Venture capital investments and valuations may be on the decline, but venture capital fundraising is doing just fine.
Case in point is Battery Ventures, which today will announce that it has raised $650 million for its eleventh flagship fund, plus another $300 million for a side fund to support larger investments. The $950 million total is a bit more than the $900 million that Battery raised for its tenth flagship fund and sidecar back in February 2013.
“We are focused on investing in innovation cycles, not business cycles,” says Battery general partner Michael Brown, who has been with the firm since 1998. “The innovation cycle still has a very long-term time horizon, particularly in enterprise and consumer tech where we still have big macro headwinds.”
Battery is stage-agnostic, backing tech companies from the early stages up through leveraged buyouts (albeit more of the former than the latter). Current portfolio companies include Blue Jeans Network, GlassDoor.com, HotelTonight, Narrative Science, Practice Fusion, and Sprinklr. The firm also yesterday got a big win by agreeing to sell Brightree, a Georgia-based provider of business management and clinical software to the post-acute care market, to ResMed (RMD) for $800 million.
No changes to investment strategy on this fund, but the partnership itself looks a bit different. As had been previously announced, longtime partner Dave Tabors stepped down, while new general partners include Chelsea Stoner (named a general partner in the middle of Fund 10), Dharmesh Thakker (ex-Intel Capital) and Russell Fleischer (ex-CEO of HighJump).
The 23 year-old firm has offices in Boston, San Francisco, Menlo Park and Israel.