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Goldman Sachs has been dialing up its presence in the startup investing space over the last several years.
The bank invests directly in deals and also wields a network of high-net-worth clients who are eager to back hot startups.
Some of these investments are about gaining access to technology that Goldman might use in its own business — like Kensho, which creates analytics platforms that could help answer complex financial questions.
Others — like stakes in Facebook ahead of its IPO and Uber — have paid off twice: first as investments, and second when the investment bank landed big roles advising company deals.
Goldman, for example, was an investor in Square in 2012 and 2014, and also the lead underwriter of its initial public offering last week. JPMorgan, another Square underwriter, was also an investor in the company.
Goldman has made over 300 such investments, according to data from CrunchBase.
They include deals led by the tech investment banking group, an investment team housed in the securities division that puts money into trading technology company, and units housed in the investing and lending division.
Here's some of the investment bank's most notable deals, including exits:
Goldman's 2011 investment in Facebook preceded a big wave of startup deals for the bank.
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In 2011, after Goldman Sachs invested in Facebook at a $50 billion valuation, it was presumed that the investment would help the bank land Mark Zuckerberg's business when time came for an IPO. But Goldman "came in third" on the IPO. Still, the bank and its clients made a tidy profit on the social network.
Goldman has piled cash into Spotify.
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Spotify has been sending its valuation skyward — Daniel Ek's startup's most recent round was for a valuation north of $8 billion — and Goldman Sachs has helped out as an investor in 2012 and as an adviser earlier this year.
Goldman recently led a round for Shift, which is disrupting the clunky online auto-sales marketplace.
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Lately, plenty of capital has been flowing into the online auto-sales arena for several reasons. One reason is that the space is ripe for disruption, in part owed to the difficulty of getting all the way through a car purchase.
But a key opportunity for banks is to help the online players build financing out that flows through the lenders themselves. Goldman led a $50 million investment in Shift last month to help the startup compete against a growing field of online players.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider