Private Equity
Yesterday we wrote about August Ventures, a new cleantech investment shop based in Boise, Idaho. If the name sounds familiar, that may be because it's awfully close to that of August Capital, the Silicon Valley firm that's been making venture capital investments for the past 15 years. Not sure why everyone is hankering for the August moniker -- perhaps the double meaning -- but August Capital has no plans to share. Instead, it plans to ring up the Boise boys and request that they order new stationary. "I'm not sure why they think they can use it, but they can't," says David Hornik, an August Capital partner who currently teaches IP law at Stanford.
3 min read · 12 November 2009
3 min read · 12 November 2009
A few weeks ago, I met with Mark Solon, managing partner of Boise, Idaho-based Highway 12 Ventures, while he was in Silicon Valley to attend some meetings. In addition to our lunchtime chat about the Boise State football team (BCS rank No. 6) and how my San Jose Sharks beat his New York Rangers, Solon talked a lot about the venture scene in Idaho and how it's similar to that of where Utah was a few years back. If it is indeed poised for growth, a good example may be the launch this year of August Ventures. Boise, Idaho-based August Ventures is seeking to invest in early stage cleantech companies. Areas of interest include renewable energy, energy storage, energy efficiency and advanced materials, according to the firm’s website. The firm calls Idaho home, but Eric Hansen, who runs the fund, says he will go anywhere in the Western U.S. where there is opportunity.
2 min read · 12 November 2009
1 min read · 11 November 2009
1 min read · 09 November 2009
Frazier Technology Ventures yesterday said that it would no longer make new investments, nor raise another fund. As part of that announcement, general partner Len Jordan said that he would be joining fellow Seattle-based venture firm Madrona. So we’ve got 5 Questions for Len: 1. When did you guys formally decide that Fund III just wasn’t going to happen? Earlier, in the first half of this year. The fund-raising environment was just very difficult, and I don’t think we foresaw it getting much better anytime soon. We’re a relatively new group, so we drew the conclusion that we should suspend. I want to emphasize, though, that it had nothing to do with our portfolio, which we feel very good about. I think we have a lot of value inside our 11 active portfolio companies, and had a very good exit last year when SNAPin was acquired by Nuance.
2 min read · 05 November 2009
Big day over at Greylock Partners, which has closed a new fund, hired a big-name new partner and agreed to move its East Coast office from staid Waltham to trendy Cambridge. Fund XIII came in at $575 million, which is significalty higher than the $500 million Greylock raised for its twelfth fund in 2006. Partner Bill Hellman says the added capital was the result of existing investors requesting more than their pro rata shares. Greylock doesn't take pre-determined management fees -- it operates on year-to-year budgets -- which might help explain why liquidity-drained LPs were ready to open their pocketbooks for Greylock. Greylock also announced that LinkedIn co-founder and executive chairman Reid Hoffman has signed on as a partner. LinkedIn is a Greylock portfolio company, having first raised money from the firm as part of a $10 million Series B round in 2004.
5 min read · 02 November 2009
1 min read · 01 November 2009
1 min read · 30 October 2009
Endowments have always been the mother’s milk of venture capital and private equity funds, typically allocating 11.8% of their portfolio to these assets, as compared with the 8.8% of all institutional investors. Yet only 33% of endowments have made new PE commitments this year according to a recent survey by Preqin and 35% won’t be making another commitment until 2011. And if you’re getting revved up about pitching one of the big boy endowments on your latest fund, you may be disappointed. The study found that 42% of endowments with over $750 million under management were over-allocated to private equity. That’s nearly three times as many over-allocated funds than the endowments with $350 million or less under management.
1 min read · 29 October 2009
