How Menlo Ventures landed a stake in Uber worth billions. : Menlo Ventures was founded in 1976 but it took 35 years for the venture capital firm to hit the jackpot. Since the dot-com boom, Menlo Ventures has teetered between good and great. A prolific Silicon Valley investor, it’s never quite reached the heights of Accel or Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), or established the level of name recognition as Benchmark or Sequoia, firms that struck gold with bets on Facebook, Instagram and Snap.