Venture Capital · Profile from Venture Capital Research Companion
SV Angel
Ron Conway's San Francisco seed firm, the institutional form of Silicon Valley's best-known "super angel." It wrote small, non-leading checks into hundreds of startups a year and sold founders network, crisis help and political cover rather than board governance. In the 2020s it added a growth fund.
At a glance
- Founded
- 2009 as an outside-capital fund, when Ron Conway converted his personal investment vehicle. Lineage runs back to Conway's angel investing (mid-1990s), Adam Ventures (1997) and Angel Investors LP (Dec 1998)
- Founders
- Ron Conway; co-founding partner David Lee (left 2016 to start Refactor Capital)
- Headquarters
- San Francisco, California
- Ownership / structure
- Private partnership controlled by the Conway family. Seed funds, a pause in outside fundraising (2018 to c.2021, when it invested partners' own money and SPVs), then SV Angel Growth funds from 2022
- Leadership (2026)
- Ron Conway and Topher Conway (managing co-directors of both strategies); Beth Turner (leads the seed fund); Ashvin Bachireddy (managing partner, Growth; co-founder of Geodesic Capital, ex-Andreessen Horowitz growth). Ron Conway disclosed a rare cancer diagnosis in April 2026 (reported)
- AUM / capital raised
- Small seed funds: ~$10m outside capital in 2009, then funds rising to ~$75m (fund V) and $53m (fund VI, 2016). SV Angel Growth I: $269m (2022). Growth II: ~$330m (reported from a Jan 2025 SEC filing; verify). Cumulative outside capital is likely under ~$1bn
- Stage focus
- Seed and pre-seed (checks ~$25k–$500k historically); Series B and later via the Growth funds
- Signature investments
- Google, PayPal, Ask Jeeves (via Angel Investors LP); Facebook, Twitter, Airbnb, Pinterest, Stripe, Dropbox, Snap, Coinbase (SV Angel era). Misses and failures: Napster, Digg, OZY Media, a long tail of acqui-hires and shutdowns
8 deals and moves analysed
Each one gets a full strategy file in the companion: context, the decision, the financing, what happened, and the lesson.
1999
Google
Angel Round via Angel Investors LP
1999
Napster
Early Angel Round
2005
Digg
Series A Angel Participation
2007
Twitter
Early Angel Investment
2010
Airbnb
Series A
2011
Stripe
Seed
2011
Y Combinator Start Fund
Batch Convertible Notes
2013
OZY Media
Early Investment