Eric Vishria
American venture capitalist
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Eric Vishria (born 1979) is a general partner at Benchmark, a venture capital firm.[1] Previously, he was CEO and co-founder of Rockmelt[2] and served as vice president at Yahoo[3] following Yahoo's acquisition of Rockmelt.[4]
Eric Vishria | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1979 (age 46–47) |
| Alma mater | Stanford University |
| Occupation | Venture capitalist |
| Employer | General Partner at Benchmark |
| Known for | CEO, co-founder of Rockmelt |
Career
Vishria graduated from Stanford University at age 19 with a B.S. in mathematical and computational science and a minor in human biology. He began his career in investment banking at Broadview International and got his first entrepreneurial experience as an early employee at Loudcloud[5] and later Opsware.[6] When Opsware was acquired by Hewlett-Packard in 2007 for $1.65 billion, Vishria was serving as VP of marketing. After the acquisition, Eric became vice president of the products, software, technology solutions group in HP Software.[7]
In October 2008, Vishria left HP to co-found RockMelt with Tim Howes, and launched the RockMelt social browser in November 2010. In 2013, RockMelt was acquired by Yahoo for a reported $60–70 million,[8] where Vishria started working as a Yahoo VP.[9] In 2014, Vishria joined Benchmark as a general partner, the first partner addition in over 6 years.[10]
Vishria has led Benchmark’s investments in and holds board seats on Amplitude[11] (which underwent an IPO in 2021),[12] Benchling,[12] Cerebras Systems,[12] Confluent[13] (IPO, 2021),[12] Contentful,[14] Fireworks.ai,[12] and Quilter.[12] Vishria’s exited investments include Pixie Labs (which was acquired by New Relic)[12] and Bugsnag[15] (which was acquired by SmartBear).[16]
