[1] Historically, the majority of the firm's investments have been in technology startups based outside of Silicon Valley, including in Europe, the UK, the US and Canada.
[3] The firm's namesake is the Valar of J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium, who are god-like immortal spirits that chose to enter the mortal world to prepare it for their living creations.
[5] Since then, the firm has spearheaded successive rounds of investment in the company[6] and Xero's market cap has grown to more than $4 billion as of February 2014.
[9] Additional investments in startups include: Breather, N26 (€10 million in a 2016 series A round[10]), Descomplica, Dinda, Even, EyeEm, Granify, Homie, Lystable, Oppa, fintech Stash,[11] TradeIt, and Vend.
[13] In February 2019, Valar Ventures led a $28 million Series B funding round for Cluno, a mobility and fintech company based in Germany.