Skip to main content
https://www.highperformancecpmgate.com/rgeesizw1?key=a9d7b2ab045c91688419e8e18a006621

Kleiner Perkins gets back to early stage with its $600M 18th fund

“KP used be a small team doing hands-on company building. We’re moving away from being this institution with multiple products and really just focusing on early stage venture capital” Kleiner Perkins partner Ilya Fushman tells me. 47 years after its founding, the storied venture fund is going “back to the future” with today’s announcement of a 18th fund — a $600 million fund for seed, Series A, and Series B financings. It’s investing across consumer, enterprise, hard tech, and fintech, looking for high-potential teams to help mold into unicorns.

Kleiner Perkins partner Ilya Fushman

“We went out to market to LPs. We got a lot of interest. We we were significantly oversubscribed” Fushman says of the firm’s raise.

Kleiner Perkins was recently rocked by the departure of legendary investor Mary Meeker. She brought along Kleiner partners Mood Rowghani, Noah Knauf, and Juliet de Baubigny and they’re reportedly raising a $1.25 billion growth fund called Bond. Fushman explained that with Kleiner refocusing on early stage, their funds will be well differentiated. “They’re going to focus on very late stage growth” while he described Kleiner fund 18 as a place where partners can “collaborate and create” alongside new startups.

Other trends Kleiner is seeking to invest in include better distributed work tools, infrastructure for technology businesses, shifts in the urban and economic landscape, and security and identity tools to protect the software-enabled future. Recent early stage investments from the firm have included wellness product subscription service FabFitFun, tax and insurance safety net Catch, and food stamps app Propel.

With the explosion of early stage funds, competition for the best deals is cut throat. Kleiner will have to trade on its reputation, the expertise of its founders, and its extensive connections to lure in founders. If entrepreneurs think Kleiner can fund their mid-stage rounds like some seed funds can’t, or hook them up with potential acquirers whether things go peachy or pear-shaped, they’ll open their cap table.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Uber co-founder Garrett Camp steps back from board director role

Uber co-founder Garrett Camp is relinquishing his role as a board director and switching to board observer — where he says he’ll focus on product strategy for the ride hailing giant. Camp made the announcement in a short Medium post in which he writes of his decade at Uber: “I’ve learned a lot, and realized that I’m most helpful when focused on product strategy & design, and this is where I’d like to focus going forward.” “I will continue to work with Dara [Khosrowshahi, Uber CEO] and the product and technology leadership teams to brainstorm new ideas, iterate on plans and designs, and continue to innovate at scale,” he adds. “We have a strong and diverse team in place, and I’m confident everyone will navigate well during these turbulent times.” The Canadian billionaire entrepreneur signs off by saying he’s looking forward to helping Uber “brainstorm the next big idea”. Camp hasn’t been short of ideas over his career in tech. He’s the co-founder of the web 2.0 recommendatio...
Post a Comment
Read more

Leading VCs discuss how COVID-19 has impacted the world of digital health

In December 2019, Extra Crunch spoke to a group of investors leading the charge in health tech to discuss where they saw the most opportunity in the space leading into 2020 . At the time, respondents highlighted startups in digital therapeutics, telehealth and mental health that were improving medical practitioner efficiency or streamlining the distribution of care, amongst a variety of other digital health markets that were garnering the most attention. Where top VCs are investing in digital health In the months since, the COVID-19 crisis has debilitated national healthcare systems and the global economy. Weaknesses in healthcare systems have become clearer than ever, while startups and capital providers have struggled to operate while wide swaths of the market effectively shut down. Given significant volatility and the rapid changes seen in the worlds of healthcare, venture and startups broadly, we wanted to understand which inefficiencies might have been brought to light, w...
Post a Comment
Read more

News-reading app Flipboard expands local coverage, including coronavirus updates, to 12 more U.S. metros

Earlier this year, personalized news aggregation app Flipboard expanded into local news . The feature brought local news, sports, real estate, weather, transportation news and more to 23 cities across the U.S. Today, Flipboard is bringing local news to 12 more U.S. metros and is adding critical coronavirus local coverage to all of the 35 supported locales. The 12 new metros include the following:  Baltimore, Charlotte, Cleveland, Detroit, Indianapolis, Nashville, Pittsburgh, Orlando, Raleigh, Salt Lake City, St. Louis, and Tampa Bay. They join the 23 cities that were already supported:  Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis-St. Paul, New Orleans, New York City, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Portland, Sacramento, San Diego, San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle, Toronto, Vancouver and Washington, D.C. To offer local news in its app, Flipboard works with area partners, big and small, like The Plain Dealer’s Cleveland.com , ...
Post a Comment
Read more