It’s why Liew stepping back may be an incredibly pivotal moment of transition for the firm. Liew “really put on the map with his foundational investments,” says Alex Taussig, a Lightspeed partner, also on the consumer team.
The firm’s partners credit the Snap investment, with its “tremendous reach” as Mhatre puts it, to putting Lightspeed on many people’s radar. The consumer sector may not be Lightspeed’s largest, but it has been the loudest-in part due to the public brand recognition some of its portfolio companies have enjoyed. From Lightspeed’s thirteenth flagship fund, enterprise still made up more than 40% of the firm’s investments, while around 27% of the fund was invested in consumer startups. Since the late 90s, when Lightspeed was formed, enterprise investing has been core to the firm’s strategy-and Lightspeed didn’t start building out its consumer strategy until the 2000s, according to co-founder Ravi Mhatre, who sits at the firm’s helm with Bejul Somaia, head of Lightspeed India Partners. As Liew’s reputation evolved in Silicon Valley, so did that of his firm Lightspeed Venture Partners-a fund that had initially focused solely on the less-sexy world of enterprise investing. Liew’s consistency over 15 years in spotting winners amidst the noisy, fast-moving world of consumer investing turned him into a venture capital icon. Investments in Cheddar, Giphy, Bonobos, and Rothy’s have lined his portfolio.
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And it was Liew who co-led the Series A of The Honest Company, Jessica Alba’s eco-friendly consumer products company. He co-led the Series B round of buy now, pay later giant Affirm-the first funding round where venture capitalists were offered a stake in the company. His $485,000 investment in Snap-the photo-sharing social media company’s very first check-snowballed into a $8.1 million exit, awarding Lightspeed’s investors a 250x on-paper return.
It is Jeremy Liew, the firm’s first consumer specialist, that catapulted the relatively little-known venture capital firm Lightspeed Venture Partners into the public eye.
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