Type Private Area served Worldwide | AUM $250M+ Founded 1995 | |
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Industry Venture Capital and Private equity Number of locations Offices in Ireland, United States and China Subsidiaries HAX Accelerator, IndieBio, Chinaccelerator, MOX, FOOD-X, Urban-X | ||
SOSV is a venture capital and investment management firm that provides seed, venture and growth stage funding to startup companies in the technology sector. The company's focus is on accelerating startups via their market specific seed accelerator programs located in Europe, Asia and the USA. The firm is made up of 7 investment partners, 45+ full-time support staff and hundreds of mentors. SOSV is headquartered in Princeton, New Jersey, with back office operations based in Cork, Ireland, and flagship offices in San Francisco, Shenzhen, Shanghai and New York.
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Founding
SOSV was founded in 1995 by Sean O'Sullivan, and was originally called SOSventures. Over the past 20 years the firm has funded over 350 startups and continues to fund at least 125 startups per year.
Investments
SOSV invests in the areas of Hardware, Software, Consumer Services and Life Sciences markets. Portfolio companies include: Harmonix, developers of the Guitar Hero series, Carma, Netflix, Leap Motion, Pembient, Kindara, Storyful, Muufri, Breather, MavenHut, Spark (now Particle) and GIROPTIC.
Accelerators
SOSV runs six seed accelerator programs: Chinaccelerator, MOX, HAX Accelerator, HAX Boost, IndieBio and FOOD-X. The programs focus on startup development in the areas of hardware, software, biotechnology and food business.
Social Entrepreneurship
SOSV has taken an interest in furthering innovation in Education and Computing.
The Khan Academy
The O'Sullivan Foundation supports the Khan Academy, the not-for-profit online learning platform whose goal is to change education for the better by providing a free world-class education for anyone anywhere. The Khan Academy is the brainchild of Salman Khan, who brought the idea of educating young people, self-starters & people who learn at their own pace — online. The educational startup now counts over 2,600 videos in its library, with sessions or classes on everything from arithmetic to physics, including 211 practice exercises, to let students watch videos and learn at their leisure.
CoderDojo
SOSV supports CoderDojo, a global network of clubs that teach young people in areas specializing in computer programming and computer technology. There are now dojos in 22 countries, teaching 10,000 children to write computer code and programs each week. Youth learn from one another about computer languages and tools including Xcode and CSS. Founded by James Whelton and Bill Liao, a partner at SOSV, in 2011 as a not-for-profit organisation. The first dojo was held in the NSC (National Software Centre), Mahon, Cork on Saturday 23rd 2011. By February 2012, there were 12 dojos around Ireland and September 2012 saw the first CoderDojo open in Silicon Valley. At this point there are over 16,000 children worldwide are learning to code every Saturday.
LearnStorm (formerly MATHletes)
The Sean O’Sullivan Foundation supports LearnStorm, formerly MATHletes, an online math game competition for kids in Ireland. It was founded in 2014 by Sean O’Sullivan and The Khan Academy.