Lightspeed Ventures, LLC

Lightspeed Ventures, LLC is a global venture capital firm founded in 2000, headquartered in Menlo Park, California, with additional offices in Beijing, Shanghai, New Delhi, and Herzliya Pituach. The firm specializes in early-stage and expansion-stage investments, focusing on a diverse range of sectors including consumer, enterprise technology, cleantech, financial technology, mobile, e-commerce, and biotechnology. Lightspeed engages in both equity and debt financing for startups and growth companies, as well as providing incubation services. It primarily invests in the United States, Europe, Israel, China, and India, with specific investment strategies tailored to different regions. In India, for instance, it focuses on advertising, healthcare, education, and retail, while in China, it targets both early and late-stage businesses across various technology sectors. The firm manages significant capital through its funds, actively participating in the growth of innovative companies across multiple industries.

Moritz Baier-Lentz

Partner

Luke Beseda

Partner

Ashley Brasier

Partner

Yoni Cheifetz

Partner

Sam Eisler

Partner

Janou Gordon

Director of Special Projects

David Gussarsky

Partner

Harry Han

Partner

Lisa Han

Partner

Kshitij Jain

Associate

Ansaf Kareem

Partner

Alex Kayyal

Partner

Meredith Kendall

Marketing Partner

Jonathan MacQuitty

Partner

Andrew John Moley

Operating Partner and Chief Financial Officer

Tal Morgenstern

Partner

Peter Moulds

Venture Partner

Antoine Moyroud

Partner

Brett Nissenberg

Partner and General Counsel

Michael Romano

Partner of Investor Relations

Adam Rothstein

Partner

Chris Schaepe

Co-Founder and Partner

Alexander Schmitt

Partner

Bipul Sinha

Venture Partner

John Wendell Thompson

Venture Partner

Rytis Vitkauskas

Partner

Scott Young

VP of Technology

Past deals in Search Engine

Glean

Series C in 2022
Scio is a search engine that aims to help in the finding of any piece of data via any tool in any company. The company's software integrates with multiple platforms to find precise data points and provide relevant search results, allowing employees to find required data points based on keywords.

Glean

Series B in 2021
Scio is a search engine that aims to help in the finding of any piece of data via any tool in any company. The company's software integrates with multiple platforms to find precise data points and provide relevant search results, allowing employees to find required data points based on keywords.

Glean

Series A in 2019
Scio is a search engine that aims to help in the finding of any piece of data via any tool in any company. The company's software integrates with multiple platforms to find precise data points and provide relevant search results, allowing employees to find required data points based on keywords.

Giphy

Series C in 2016
Giphy is an American online database and search engine that allows users to search, share, and discover the best GIFs. It operates a search engine that enables users to search, share, and discover animated graphics interchange formats (GIFs) on the Internet. Animated GIFs have existed for decades, but there was still no good way to browse and discover the best the web had to offer. And the vision for GIPHY isn’t really just about finding GIFs. It’s a search engine today but soon you’ll see it grow into a community, a platform with a host of features targeted at gif artists, enthusiasts, bloggers, and anyone generally looking to discover or create that next big meme. It was founded in 2013 and headquartered in New York, United States.

LocalOye

Series A in 2015
The easiest way to hire experts for your daily needs. People spend money on two things – buying products or hiring services. We want to completely own the second part and offer services in a 450+ categories; including education, home services, wellness and events etc. Discovery and booking of local services through current solutions (heavily dependent on listings and phone calls) can be a frustrating and unreliable experience. Our mobile-centric and match-making approach eliminates this, making it hassle free for the customer while providing 50x better conversion rates for a service professional. Our advanced recommendation engine connects customers with experts within a few minutes. This is a REALLY big opportunity, and the classifieds and yellow pages market has not seen innovation in a decade.. it is time to change that!

Giphy

Series B in 2015
Giphy is an American online database and search engine that allows users to search, share, and discover the best GIFs. It operates a search engine that enables users to search, share, and discover animated graphics interchange formats (GIFs) on the Internet. Animated GIFs have existed for decades, but there was still no good way to browse and discover the best the web had to offer. And the vision for GIPHY isn’t really just about finding GIFs. It’s a search engine today but soon you’ll see it grow into a community, a platform with a host of features targeted at gif artists, enthusiasts, bloggers, and anyone generally looking to discover or create that next big meme. It was founded in 2013 and headquartered in New York, United States.

LimeRoad

Series B in 2014
We are passionate about finding things that rise above the mundane; that we think will catch your eye and arrest it. Moreover, to bring these to you wherever you are and whenever you feel you have the time to indulge a little. So we created a company to bring you products you will fall in love with; to give you a chance to create your own space, to tap into those hidden talents and make your personal looks and collections; to help you share your creations with friends to get that second opinion, to inspire or be inspired; and to help you shop in a way that you will find mesmerizing. We like to think of LimeRoad as the digital-age equivalent of the 16th Century Grand Trunk Road, a highway that changed the face of trade in the Indian subcontinent.

LimeRoad

Series A in 2012
We are passionate about finding things that rise above the mundane; that we think will catch your eye and arrest it. Moreover, to bring these to you wherever you are and whenever you feel you have the time to indulge a little. So we created a company to bring you products you will fall in love with; to give you a chance to create your own space, to tap into those hidden talents and make your personal looks and collections; to help you share your creations with friends to get that second opinion, to inspire or be inspired; and to help you shop in a way that you will find mesmerizing. We like to think of LimeRoad as the digital-age equivalent of the 16th Century Grand Trunk Road, a highway that changed the face of trade in the Indian subcontinent.

Kosmix

Series D in 2008
Kosmix is a web navigation platform that enables users to explore the Internet by topic. It presents a dashboard filled with relevant multimedia content, including videos, photos, news, and community discussions, all organized into magazine-style topic pages. This categorization engine facilitates user navigation even when they are uncertain about their specific interests. Founded in 2005 by Venky Harinarayan and Anand Rajaraman in Mountain View, California, Kosmix originally began as a vertical search engine with the introduction of RightHealth.com, which has since become a prominent health site. Over time, the company transitioned to a broader approach, expanding its services to cover a wider array of topics. Kosmix has received funding from notable investors, including Accel Partners and Lightspeed Venture Partners. The founders previously established Junglee, the first shopping search engine, and contributed to Amazon's Mechanical Turk.

Kosmix

Series C in 2007
Kosmix is a web navigation platform that enables users to explore the Internet by topic. It presents a dashboard filled with relevant multimedia content, including videos, photos, news, and community discussions, all organized into magazine-style topic pages. This categorization engine facilitates user navigation even when they are uncertain about their specific interests. Founded in 2005 by Venky Harinarayan and Anand Rajaraman in Mountain View, California, Kosmix originally began as a vertical search engine with the introduction of RightHealth.com, which has since become a prominent health site. Over time, the company transitioned to a broader approach, expanding its services to cover a wider array of topics. Kosmix has received funding from notable investors, including Accel Partners and Lightspeed Venture Partners. The founders previously established Junglee, the first shopping search engine, and contributed to Amazon's Mechanical Turk.

Kosmix

Series B in 2006
Kosmix is a web navigation platform that enables users to explore the Internet by topic. It presents a dashboard filled with relevant multimedia content, including videos, photos, news, and community discussions, all organized into magazine-style topic pages. This categorization engine facilitates user navigation even when they are uncertain about their specific interests. Founded in 2005 by Venky Harinarayan and Anand Rajaraman in Mountain View, California, Kosmix originally began as a vertical search engine with the introduction of RightHealth.com, which has since become a prominent health site. Over time, the company transitioned to a broader approach, expanding its services to cover a wider array of topics. Kosmix has received funding from notable investors, including Accel Partners and Lightspeed Venture Partners. The founders previously established Junglee, the first shopping search engine, and contributed to Amazon's Mechanical Turk.

Kosmix

Series A in 2005
Kosmix is a web navigation platform that enables users to explore the Internet by topic. It presents a dashboard filled with relevant multimedia content, including videos, photos, news, and community discussions, all organized into magazine-style topic pages. This categorization engine facilitates user navigation even when they are uncertain about their specific interests. Founded in 2005 by Venky Harinarayan and Anand Rajaraman in Mountain View, California, Kosmix originally began as a vertical search engine with the introduction of RightHealth.com, which has since become a prominent health site. Over time, the company transitioned to a broader approach, expanding its services to cover a wider array of topics. Kosmix has received funding from notable investors, including Accel Partners and Lightspeed Venture Partners. The founders previously established Junglee, the first shopping search engine, and contributed to Amazon's Mechanical Turk.

FatLens

Series A in 2005
FatLens is the first e-commerce search engine built with patent-pending technology specifically to enhance your online shopping experience. Innovative FatLens technology instantaneously brings you the web's most comprehensive, relevant and unbiased product search results, and the first-ever integrated search with instant messaging for real-time, collaborative online shopping with your friends and family. FatLens provides you the web's most comprehensive e-commerce search results by indexing relevant data from the most number of e-commerce sites and exhaustively categorizing all of the for-sale items at each crawled site. FatLens brings you the most relevant results to your product search through our patent-pending TRIP™ scoring system that accurately matches the indexed and categorized items for sale to your query. Built-in category intelligence easily handles nicknames, misspellings, synonyms and also "fuzzy" matches for providing the greatest relevancy. FatLens also uniquely enhances your e-commerce experience by integrating search with popular instant messaging products (Yahoo! Messenger and AOL Instant Messenger). FatLens enables you to interact in real-time with your friends and family to quickly complete joint or group buying, get timely expert advice or validation, and of course enjoy sharing the online shopping experience. You can search for products you want to buy, select specific products of interest to you to share with your friends and family. By invoking the IM/Collaboration capability (just click the share using Yahoo! Messenger button or AIM button) you can invite your IM buddies to view, share, and refine your product preferences online while also chatting about your choices. The company was founded by an experienced team of entrepreneurs and technologists who have co-founded and worked at successful Internet and search engine technology companies in Silicon Valley. FatLens started operations in 2003 and received its first venture financing from Redpoint Ventures and Cambrian Ventures.