Private Equity
2 min read · 07 April 2010
1 min read · 07 April 2010
Venture capital has spent the past year becoming more accessible, via institutional efforts like office hours and the emergence of omnipresent superangels. Another crack in the old boy network comes today, via the launch of a P2P startup equity platform called Microventures. The company is essentially an equity riff on Prosper or Kiva, in which startups are able to request between $50,000 and $250,000 from accredited investors. MicroVentures takes a fee only if the issuer raises its desired amount, and provides free services that ensure the issuer is in regulatory compliance. "What we're doing is creating a marketplace for entrepreneurs who don't have the means to go out and find venture capitalists, and for investors who might not have access to
1 min read · 05 April 2010
Boehringer Ingelheim, a German pharmaceutical company, has launched a €100 million corporate venture fund. The vehicle will invest in startups "that provide ground-breaking therapeutic approaches and technologies to help drive innovation in medical science. "
2 min read · 31 March 2010
Godzilla isn’t the inspiration most angel investors point to when explaining their investment philosophy. But Mike Maples – whose portfolio of early stage investments includes such well-known names as Twitter and Digg – may be on to something. The Silicon Valley-based angel investor this week rolled out a newly named investment fund called Floodgate, which will make investments of $150,000 to $1 million, principally in Internet and technology companies. In building up the portfolio, Maples, says, Floodgate will focus on finding and funding a class of ultra-promising startup teams that he calls thunder lizards. “I thought it was a good metaphor for the disruptive startup,” says Maples, who defines a thunder lizard as one of the tiny minority of venture-funded companies each year that grows up to be worth north of $700 million.
2 min read · 25 March 2010
We're still a few weeks away from Q3 venture capital deal data, but fired up the old database to see which firms have been the most active so far. It's mostly the usual suspects, although Benchmark Capital and Redpoint Ventures moved into the Top 10 with much faster investment paces than they exhibited last year. What follows after the jump is based on our VentureXpert database, based on global investment pace (the MoneyTree numbers, on the other hand, are only for investments in U.S. companies). Per usual, just a reminder that money in doesn't always correlate to money out.
3 min read · 23 March 2010
Atomico Ventures, a European VC fund run by Skype co-founder Niklas Zennström, today announced that it has closed its second fund -- and first institutional one -- with $165 million in capital commitments. So we spent some time on the phone this morning with Zennström, in order to learn more about the fundraise and the state of European venture capital. Last May, Atomico said in an SEC filing that it was looking to raise up to $266 million. Why did you close on so much less? I wouldn't say we closed on much less. The thing our lawyers told was was that we needed to set a limit in the SEC filing, because if we went above it we'd have to do another filing. So we basically put a high number with a really big buffer. The reality is that, with the kind of investments we’re looking at, you don’t want to have too big of a fund.
3 min read · 22 March 2010
Atomico Ventures, a European-focused VC fund run by Skype co-founder Niklas Zennström, has closed its second fund with $165 million in capital commitments. A regulatory filing from May 2009 indicated that the firm had been seeking upwards of $266 million, with Probitas Partners serving as placement agent.
2 min read · 22 March 2010
1 min read · 19 March 2010
Last month, I wrote about how venture capitalist Giri Sekhar had been indicted for trying to blackmail a New York public pension official. The alleged story is that Sekhar threatened to disclose an extra-marital affair, unless the official helped secure a $25 million LP commitment to a new fund being raised by Sekhar’s fund. Sekhar’s case hasn’t progressed much since then, with the only available paperwork being the original three-page indictment. A rep from the Albany County DA’s office would only say that the case is “ongoing,” while Sekhar didn’t reply to email requests for comment. But I was curious as to what all this scumdrudgery means for FA Technology Ventures, the firm at which Sekhar had been a partner (he officially left in late December, just as the fan began to stink). A firm spokesman declined to comment, so let’s move onto anonymous sourcing:
3 min read · 19 March 2010
