DFJ Collects $400M For Sixth Vehicle –

REDWOOD CITY, Calif. – Draper Fisher Jurvetson Fund VI late last summer closed on $400 million – $375 million from limited partners and $25 million from the firm’s managing directors.

Once existing limited partners were informed about the new fund, the vehicle completed fund raising in three weeks, said Managing Director Tim Draper.

While Fund VI is twice the size of its predecessor, Draper Fisher Jurvetson Fund V, which wrapped in the summer of 1998, the new vehicle will maintain DFJ’s focus on early-stage Internet companies. Fund VI will be overseen by five managing directors: John Fisher, Steve Jurvetson, Warren Packard, Jennifer Fonstad and Draper.

Draper was uncertain how long it would take the firm to invest the new pool of capital, but said Funds IV and V were “very aggressively” invested based on the correct suspicion that Internet investments would take off. The $90 million Fund IV wrapped in 1997, and Fund V wraped on $183 million in 1998.

Funds III and IV had triple digit internal rates of return, while Fund V climbed to four figures, drawing on the success of two of its portfolio companies that went public: free Internet-access and e-mail provider NetZero Inc. and on-line investment banking and brokerage firm Wit Capital Group Inc., Draper said. He declined to give specific returns.

Fund VI features a 25% carry, an increase from Fund V’s 20% take, Draper said. “We’re still the best deal in town.” Draper declined to name limited partners.