“In the U.S., if you look at the tier one, tier two VC firms, more than half, 60%-plus, of the general partners of VC organizations have actually built companies before,” said about the new fund. “And we discovered that in Europe that statistic is 8%.” 

Tamkivi, co-founder of is one of the four startup founders behind Plural, alongside co-founder of , co-founder of , and CEO at .

The four co-founders call themselves “unemployables”—founders who would not readily join a VC firm or be employable at a startup. As active angel investors, they seek to create a structure for European founders who have reached the stage that they want to give back to the next generation. 

How it works

The fund will operate in a distinct manner from a traditional fund. There is no fund thesis because there’s no committee decision-making. Each lead will select two to four companies a year they are passionate about working with. 

The fund committee will critique the investment. However, the lead makes the decision and will always invest their own money alongside capital from the fund. At the core is an agreement between the lead and the founder on how they will help, creating an intimate relationship. 

Plural has other co-founders who plan to join but are not yet announced. The firm anticipates having around 10 leads investing by the end of the year. 

Building a startup is “a very scalable craft,” said Tamkivi. He knows it is helpful to have people you can call who have “been in your shoes, who have built things, hired people early on, made their first sale, try to figure out what’s the next round like and so forth.”

The team has already made 14 investments. Its commitment is largely at seed or Series A, and typically around $3 million to $4 million. Areas of interest for the fund leads are climate, AI and machine learning, data and governance, health, and social equality. 

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KP19, the 19th fund for the firm, will focus on early-stage investments in consumer, enterprise, financial technology, health care and hartech companies, according to a statement from Kleiner Perkins.

KPCB, which has backed companies like and , said it would go back to focusing on early-stage investments when it announced the closing of its last fund last year.

About 35 percent of its KP18 investments were seed series, 53 percent were Series A rounds and 12 percent were Series B. Enterprise startups made up 43 percent of KP18’s investments, with the firm investing in 15 enterprise companies. Deep tech took second place with 24 percent of KP18’s investments, or eight companies.

KP19 will be “more of the same,” according to the firm.

“It’s the same team, with the same strategy, investing in the same sectors at the earliest stages,” KPCB said in a statement.

Additionally, Annie Case, Monica Desai Weiss and Josh Coyne were promoted to principals at the firm. Case will focus on consumer and health care, Weiss will lead investments in fintech and consumer, and Coyne will focus on enterprise and fintech.

, and are the general partners listed on for KP19. , who was listed as a GP on KP18, closed last year, is not listed as a general partner on this latest fund.

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At the time of filing, no capital has yet been raised; however, it bears mentioning that it’s common for venture investors to file their Form D immediately prior to calling down at least some pre-committed capital from limited partners.

Precursor Ventures is managed by , the firm’s sole general partner. Prior to starting his own firm, Hudson served in a variety of operating roles, including starting a couple of companies. Hudson cut his teeth as a venture investor at (formerly known as SoftTech VC) where he served in alternating venture partner and partner roles over his more than eight years with the firm.

Hudson, one of the all-too-few black general partners operating in venture today, is also on the teaching team for Entrepreneurship from Diverse Perspectives, a course at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business.

The firm’s investment team consists of and , two black women with extensive startup and financial management experience. , an ex-Googler with prior founding experience, is working on a new financial technology venture as an EIR at the firm.

If fully raised, Fund III will be the firm’s largest yet. Precursor Ventures closed out in February 2019, nearly one year and four months after taking down its first LP commitments.

Precursor raised a little more than $15 million for its first fund, which closed out in late 2016.

Since the firm’s formation in October 2015, Precursor has primarily focused its investment dollars on seed and pre-seed deals. On its website, Precursor Ventures that it’s committed to investing in companies’ first institutional rounds, typically committing between $100,000 and $250,000 to that first round, with reserves for follow-on investment.

The firm adds that it is “committed to investing in founders who represent a wide variety of backgrounds in terms of gender, race, background, academic experience and life circumstances.”

The firm’s recent investments include organization management software company , childcare-as-a-benefit company , and AI-enabled radiology reporting software company .

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The firm’s debut fund closed out at $180 million in October 2017.

M33 Growth is led by co-founding managing directors , and .

Prior to M33 Growth, Shortsleeve was a managing director at and served stints in leadership and directorship roles at the Massachusetts Department of Transportation and the . Ling is also an alumnus of General Catalyst, where he served as partner for 13 years prior to starting M33 Growth.

Anello was a senior associate in General Catalyst’s growth equity group and, between 2013 and 2017, co-founded a travel booking startup, worked on the special projects group at , worked with , and served in board and leadership roles at a number of other companies.

The firm employs 15 people at its Boston headquarters.

M33 Growth is broadly focused on technology and health care, but there is notable variance in its investments.

The firm states in its press release that it “invests growth capital and applies its deep operational experience to optimize go-to-market teams and execute on strategic acquisitions.”

“M33 Growth was founded to fuel the growth of the next great success stories in American business,” said Shortsleeve in the press release announcing Fund II. “We seek to partner with scrappy founders who have built great companies by bootstrapping their way to profitability and are looking for a partner to help them accelerate growth. Our second fund marks not only the next milestone for our firm, but also a tremendous platform to continue to expand the sales and go-to-market expansion and strategic sourcing platform that we believe will drive growth in our companies.”

The lists a number of its current and prior portfolio companies. M33 Growth’s current portfolio consists of , RHI Group, , and W Energy Software.

The firm says that AssuriCare provides software and services which helps to minimize “fraud, waste, and abuse in the long-term care industry.”

RHI Group is in the business of investing in and partnering with traditional retailers to help them market themselves more effectively. M33 Growth is currently co-invested, alongside RHI Group, in and previously co-invested in (acquired by ) and (acquired by ).

The Oncology Institute operates cancer treatment centers which also offer patient and family services like financial, dietary and end-of-life counseling.

Titan Cloud offers retailers in the fuel industry the ability to monitor inventory levels and delivery scheduling, manage their facilities, and track exposure to and compliance with environmental regulations. And, in a similar vein, W Energy Software provides cloud-based enterprise resource planning software to “upstream and midstream oil and gas companies.”

In addition to Datalogix and Index, M33 Growth’s prior portfolio includes , , , , , , and .

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Fund III is the largest in this series of funds. Andreessen Horowitz’s previous biotech and health care funds came in at $450 million (announced in December 2017) and $200 million for (announced in November 2015).

According and , the firm has made investments in dozens of companies in the health care, biotechnology and pharmaceutical sectors.

In its announcement for Fund III, the firm’s managing directors said “[t]ech, biotech, and our healthcare system are merging—into what we call simply ‘bio.’ And whether for pharma, hospitals, or investors, bio is now officially the hot new thing.”

The firm’s portfolio companies are operating on several sides of this emerging sector.

Take as an example. It’s a broker of Medicare Advantage plans. Andreessen Horowitz led the company’s round in October 2018.

More recent additions to the portfolio include cancer drug company and , which develops cancer treatment protocols for dogs, and medical data management upstart .

“We are now approaching a new ability to rethink bio’s biggest problems, from intractable diseases and massive inefficiencies or disparities in an overburdened health care system, to what we eat, what we wear, what we build, even how we heal our planet. And we will do this by using our most advanced technological tools, as well as the engineering principles that brought them to us,” fund managers , , and said in their announcement.

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If it is fully raised, this fund will match the size of the , which was closed in April 2018. The firm’s was closed in March 2016, raising $300 million to invest mostly in early-stage deals.

The filing states that no capital has yet been closed for the new investment vehicle. Venture capital firms often file a Form D immediately prior to closing capital for new funds, even though most have secured “soft commits” from limited partners prior to making the first official close.

The firm is led by , a multi-time entrepreneur turned venture capital investor. Outside of his work with 8VC, Lonsdale is perhaps best known as a co-founder of controversial data analytics company . In addition to Palantir, he cofounded wealth management platform and government services automator .

Lonsdale is the sole general partner listed on the filing.

8VC has retained the services of New York-based independent broker-dealers Artist Capital and ABG to assist with raising the fund.

As stated earlier, 8VC is an investor in Crunchbase. The firm was a participating investor in , which was closed in November 2015.

More recently, however, the firm has made bets across a number of sectors. Its most recent publicly disclosed deal is a participating investor in insurance technology startup . Other deals from 2020 include leading raised by health care software company and participating in of Seattle-based , which helps immigrants apply for work visas at startup companies.

The firm has seen a number of exits out of its portfolio. These include freelancer-focused mobile banking app-maker , oncology tech company and AI-powered drug discovery company , among .

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The filing states that no capital has yet been raised, but it’s also common for investment firms to submit a Form D immediately prior to calling down capital from limited partners.

At $420 million, Fund VI would be equal in size to , for which Ribbit made its initial filing in September 2018.

Filings for Ribbit , , , and can be found on the SEC’s website.

The firm intends to raise the new fund from “qualified purchasers,” which are institutional funds and individuals with at least $5 million in deployed investment capital, exempting it from securities registration under Section 3(c)(7) of the , as disclosed in the filing.

Ribbit Capital is managed by . Originally hailing from Venezuela, Malka held founding and leadership roles at a number of financial institutions prior to founding Ribbit in 2012.

The firm invests across multiple sectors, but has a focus on financial technology and marketplace-oriented businesses. Its latest bets include lead investments in a for India-based neobank (alongside co-lead ), startup-focused San Francisco-based insurance company and India-based credit card payment rewards company (which was also co-led by Sequoia Capital and ).

Crunchbase data lists two exits for the firm so far. Ribbit was a participating investor in London-based lending platform ’s later-stage rounds; Funding Circle went public on the London Stock Exchange in September 2018. Ribbit also invested in , the last funding closed by the financial news company prior to for $200 million.

Ribbit’s managing director Malka is also listed as the director of a seemingly new entity called Bullfrog Capital. Its filing, disclosing, was submitted to the SEC minutes before the filing for Ribbit Fund VI went through. No other information is known about the new fund or its strategy at this time.

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Founded in 1982, San Mateo-based announced on Thursday afternoon that .

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The firm said that “[the] fund was oversubscribed and the prior fund’s institutional investors increased their commitment to the new fund.”

In , the firm disclosed its intent to raise $175 million. Now, four months later, the firm raised all that plus $40 million more.

“We are very appreciative of the continued support we have received in Sierra XII from our existing investors, as well as excited to add some leading Limited Partners in this fund. We are proud to have some of the best endowments, pension funds and corporations from across the world on our roster,” said the firm’s managing director, Mark Fernandes, in a statement.

Fund XII is the largest Sierra Ventures has raised in the past decade. Fund XI, announced in 2016, topped out at $170 million. The firms largest funds, historically, were closed during times of market exuberance. The firm raised in 2000, just as the dot-com bubble was beginning to crack; Fund IX, , was closed in 2006 in the lead-up to the great financial crisis.

Like with the firm’s prior two funds, Fund XII will be led by , , and , who have worked together for 17 years, according to a statement from the firm. The new fund will carry on the firm’s investment strategy of taking stakes at seed, Series A, and select Series B rounds “in companies that show high potential revenue growth.”

Sierra Ventures’ most recent exits include computational orchestration and acceleration startup BitFusion.io, which this past Thursday. Back in May, announced its of , in which Sierra Ventures had been an investor since at least .

In its announcement for its latest fund, Sierra Ventures cited other exits as well. “Interest in Fund XII was driven by the continued success of Fund X (2012) portfolio companies, with nine notable exits to date including (ARM) and (Palo Alto Network), both acquired in late 2018 for a cumulative purchase price of almost $800 million,” the firm said.

The firm’s most recent investments include participation in stealth networking startup , text analytics suite , and Austin-based digital learning platform .

Ben Yu, a managing director at the firm, cited Sierra Ventures’ prior investments in marketplaces, machine learning, and emerging technologies like 5G wireless, AR/VR, and robotics. “In Fund XII, we will continue to seek innovations in these areas. In particular, we believe AI and blockchain will become the horizontal platform technologies that cover both enterprise and consumer needs, touching almost everything we do,” he said.

With Fund XII, Sierra Ventures has raised and managed over $2 billion since its inception.

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Fund V is twice the size of , which targeted $25 million, according to made in March 2017.

According to the regulatory disclosure, investors first committed capital to Fund V on October 5, 2018. The narrow intervals between capital raises for its flagship funds points to the “always be (fund-)raising” nature of boutique firms like Haystack. A combination of small fund sizes and high investment velocity means that general partners at these firms are almost always talking to limited partners.

The filing lists as the fund’s solo general partner. Shah started Haystack in 2013, raising . “Haystack Funds I and II were fortunate to invest at the key inflection points of outstanding companies,” Shah .

Haystack’s more successful portfolio companies include , , , , and . According to Crunchbase data, its most recent investments include direct-to-consumer low-alcohol aperitif brand (Haystack led its late-June ) and restaurant operations platform .

Shah is also at .

Prior to entering the investment world full-time, Shah worked at a number of early-stage startups including Swell, Rexly, and Votizen. In 2012, Shah also started and hosted “,” a video interview series produced by TechCrunch.

Shah did not respond to a request for comment prior to publication. We will update this article as we learn more.

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It would be DCVC’s largest fund raised to date, and more than twice the size of its last fund, , which closed out at $212 million in early January 2017.

and , DCVC’s co-founding general partners, are listed on the filing. The filing says that no capital has yet been raised for the new legal entity, which was formed in 2018.

Established in 2011, Data Collective “invests in entrepreneurs building big data, deep compute, and IT infrastructure companies.” The firm typically makes its first investments in a startup at seed, Series A, or Series B, and frequently follows on its investments through later rounds.

DCVC’s portfolio exits include the likes of (IPO), (IPO), (acquired by Google), (acquired by Coinbase), .

This is not the first time Crunchbase News has covered DCVC’s fund filings. Back in April 2018, we broke the news that the firm was targeting $250 million for a biotech and life sciences-focused fund, which incorporated former investment executives from Monsanto Growth Ventures.

In the case of DCVC Fund V, it’s important to keep in mind that $575 million is just a target and may be subject to change, depending on market conditions and investor interest.

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