RWI Wraps On Fund IV –

PALO ALTO, Calif. – Bypassing any internal dotcom house keeping and attributing its recent $103 million in commitments to “old fashioned venture economics,” RWI Group recently closed its fourth fund, bringing the company’s overall assets under management to more than $165 million.

“There are a lot of funds that have gotten larger and have drifted away from series A [investments] and there are a lot of funds that have to take care of a lot of dotcom clean-up,” said Bill Baumel, a general partner with RWI. “We basically view it as a big window of opportunity.”

Based in Palo Alto, RWI invests in start-up companies within the communication, software and semiconductors spaces. So far, the fund had already made a quartet of investments including Cierra Photonics, PDF Solutions, Xporta and YY Software. The firm forecasts 20 more portfolio additions, with an average initial investment of $2 million to $3 million. A majority of the firm’s portfolio is expected to be based in or around Silicon Valley area.

“As the pace of technology changes, people want more bandwidth and software to provide better business efficiency,” General Partner Donald Lucas said. “While the fundamentals are increasing, valuations are going down, [as a result] we are provided with an attractive opportunity.”

The majority of the most recent fund-raising period lasted all of 30 days, following a July launch.

“The only one [LPs] who took longer to close were two select institutions that just had to go through their internal processes and they just took a little bit longer,” Baumel said about the fund’s six month lay-over.

Institutional investors such as Minneapolis Teachers’ Retirement Fund Association and St. Paul Teachers’ Retirement Fund Association participated in this fund alongside a select group of entrepreneurs, chief executive officers, senior technology executives, VCs, attorneys and financiers.