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unnoteworthy facts. (September 2021) |
Peter Fenton | |
---|---|
Born | July 1972 | (age 51)
Nationality | American |
Alma mater | Stanford University |
Occupation | Venture capitalist |
Employer | General Partner at Benchmark |
Spouse | Kate Fenton |
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, [1] then rising to no. 62 in 2008 [2] and no. 50 in 2009. [3] 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". [4] In 2012, Fenton was ranked no. 5 on the Forbes Midas List [5] and was no. 2 in 2015. [6] He has been a perennial member on the Midas List since 2007.
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 began his career at Bain & Company and was also an early employee at Virage[ citation needed] before joining Benchmark in 2006. [7] [8]
Fenton's investing style has been summarized as, “Wait until right before the company’s rising ‘adoption curve’ meets the declining ‘risk curve.’” [9] He served on the board of Twitter [9] and backed Twitter when it had only 25 employees. [4] He invested early in Yelp in 2006 and sits on its board. [9]
Noted for his expertise in open source technology, Fenton has invested in JBoss (acquired by Red Hat), SpringSource (acquired by VMware) and Zimbra, [10] which was later acquired by VMware. [11] The VMware acquisition occurred on the same day that Facebook acquired FriendFeed, another company in Fenton’s portfolio. [9] He 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!), [5] Minted, [12] Quip (acquired by Salesforce), [13] and Polyvore (acquired by Yahoo). [14]
In addition to Twitter and Yelp, Fenton also serves on the boards of (in alphabetical order) Cockroach Labs, Digits, [15] Docker (formerly DotCloud), Elastic, Engine Yard, Hortonworks, Lithium Technologies, New Relic, Optimizely, Revinate, Zendesk, and Zuora. [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] In December 2014, Fenton "had one of the most unusual days in venture history" when two of his investments, Hortonworks and New Relic, went public the same day. [6] In February 2014, he was awarded the TechCrunch Crunchie for Venture Capitalist of the Year. [23]