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Planeteer Capital closed its debut fund with anchor investments from an Ivy League university endowment and Mike Schroepfer, former CTO of Meta and a partner at Gigascale Capital, after pitching more than 400 potential LPs.

Staff and consultants of the $5bn Silicon Valley pension are bullish about opportunities in a depressed VC marketplace.

The firm closed on $50 million to back early-stage companies and connect them with its corporate network.

Investors in Zeal's $82m Fund II include Capricorn Investment Group, Citi Impact Fund, Hampton University, M&T Bank, MassMutual, Spelman College, Wells Fargo and Zaffre Investments.

'We decided to actively go find partners in Canada and Europe to be long-term partners,' managing partner John Tough tells Venture Capital Journal.

LPs in Longview’s North America University Innovations Fund include UK-based IP Group plc, institutional investors, large multi-family offices and prominent single-family offices.

Firm with $7.3bn raised in VC program since first fund in 1990 anticipating return of IPOs and M&As later this year or next, with uptick of CVs in the meantime.

In part 21 of his series on venture debt, Zack Ellison from Applied Real Intelligence explores the fundamentals of convertible notes and why they are a staple of early-stage financing.

Some seed funds are asking their LPs to support a larger number of investments, which typically means a fund will have smaller ownership of each company but will get more shots on goal.