Peter Fenton (venture capitalist)
| Peter Fenton | |
|---|---|
Peter Fenton
|
|
| Born | July 1972 (age 44) |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | Stanford University |
| Occupation | Venture Capitalist |
| Employer | General Partner at Benchmark |
Peter Fenton (born July 1972) is an American venture capitalist based in Silicon Valley. He is a general partner at Benchmark, a venture capital firm. Fenton has steadily worked his way up the Forbes Midas List of the 100 top technology investors, starting at no. 94 in 2007, then rising to no. 62 in 2008 and no. 50 in 2009. Fenton was ranked no. 4 when Forbes resumed publishing its Midas List in 2011 and was described as the “most productive venture capitalist on our list.” In 2012, Fenton was ranked no. 5 on the Forbes Midas List and was no. 2 in 2015.
Fenton graduated with a BA in philosophy and an MBA from Stanford University, where he was elected Phi Beta Kappa and an Arjay Miller Scholar, and spent seven years as a partner with Accel Partners. He was also an early employee at Virage before joining Benchmark in 2006.
Fenton's investing style has been summarized as, “Wait until right before the company’s rising ‘adoption curve’ meets the declining ‘risk curve.’”
Fenton serves on the board of Twitter and backed Twitter when it had only 25 employees. He invested early in Yelp in 2006 and sits on its board.
Noted for his expertise in open source technology, Fenton has invested in JBoss (acquired by Red Hat), SpringSource (acquired by VMware) and Zimbra, which was later acquired by VMware. The VMware acquisition occurred on the same day that Facebook acquired FriendFeed, another company in Fenton’s portfolio. He has also led Benchmark's investments in Wily Technology (acquired by CA Technologies), Reactivity (acquired by Cisco), Coremetrics (acquired by IBM), Xensource (acquired by Citrix), Zimbra (acquired by Yahoo!),Minted, and Quip (acquired by Salesforce).
...
Wikipedia