Lawrence Aragon
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Foundation Capital has set out to raise $400 million for its seventh fund, considerably less than the $750 million it raised in 2008 for its sixth fund. The new fund also won't include two GPs from fund VI: Rich Redelfs and Mike Schuh.
"High-quality [VC] firms will find it easy to raise funds but lesser-quality funds will struggle mightily,” says Brian Rodde of Makena Capital Management, which manages and invests capital for endowments, foundations and family offices.
Venture capitalist Kate Mitchell has scored a coveted invitation to President Obama's signing of the JOBS Act, tentatively scheduled for this Thursday. Mitchell is co-founder of Scale Venture Partners and was chairman of the 17-member IPO Task Force that drafted the recommendations that went into the JOBS Act.
The €150 million ($198 million) life sciences fund counts as anchor LPs GlaxoSmithKline and the venture capital affiliate of the Janssen pharmaceutical companies of Johnson & Johnson.
The Los Angeles City Employees’ Retirement System plans to commit up to $45 million to funds managed by Avenue Capital Group, Blackstone Group and Hony Capital, according to the agenda for LACERS' March 13 board meeting.
Benchmark Capital Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners and Elevation Partners as a group own 31.7 million shares worth in excess of $475 million at $15 per share.
General Motors Ventures and other VCs will lose about $16M invested in Bright Automotive. The failure follows the December demise of Aptera, another VC-backed vehicle maker.
Yahoo is "seeking to force Facebook into licensing 10 to 20 patents over technologies that include advertising, the personalization of Web sites, social networking and messaging," according to the New York Times.
Most peHUB readers are troubled by President Obama’s business tax reform proposal, but few think it has any real chance of passing, according to our weekly poll.