Fundraising a Long Slog, Including for Ex-Googlers
In November 2007, Salman Ullah, Sean Dempsey, and Peter Hsing came together to form Merus Capital, a venture capital firm that wanted to raise $125 million for its first fund. Given the founders’ backgrounds, it didn’t seem overly ambitious. Ullah had been Google’s VP of corporate development, where he worked with Dempsey, and Hsing was coming from Microsoft, where he had been a general manager of corporate strategy. But like many firms trying to pool capital in today’s inhospitable fundraising environment, Merus is assembling a much smaller fund -- and at a much slower rate -- than expected. Indeed, according to a May SEC filing that I stumbled across tonight, the Palo Alto-based has raised just $36 million so far and has amended its filing so that it might continue its fundraising indefinitely.
