How Goldman Sachs Became A Tech-Investing Powerhouse

The inside story of how - and why - Goldman Sachs became a tech-investing powerhouse.

- Katrina Brooker, illustration by Eboy

They weren't coming just to get wasted says Mel Cavaricci aka DJ Melrecalling the crowd milling in front of his sound table at a party in March.It was at the height of the annual South by Southwest (SXSW) conference, held in Austin, Texas. The event, which started as a music festival, more recently has become famous for propelling the likes of Twitter, Foursquare, Meerkat, and other fast-growing startups. Tech and media companies throw liquor-soaked bashes to celebrate themselves, promote products, and woo hard-to-hire software developers. Music service Spotify hosted a week-long concert series. MRY, a digital marketing firm, hosted a party featuring rapper Busta Rhymes and dancers with big Day-Glo sticks.

This year, Cavaricci had been hired to spin for a company he’d never seen around SXSW before: Goldman Sachs. The party was different from his usual gigs; it was hard for the deejay—a veteran of many SXSW raves—to figure out what to play. “From the looks of the crowd, they didn’t want to hear EDM,” he says. So instead of electronic dance music, he picked oldies. One in particular, Edwin Starr’s 1970s classic Easin’ In, seemed to fit: “There’s a man coming into town ... Like a cat that’s stalking its prey, he don’t wanna let it get away ....”

Goldman Sachs, arguably the most powerful bank in the world, quietly, without fanfare, is making a play to become one of the most influential investors in technology startups. According to research firm CB Insights, the Wall Street bank has participated in 132 fund-raising rounds in private technology companies since 2009, with 77 of those deals made in the past 2½ years alone.