In 2005, seeing opportunity where others saw challenges, John Fisher brought together Mark Bailey, Randy Glein, and Barry Schuler to explore new approaches. They reasoned young tech companies could scale more efficiently if they stayed private longer, avoiding the short term motivations and scrutiny of the public markets. They believed more scale would be required to reach an IPO, thus creating a gap between the strategies of early-stage venture capital and the public markets. This situation presented a perfect opportunity to put capital and operational expertise to work. DFJ Growth was conceived to fill this emerging funding gap. Within a decade, the venture growth category exploded in size and significance, and DFJ Growth emerged as a leading growth investor and prominent backer of many disruptive leaders including Coinbase, SpaceX, Tesla, Twitter, and Unity.

DFJ Growth is based in Silicon Valley, the home of a powerful ecosystem that has spawned so many visionary entrepreneurs, game-changing innovations, and iconic tech companies. Silicon Valley has an ethos that supports taking big risks, accepting failure as a learning experience, and seeking disruptive innovation as a path toward betterment. It is a state of mind, but it is in no way exclusive to the San Francisco Bay region.