Although the sophomore fund is a sizable increase from the firm’s $85 million debut fund, which closed a little over two years ago, the final close is below the initial $150 million target, according to a regulatory filing.

Less than two years after its launch, Unusual Ventures has wrapped up its second fund with $400 million, a 150 percent increase from its $160 million debut effort.

As the year is close to wrapping up, emerging venture managers have closed on larger amounts. In the last two weeks, fundraisers pulled in their second highest pool since early August. A total of eleven fund managers raised $642.2 million from Oct. 23 through Nov. 5, according to research from Venture Capital Journal. That’s up […]

Venture capitalists were upbeat about the value of the Silicon Valley-based companies they funded in Q3 2019. The average share price increase for private companies raising venture capital rose to 88 percent in Q3, compared to 77 percent in the second quarter, according to a report from Fenwick & West. This was the largest increase […]

The $71.8 billion Massachusetts Pension Reserves Investment Management Board continues to be rewarded for its highly developed venture capital program. The pension plan’s latest performance results show that about 80 percent of venture funds in the 2006 to 2015 vintages have double digit IRRs and 100 percent of the funds in the time period registered […]

Neil Stanford, head of PE at the A$45bn superannuation fund, discusses the LP's push into Aussie VC and its aversion to large domestic buyouts.

New Jersey Division of Investments, a manager of seven state pension plans with $76 billion in assets under management, has not made a venture-related investment since 2014 when it committed $100 million to Technology Crossover Ventures’ $2.23 billion eighth fund. However, the eight venture-focused positions in the division’s portfolio have been performing relatively well. Topping […]

Tech companies shopping for a private equity partner must be ready to perform due diligence, as not all PE firms are alike. That's the message from Scott Munro, a venture partner at Inovia Capital, in a PE Hub Canada feature article. Munro argues that only a handful of North American tech PE firms make suitable partners to tech companies in growth mode. He outlines the criteria the best PE firms use to evaluate opportunities and the situations in which they can create optionality for a company's management team and its investors.

During the last few years, general partner-led secondary transactions have evolved and are no longer just associated with GPs trying to dispose of lingering assets that have become hard to sell. Increasingly, GP-led secondaries are used to create for both PE fund sponsors and their LPs liquidity solutions with more attractive valuations than regular dispositions of funds’ assets. In a PE Hub Canada feature article, Torys LLP Partners Venera Ziegler, Scott Semer and Andrew Beck and Senior Associate Batya Nadler look at key issues associated with GP-led secondary transactions as well as related guidelines released by the Institutional Limited Partners Association for sponsors and LPs.

At the beginning of each year, Jim Orlando looks backwards and forwards on trends shaping the Canadian technology startup industry. With time on his hands prior to starting his new job at Wittington Investments, Orlando decided to revisit the multiple fearless forecasts he made for 2019 in January, including the state of Canada's startup financing environment, emerging technology trends, and trends at the international level. In a PE Hub Canada feature article, he reviews his prior thinking and awards positive grades in some areas and less positive ones in others.