Social Capital (venture capital firm)
venture capital firm
Social Capital, formerly known as Social+Capital Partnership, is a venture capital firm based in Palo Alto, California with approximately $2B in assets under management. The firm specializes in technology startups, providing seed funding, venture capital, and private equity.
The firm has "stood out strategically", according to Fortune, "with a focus on ... healthcare, financial services and education ... when those fields were ... neglected by the VC community."
History
Social Capital was founded in 2011 by Chamath Palihapitiya, who had previously worked at Facebook. Mamoon Hamid and Ted Maidenberg also joined the firm that year as general partners.
In January 2015, Fortune reported that Kleiner Perkins was in acquisition talks with Social Capital, but the acquisition reportedly fell through. In May 2015, Social Capital raised $600 million in their third and largest venture capital fund. PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel praised Palihapitiya's approach, and as of 2015 served as a limited partner.
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This entry incorporates text from “Social Capital (venture capital firm)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.