Craig Sherman

Investor

Board member or investor in: zulily, ancestry (ACOM), photobucket (acquired by Fox), zillow (Z), zipcar (ZIP), seeking alpha, roblox, survey monkey, kongregate (acquired by GameStop), logoworks (acquired by HP), homestead (acquired by Intuit), urban daddy, and others.

I am not a 'thesis-driven' investor. Instead, I find I get 'hooked' on a case-by case basis. Things I like

- Consumer focused businesses;

- entrepreneurs who created something for themselves first - and that, secondarily, resonates with millions of other customers

- something with a very meaningful value proposition to the end customer (it's so good that customers will use it repeatedly for a long time and also tell their friends/colleagues)

- Something that is hard to build or deliver in the first months or years from inception. Something that, by virtue of that difficult upfront challenge, creates a competitive moat.

Finally: i absolutely love consumer (and some small business) subscription businesses!

INVESTMENT SIZE / CRITERIA:

Meritech is a late stage investment firm- we typically invest after a company has hit $10mm a year in sales, though we meet with entrepreneurs earlier and build relationships early.   We were the second earliest and remain the third largest institutional investor in Facebook, first and only institutional investor in PopCap games (sold for over $1 billion to EA in 2011) an early investor in Saleforce, and are big investors in SaaS, Security, Big Data.  Experts at helping grow companies from $10mm in revenue into the $100s, take companies public (4 IPOs in 2011 alone) and maximize exits (12 exits in 2011 alone).  Personally, I also do a small number of angel investments in parallel - when I love the team or product and think I can be particularly helpful to the company at that earlier stage.