Daring to Dream and
Redefine What’s Possible

We have been the earliest investor with dozens of teams that have dared to pursue their vision—creating and leading new markets, and shaping the future.

Meet the companies that inspire us every day.

Our Companies

RoadRunner

RoadRunner

Founded in 1993 and launched in 1995 with market tests in Elmira NY, Del Mar CA and Portland ME, Roadrunner was a pioneer of mass market residential broadband Internet access. The Roadrunner founding team defined the end-to-end architecture for one of the very first hybrid-fiber broadband access networks, and included Dr. Mario Vecchi, Howard Pfeffer, and Christopher Rust. Tom Staniec and many others were instrumental to the realization of Roadrunner for Time Warner Cable.

When the conceptualization phase for Roadrunner began the cable TV infrastructure was purpose-built for one-way broadcast delivery of analog TV over coaxial cable. Key building blocks such as the “cable modem” were embryonic. Innovation was required at each layer of the protocol stack: selection of physical layer modulation scheme; definition of spectrum allocation plan for the coax transmission channel; creation of a new media access control layer to support concurrent bi-directional transmission of up and downstream traffic; content routing; subscriber management; end-to-end service provisioning, etc. An inspired effort by a talented and committed team was needed to have all of the pieces converge. By 2015 Roadrunner was available to over 66 million people across 29 states, making it the 2nd largest provider of cable broadband in the US. In 2012 Roadrunner was re-branded as Time Warner Cable Internet. In April 2016 Charter Communications acquired Time Warner Cable for $78.7 billion, creating one of the US’s largest broadband Internet service providers with over 17 million subscribers.

  • Founded: 1993
  • Fund: Founder
  • Clear Partner(s): Chris Rust
  • Status: Acquired
  • Acquirer: Charter Communications (CHTR)
  • Acquisition Price: $ 78,700,000,000
Chris was an impressive young professional, working on a challenging new technological and business initiative, when we worked together to develop the RoadRunner broadband service at Time Warner Cable. His technical skills were matched by his business insight, and he was the most valuable close contributor I worked with to define the architectural principles of the systems and devices that were then developed for this brand new service. I have remained in touch with Chris throughout his later career, and I am not surprised at the success he has achieved in identifying and launching so many new ventures. I trust his knowledge and his good judgement, and I strongly recommend him.
Dr. Mario P. Vecchi, Founder, SVP, and CTO

Results Matter, Success Counts

Four of the companies our team co-founded produced over $1.7 billion of market cap from 2 IPOs and 2 acquisitions.

We have funded over 90 companies, 90% as the first investors, and have had 48 exits valued at $95B from 11 IPOs, and 37 acquisitions.

Before we became VCs, we had already founded 5 successful companies.

Portfolio Breakdown