IVP Woos Hot Web Companies Before They Grow Old
If you think early-stage investing is the only place to be in venture capital, you haven’t been paying attention to Institutional Venture Partners.
Although it’s a senior citizen in VC with 13 funds to its name, the late-stage investor is behind two of the Web’s hottest companies, Twitter Inc. and Zynga Game Network Inc.
And while many firms struggle to hit fund-raising goals, IVP recently closed a new fund at $750 million, its largest ever, blowing by a $600 million target.
Its partners think that’s because this is exactly the right time for its strategy as the road to exiting has grown longer and early investors and founders look for liquidity.
Although the firm is not lacking competition, “the supply-demand relationship in the late stage is quite attractive,” said General Partner J. Sanford “Sandy” Miller. Fund-raising data support this view: Early-stage and multi-stage venture firms raised $3 billion and $3.98 billion, respectively, in the first half of this year, according to Dow Jones LP Source; late-stage specialists raised a mere $500 million (this amount does not include IVP’s latest fund, which closed in the second half of this year).
