Spark's Bijan Sabet on co-investingBijan Sabet, co-founder of Boston's Spark Capital, talks about partnering with other VC firms, especially New York's Union Square Ventures in this episode of The Deal's Behind the Money video show. Spark and Union Square co-invest in Boxee, Bug Labs, Covestor, Tumblr Inc. and Twitter Inc.
To get a feel for the mechanics of co-investing, we asked Sabet to walk us through how he met David Karp, the 22-year-old founder of Tumblr Inc., and introduced him to Union Square Ventures co-founder Fred Wilson.
In December, the two firms invested $4.5 million in Tumblr, following up on a $775,000 round the previous year that included TV producer Fred Seibert, entrepreneurs Jakob Lodwick and Martin Varsavsky, as well as Betaworks, an innovative incubator in New York.
To find the next generation of Twitters and Tumblr, last week Spark announced a new seed-stage program called Start@Spark. Through the new program, Spark will invest up to $250,000 each in promising startups in the Northeast.