Joe HorowitzInvestor

United States - Palo Alto, California

I have been in the venture capital business for a long time, beginning with the seed financing of Sun Microsystems. I have seen the good, the bad and the ugly, but the one shining constant has been the privilege of working with remarkable entrepreneurs and venture investors as well as many amazing people in the tech community.

Early in my career, I spent 10 years at US Venture Partners, then 6 years with my own advisory firm, followed by a 2-year stint as Chairman & CEO of Geocast Network Systems (backed by Kleiner Perkins, Mayfield and IVP). In 2003 we formed Icon Ventures (formerly called Jafco Ventures) with a $100m fund and a commitment to best practices in venture capital. The focus of our firm is to lead Series B and Series C financings, backing world-class entrepreneurs, supporting them regardless of their journey. Our north star is to be "a force for good."

I am a generalist, but have been particularly active in the security space with early investments in FireEye (IPO - FEYE), Palo Alto Networks (IPO - PANW) and Proofpoint (IPO - PFPT) that today are publicly-traded companies with multibillion-dollar market valuations. Other notable exits include Aster Data (acquired by Teradata), Clicker (acquired by CBS), Infinera (IPO - INFN), KIXEYE (acquired by Stillfront), Meebo (acquired by Google), Mimosa Systems (acquired by Iron Mountain), Ocarina Networks (acquired by Dell), Opcity (acquired by News Corp), Posterous (acquired by Twitter), SiTime (acquired by MegaChips), Teladoc (IPO - TDOC) and True[x]Media (acquired by Fox).