Founded in 1988, St. Paul Venture Capital has roughly $1.5 billion in investment capital under management, making it one of the nation's largest venture capital firms. The source of all of the company's capital is the St. Paul Fire and Marine Insurance Company, an insurance conglomerate with over $20 billion in assets.

Investment strategy: early stage focus

While St. Paul VC invests in companies at all stages, the majority of its fundings are early stage. (The firm estimates that a healthy 20 percent of investments are made in later stage firms.) With a large insurance company as a solid source of capital, St. Paul VC can invest anywhere from $1 million to $15 million over the life of an investment. The firm also has a fund set up specifically for investing in Minnesota businesses. The fund is run by managing partner Michael Gorman and includes investments in all types of firms. St. Paul has made several impressive investments in the past including WebTV, Coffee Connection amd Petstuff/Petsmart.

Portfolio: 7-prong focus

The firm focuses its investments in seven areas: consumer information technology, consumer products and services, communications, e-commerce, healthcare and life sciences, enterprise information and software and the previously mentioned Minnesota targeted investments. The e-commerce portfolio, run by general partners James Simmons, Brian Jacobs and Michael Gorman, contains stars such as DirectAG.com, net.Genesis and Net Perceptions. The health care portfolio, which is run by managing general partner Patrick Hopf as well as general partners Everett Cox and Nancy Olson, includes Domain Pharma, Eclipsys and Prometheus.

General partners: no hegemony