5 Ingredients for the Perfect Investment | Jeff Horing Interview

2025-09-16 · 10 company · 10 thematic

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jeff horing

Jeff Horing founded Insight Partners in the mid-1990s after leaving Warburg Pincus; he built the firm into a $12B+ single-fund platform across venture, growth, and buyout stages, pioneering software-focused sourcing at scale and a 'one fund' strategy. He remains deeply involved in deal sourcing, portfolio management, and firm culture.

quote

“that data bricks is still a private company at this scale is sort of unheard of. Uh you could argue OpenAI is still a young company relatively speaking to the timing of its revenues, but um for reasons that maybe represent just the shiftin…”

—jeff horing

now playing · $DATABRICKS

$DATABRICKSbullish· medium· posjeff horing

Insight invested in Databricks mega-round at massive private valuation

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Wiz is a flagship portfolio company backed at zero revenue, doubling net new bookings for six years

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$VERITASbullish· medium· posjeff horing

Vertafore was Insight's first software buyout in 1999, now owned by Vista

Vertafore proved software companies with cash flow could be bought and levered; Insight high-fived at 2x leverage then, today it likely carries 9x leverage showing market evolutio…

$MNDY···bullish· high· posjeff horing

Early investor in Monday.com at $5M ARR, now a public company success

Monday was not the most obvious funded company but had the right metrics; Insight backed at ~$5M ARR and it grew into a large TAM supporting a major exit.

$S···bullish· medium· posjeff horing

Early investor in SentinelOne at $4-5M ARR, now public

SentinelOne (referred to as Cena) was backed at $4-5M ARR and grew into a public company; exemplifies Insight's early-stage sourcing and scaling within one-fund strategy.

$ANTHROPICbullish· medium· posjeff horing

Insight backed Anthropic in recent large round via public strategy fund

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$RIVIERA-PARTNERSbullish· medium· posjeff horing

Insight bought large stake in Riviera Partners, top tech executive recruiting firm

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$UBER···bearish· highjeff horing

Insight passed on Uber at attractive round, calls it a huge mistake

Insight evaluated Uber at a great round but partnership voted to pass; acknowledges it was a massive missed opportunity due to mandate limitations and West Coast bias.

$MSFT···bullish· mediumjeff horing

Microsoft can enhance existing products with Copilot rather than rebuild from scratch

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$ADBE···bullish· mediumjeff horing

Adobe can expand Photoshop market share from 3% to 20% via AI lowering learning curve

AI dramatically reduces user interface complexity, allowing Adobe to expand Photoshop's addressable market from 3% to 20% of humans by lowering the learning curve an order of magn…