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- 5 Questions for David Lincoln of Element Partners
Element Partners, a cleantech-focused venture capital firm with offices in Pennsylvania and Silicon Valley, tomorrow will announce that it has closed its second fund with $486 million in capital commitments. So we've got 5 Questions for David Lincoln, the firm's managing partner: 1. Element Partners originally focused on both early-stage and later-stage investing, but this fund will drop the early-stage component. Why? Lincoln: We'd always had a mixed-stage focus, but the initial impression was that we were primarily early-stage, because of our association with Draper Fisher Jurvetson. In fact, we continue to get a ton of early-stage dealflow, but not as much in the growth or expansion-stages -- even though that's the area where we focused 80% of our attention. So we thought it was good to formalize and emphasize our growth-stage and expansion-stage strategy with this fund and fund announcement. Also, for this moment in the economy, we think there are better cleantech opportunities later.
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- Bessemer Venture's Fuzzy Math
Bessemer Venture Partners this morning announced /32771/bessemer-venture-partners-raises-350-million-annex-fund/ "the closing of a $350 million supplement to its current fund." But that's not really true. At least not in the traditional sense. The fund in question is Bessemer Venture Partners VII, which closed in June 2007 with approximately $1.1 billion in capital commitments. It was the first BVP fund open to institutions other than family office Bessemer Securities, although BS still took a very large stake. Too large a stake, perhaps, as the new "supplement" is mostly a transfer of unfunded capital from Bessemer Securities to other limited partners.
- peHUB Wire: Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Random Ramblings
- peHUB Wire: Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Random Ramblings
- VCs Have Lots of Problems, But Access to Capital Isn't One of Them
I respect Tom Friedman. Hell, I envy him. But the man has taken temporary leave of his senses, by repeatedly arguing that some sort of venture capital bailout is in order. First, he penned a piece http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/22/opinion/22friedman.html?_r=2 arguing that VC-backed cleantech companies were "dying like flies," due to a lack of capital. I’ve repeatedly written about the lack of project finance for the handful of VC-backed startups that need it (mostly facility-heavy electric vehicle and biofuel producers), but Friedman vastly overstates the problem. Moreover, he fails to note that a number of firms rushing in to fill the void, including Blackstone, C Change, CMEA and Kleiner Perkins. Then came a follow-up column http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/22/opinion/22friedman.html?_r=3 in which he wrote: