi-Region Disaster Recovery and GovRAMP-Ready Compliance for Highly Regulated Industries6.8.2026 17:00:00 EEST | Press release
Laserfiche — the leading SaaS provider of intelligent content management — today announced the launch of Enterprise Security, an advanced suite of security enhancements designed for organizations navigating complex regulatory environments. Enterprise Security addresses GovRAMP and CJIS (Criminal Justice Information Services) security requirements based on the NIST SP 800-53 framework. For organizations handling privileged citizen, legal or corporate data, these built-in controls streamline audit preparation and fortify defenses. With organizations placing a higher priority on data stewardship and corporate governance, enterprise IT leaders require a security architecture that protects data without slowing down operations. Laserfiche Enterprise Security extends Laserfiche Cloud’s highly resilient infrastructure with multi-region data replication, elevated security controls for privileged accounts, and built-in governance safeguards. “Maintaining data integrity and compliance has always
Khimji Ramdas Group Chooses Rimini Street to Reduce SAP Support Costs, Protect 700+ Customizations and Reinvest Savings in Innovation6.8.2026 16:00:00 EEST | Press release
Rimini Street, Inc. (Nasdaq: RMNI), the Software Support and Agentic AI ERP Company™ and the leading third-party support provider for Oracle, SAP and VMware software, today announced that Khimji Ramdas Group, one of Oman’s largest privately held conglomerates, has selected Rimini Support™ for SAP, a move that has helped the organization reduce costs, reinvest savings in AI innovation and maintain its highly customized SAP ECC 6 environment with zero downtime. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260806244148/en/ Khimji Ramdas Group Chooses Rimini Street to Reduce SAP Support Costs, Protect 700+ Customizations and Reinvest Savings in Innovation “Staying on SAP ECC is a strategic decision for us,” said Prashant Kumar, CTO, Khimji Ramdas Group. “We went to an industry analyst to ask what options we have to keep our ECC systems running without vendor support dependencies, and they suggested that we contact Rimini Stree
AM Best Upgrades Fortegra Insurance Subsidiaries to A (Excellent)6.8.2026 16:00:00 EEST | Press release
The Fortegra Group, Inc. (“Fortegra” or the “Company”), a global specialty insurer and part of DB Insurance Co., Ltd., today announced that AM Best has upgraded the Financial Strength Rating (FSR) of its insurance subsidiaries to A (Excellent) from A- (Excellent) and the Long-Term Issuer Credit Ratings (Long-Term ICRs) to “a” (Excellent) from “a-” (Excellent). The outlook assigned to the ratings is stable, and AM Best removed the ratings from under review with positive implications. KBRA has also upgraded all of its ratings for the Company. The upgrade applies across Fortegra’s insurance platform. The property and casualty companies include Lyndon Southern Insurance Company, Insurance Company of the South, Response Indemnity Company of California, Blue Ridge Indemnity Company, Fortegra Specialty Insurance Company and Fortegra Europe Insurance Company SE. The life and health companies include Life of the South Insurance Company, Bankers Life Insurance Company of Louisiana and Southern F
In our pressroom you can read all our latest releases, find our press contacts, images, documents and other relevant information about us.
Visit our pressroom