Venrock eyes $450 mln for seventh fund

Venrock Associates, one of the oldest venture firms in the business, is back in the market after four years targeting $450 million for its seventh fund, according to two limited partners with knowledge of the fundraising.

Venrock, launched by the Rockefeller family in 1969, did not return calls and emails for comment.

Venrock has not filed a Form D with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The LPs said Venrock is expected to have a quick fundraising for Fund VII.

It’s not clear who the general partners of Fund VII will be. The firm identifies nine of the 15 members of its investment team as “partners” on its website. Just last month, healthcare investor Camille Samuels, formerly of Versant Ventures, joined Venrock as a partner. (Technology entrepreneur Doug Dooley was also added to the investment team, but he was not named a partner.)

Of the nine partners on the firm’s website, four were listed as general partners for Venrock Associates VI, a $350 million fund raised in 2010: Brian Ascher, Anders Hove, Bryan Robertsand Michael Tyrrell, according to the regulatory filing. 

Roberts was the only GP to move over from Fund V, a $600 million vehicle raised in 2007, an SEC filing shows. The three GPs listed for Venrock Associates V were Roberts, Ray A. Rothrock and Anthony Sun,

VCJ was unable to find performance information for Venrock’s funds.

Venrock focuses mostly on early stage tech companies, but it also has separate funds for healthcare investments. Venrock Healthcare Capital Partners II filed papers with the SEC in March indicating it planned to raise $200 million. (That filing lists two GPs for the healthcare fund: Hove and Bong Koh.)

In 2012, Venrock reaped a return of more than 15x its money on the sale of SlideShare to LinkedIn, VCJ sister publication peHUB reported.

Venrock also was an investor in Castlight Health Inc., which went public earlier this year with its shares debuting at $37.50, well above its expected offering range of $16. However, Castlight’s share prices have come down to earth since the debut, trading at $15.13 around mid-day Friday.

Venrock earlier this month participated in a $21 million round for Los Altos, Calif.-based VeloCloud Networks, which provides cloud-based networking services. Venrock invested along with New Enterprise Associates and incubator The Fabric.