GV Investment Managers

GV Investment Managers is a private equity firm founded in 2000 and based in Stamford, Connecticut. The firm specializes in impact investing, private equity, and portfolio management services. It focuses on sectors such as life sciences, consumer products, enterprise solutions, cryptocurrency, climate technology, and frontier innovations. With Alphabet as its sole limited partner, GV Investment Managers primarily targets investments in North America and Europe. The firm collaborates with operating partners who assist startups in areas such as design, diversity and inclusion, talent acquisition, and engineering, while also facilitating connections with Google for technological support and expertise.

Brian Bendett

Partner

Brendan Bulik-Sullivan

General Partner

Terri Burns

Partner

Frederique Dame

Partner

Karim Faris

General Partner

Crystal Huang

Partner

Tom Hulme

General Partner and Head of Europe

John Lyman

Partner

Laura Melahn

Partner

Erik Nordlander

General Partner

David Reshef

Venture Partner

Ben Robbins

General Partner

Issi Rozen

Venture Partner

M.G. Siegler

General Partner

Andy Wheeler

General Partner

Krishna Yeshwant

Managing Partner

Sangeen Zeb

Partner

David Schenkein

General Partner

Past deals in Messaging

Lapse

Series A in 2024
Lapse is a social disposable camera app. The app lets close groups recreate the magic of old-school disposable cameras by taking 36 snaps to ‘rolls’ in private group chats.

Courier

Series B in 2022
Courier provides a notification management platform that allows developers to effectively route user notifications across various communication channels, such as email, SMS, and messaging apps. By utilizing an API, the platform intelligently determines the optimal channel for delivering messages based on user engagement and online status. This capability enables businesses to craft a single message that can be reused across multiple channels or customized for specific platforms, ensuring timely and relevant communication with users, business partners, and external stakeholders. With a commitment to customer success, Courier has evolved alongside technological advancements while maintaining stable management practices and long-term relationships with its clients.

Lapse

Seed Round in 2021
Lapse is a social disposable camera app. The app lets close groups recreate the magic of old-school disposable cameras by taking 36 snaps to ‘rolls’ in private group chats.

Norby

Seed Round in 2021
Norby is a company that provides an audience relationship toolkit aimed at fostering meaningful connections between creators and their followers. The platform is designed for both creators and brands, offering tools that facilitate the building and monetization of an audience through SMS marketing campaigns and email newsletters. By enabling content creators to effectively manage their marketing efforts, Norby helps them maintain a close relationship with their audience while enhancing their outreach capabilities.

Podium

Series C in 2020
Podium, Inc. is a software company based in Provo, Utah, that provides a customer communication platform designed to help businesses manage online reviews and enhance customer interactions at a local level. Founded in 2013, the platform allows users to collect and respond to reviews from various sites such as Google and Facebook, right at the moment of transaction. It offers features for interaction management, enabling businesses to communicate effectively with leads, customers, and team members through messaging. Podium's system aggregates and analyzes customer reviews, helping organizations improve their online reputation, gain insights into customer preferences, and influence purchase decisions through user-generated content.

Podium

Series B in 2018
Podium, Inc. is a software company based in Provo, Utah, that provides a customer communication platform designed to help businesses manage online reviews and enhance customer interactions at a local level. Founded in 2013, the platform allows users to collect and respond to reviews from various sites such as Google and Facebook, right at the moment of transaction. It offers features for interaction management, enabling businesses to communicate effectively with leads, customers, and team members through messaging. Podium's system aggregates and analyzes customer reviews, helping organizations improve their online reputation, gain insights into customer preferences, and influence purchase decisions through user-generated content.

Hustle

Series B in 2018
Hustle, Inc. operates a peer-to-peer text messaging platform that allows organizations to communicate directly with their contacts. Founded in 2014 and based in San Francisco, the company offers a software-as-a-service solution that supports personal text messaging for various purposes, including event attendance, fundraising, admissions, recruiting, advocacy, and sales and marketing. Hustle's platform emphasizes two-way conversations, enabling users to engage in meaningful dialogues with large audiences. It also provides tools for tracking goals, managing contacts, and viewing conversation histories, which help clients strengthen relationships and enhance their outreach efforts. Through this approach, Hustle aims to connect organizations with a broader demographic in an efficient and effective manner.

Intercom

Series D in 2018
Intercom, Inc. is a customer communication platform designed for web and mobile businesses, facilitating personalized interactions with customers at scale. The platform allows teams to engage with their audience through various channels, including websites, mobile applications, and email. Intercom offers several key products: Acquire for real-time website chat, Engage for targeted onboarding and retention messaging, Learn for customer feedback collection, and Support for customer assistance within applications. With a global customer base exceeding 25,000 organizations, such as notable companies like Atlassian, Amazon, and Lyft, Intercom processes over 500 million messages each month, reaching more than 600 million active users. Founded in 2011 and headquartered in San Francisco, California, with an office in Dublin, Ireland, Intercom is dedicated to transforming customer service through effective messaging and automation.

Podium

Series A in 2017
Podium, Inc. is a software company based in Provo, Utah, that provides a customer communication platform designed to help businesses manage online reviews and enhance customer interactions at a local level. Founded in 2013, the platform allows users to collect and respond to reviews from various sites such as Google and Facebook, right at the moment of transaction. It offers features for interaction management, enabling businesses to communicate effectively with leads, customers, and team members through messaging. Podium's system aggregates and analyzes customer reviews, helping organizations improve their online reputation, gain insights into customer preferences, and influence purchase decisions through user-generated content.

Slack

Series E in 2015
Slack Technologies, Inc. operates a cloud-based communication and collaboration platform designed to enhance organizational communication. Founded in 2009 and headquartered in San Francisco, California, Slack enables users to exchange messages, share files, and integrate with a variety of business tools and services. The platform is utilized by teams across multiple industries, from startups to large enterprises, promoting increased efficiency and productivity. Slack's offerings are provided under a software-as-a-service model, and the company also manages the Slack Fund, which invests in teams developing innovative products aimed at improving workplace productivity.

Slack

Series D in 2014
Slack Technologies, Inc. operates a cloud-based communication and collaboration platform designed to enhance organizational communication. Founded in 2009 and headquartered in San Francisco, California, Slack enables users to exchange messages, share files, and integrate with a variety of business tools and services. The platform is utilized by teams across multiple industries, from startups to large enterprises, promoting increased efficiency and productivity. Slack's offerings are provided under a software-as-a-service model, and the company also manages the Slack Fund, which invests in teams developing innovative products aimed at improving workplace productivity.

Cord Project

Seed Round in 2014
Cord is incredibly simple, incredibly fast voice messaging that lets you chat with one friend or shout to a whole group of friends. Start chatting for free on iPhone or Android now.

WUT

Seed Round in 2014
WUT, Inc. is a technology company based in San Francisco, California, founded in 2014. It specializes in developing a social messaging application that enables users to send anonymous and ephemeral messages to their friends. The app captures the spontaneous and free-spirited interactions that users enjoy, allowing them to engage in casual conversations through their mobile devices. By focusing on anonymity and temporality, WUT aims to enhance the social messaging experience, making it more dynamic and reflective of real-life interactions.

Confide

Seed Round in 2014
Confide, Inc. is a New York-based company that specializes in providing a secure mobile messaging solution designed for confidential communication. Founded in 2013, Confide offers a platform that enables users to send encrypted messages that self-destruct after being read, ensuring privacy and preventing the possibility of screenshots. With its use of public and private encryption keys, the platform allows individuals to engage in sensitive discussions without the fear of information being duplicated or misused. By prioritizing message security and integrity, Confide aims to facilitate unfiltered conversations while maintaining the confidentiality of its users' communications.

Secret

Seed Round in 2013
Secret offers an online platform that enables users to share their personal secrets with other users anonymously. It owns and operates a mobile application that helps users to share and connect with friends. The company was founded in 2015 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California.

rumr

Seed Round in 2013
Rumr is a messaging app that enables users to chat privately and anonymously with their friends. The company was founded in 2015 and is headquartered in Los Angeles, California.

MessageMe

Series A in 2013
Messageme.com is to provide an emotionally engaging communication experience that's fun, lightweight and ubiquitous. Messaging revolves around a simple loop: users send messages and respond to messages. Social gaming showed that there are ways to tweak the experience around this loop to increase its performance drastically by influencing the emotions surrounding reciprocal interactions. They believe there is a large opportunity to provide a new level of engagement and excitement in messaging apps by applying these techniques and philosophies. MessageMe had also been courted by Snapchat as well as an app maker out of Europe, Truecaller. And, after earnouts, the price that Yahoo paid to acqui-hire MessageMe is between $30 million and $40 million.

MessageMe

Seed Round in 2013
Messageme.com is to provide an emotionally engaging communication experience that's fun, lightweight and ubiquitous. Messaging revolves around a simple loop: users send messages and respond to messages. Social gaming showed that there are ways to tweak the experience around this loop to increase its performance drastically by influencing the emotions surrounding reciprocal interactions. They believe there is a large opportunity to provide a new level of engagement and excitement in messaging apps by applying these techniques and philosophies. MessageMe had also been courted by Snapchat as well as an app maker out of Europe, Truecaller. And, after earnouts, the price that Yahoo paid to acqui-hire MessageMe is between $30 million and $40 million.

Airtime

Series B in 2012
At Airtime, we’re changing the way people interact online, making the internet a more welcoming and truly social place. Social networks have the power to bring people together, but they have often proven to do the opposite. In a world of social platforms that filter and curate our lives, social media has made us antisocial. That’s why we created Airtime. It’s a new kind of social space. No matter what you’re into—lofi hip hop, airbrush makeup, or improv comedy—drop in any time. There’s a room for you on Airtime that’s always open, live, and ready to welcome you in. Our company was founded by Sean Parker and is backed by Accel, Andreessen Horowitz, Founders Fund, Google Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, and a host of other incredible partners. We have a world-class leadership team and over 100 wonderful employees in three offices across the country. We're working hard to create the most welcoming online live social space out there, not only in our product but also in our organization.

echoecho

Seed Round in 2011
echoecho is a mobile phone software development company founded in 2010 to create and develop cutting edge smartphone solutions. The company's first product, an open API, cross-platform, carrier agnostic location sharing system called echoecho, is primed to be a market leader in the location based services sector. echoecho is confident that the ability to safely, simply and quickly share location with friends, family or business colleagues is a real problem that many users find themselves facing. "Where is John?" "Where is my girlfriend?" "I'm running late but I'd like to show you where I am located." echoecho seeks to continue redefining location sharing technology - and its uptake within and beyond the early adopter markets - by focusing on simplicity - rather than adding complexity. Since we figure we solved the problems of privacy, permission and preference inherent in location sharing very elegantly - we thought we'd add some more use cases into the mix - so users can now chat and find+share meeting places in 2 clicks. In the latest version of the software we also added a feature we call LIVE - essentially a short term 2-way real-time link between friends - it works very well and it's perfect for organising vehicle pickups (carpooling, dropping off and picking up friends etc)

Just.me

Seed Round in 2011
Just.me is a mobile messaging platform that combines the functionalities of various communication tools into a single application. It allows users to capture and share memories through photos, videos, voice messages, and text, all while providing control over who can view their content. Users can save personal memories, share them with selected contacts, or publish them publicly. The app leverages the smartphone address book to ensure clarity in sharing, eliminating confusion about who sees each message. Currently, Just.me is in beta for iPhone and is being developed for Android, with a web version available that offers reduced features. The focus of Just.me is to empower users by giving them full control over their information and messages.
Spot something off? Help us improve by flagging any incorrect or outdated information. Just email us at support@teaserclub.com. Your feedback is most welcome.