Reid Dennis

Reid Weaver Dennis (1926-2024) was the founding father of institutional venture capital in Silicon Valley. As founder of Institutional Venture Partners (IVP), he pioneered the model of raising venture funds from institutional investors - insurance companies and endowments - at a time when VC was barely a cottage industry. His 1974 fund raised nearly half of all private venture capital in the U.S. that year. Over seven decades, he backed companies like Seagate, Netflix, TiVo, and Juniper Networks, served 37 years on the San Francisco Opera board, and built IVP into a firm managing $7 billion with a 40-year IRR of 43.1%.