Venture Studio Profile: Sutter Hill Ventures

Type: Venture Capital

Location: Bldg A 200, 755 Page Mill Rd, Palo Alto, California 94304

Description: Sutter Hill Ventures is one of Silicon Valley's oldest and most successful venture capital firms, founded in 1964 by Bill Draper and Paul Wythes. Uniquely positioned in the VC landscape, Sutter Hill pioneered a company 'origination' model where they don't just invest in existing startups but incubate and build companies from scratch. Led by Managing Director Mike Speiser since 2008, the firm operates with an evergreen fund structure that allows unlimited time horizons and deep, concentrated investments. Rather than spreading capital across hundreds of portfolio companies, Sutter Hill takes a focused approach, typically originating 1-2 companies per year while selectively investing in a few others. The firm is known for taking hands-on operational roles, with partners serving as founding CEOs, recruiting founding teams, and providing extensive in-residence builder support. This builder-first philosophy has generated historic returns, including turning a less than $200 million investment in Snowflake into a $12+ billion stake at IPO. Sutter Hill maintains an extremely low public profile—their website is just a landing page with contact information—but has quietly created almost $100 billion in market cap through originated companies since 2009. The firm focuses on identifying large macroeconomic shifts (cloud computing, flash storage) and building technically differentiated products for big markets, with extensive cross-portfolio ecosystem effects where portfolio companies become customers of each other.

Industry Focus: Cloud Computing & SaaS, Data Infrastructure & Warehousing, Cybersecurity, Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning, Developer Tools, Enterprise Software, Semiconductors & Hardware, Data Storage, Business Intelligence & Analytics, DevOps & Observability, Nanotechnology & Energy Storage, Healthcare & Life Sciences, FinTech, Networking & Computer Technology

Geographic Focus: United States (primary - 122 investments), Silicon Valley/Bay Area (headquartered in Palo Alto), Global (selective international investments including China - 2 investments), London office for European presence

Founded: 1964

Typical Check Size: Series A: $22.3M average, Series B: $25.2M average, Series C: $28.4M average. Large follow-on investments in originated companies (e.g., $1.3B in Lacework)

Portfolio Companies: 20 companies

Number of Partners: 12

Total Companies Built: 196

Years in Operation: 61

Website: https://shv.com/