The True Story of True Ventures
San Francisco-based True Ventures emerged on the venture scene in 2005 and its way of doing business -- focusing on seed-stage startups that it can afford to back for the long haul -- quickly resonated with LPs. Not only did they give True $155 million back in 2006 but they came back for a second, $195 million, offering last fall. That True had already enjoyed two quick exits helped: In late 2006, it participated in the $850,000 seed round of Maya’s Mom, a social networking site for mothers that BabyCenter bought for an undisclosed amount less than a year later. True was also the first institutional money into blog search engine Sphere, which sold in April 2008 to America Online for $25 million after raising just $4.3 million. True's reputation among entrepreneurs is more notable, though. Whatever it's doing -- be it treating entrepreneurs like customers, as it likes to say, or operating out of a startup-like space (its open, sunny offices at the base of a pier feature little aside from cheap gray carpeting and an array of modest desks) -- has resonated with the digital media community, which seemingly now holds the firm in the same high regard as Union Square Ventures in New York, First Round Capital outside Philadelphia and prominent angel investors like Ron Conway. Yesterday, I visited the firm to find out what all the fuss is about; there, I talked with co-founder Jon Callaghan over the sound of squawking seagulls:
