Javelin Ventures Partners-a San Francisco-based, early stage venture firm founded in 2008 has closed its fourth fund with a $125 million which is the same size of its third fund closed exactly three years ago.
Established in 2008, Javelin, a longstanding sponsor of Vator, makes investments in the seed, Series A, and sometimes Series B, rounds. The firm was the first institutional investor Thumbtack, and has also made investments in companies that include Engrade, Kitchit, BoostMedia, MasterClass, Plug.dj,The Hunt,Weddington Way, Nexenta, SmartAsset, StealthCo and Estimote
Javelin came together when Noah Doyle, and Jed Katz - friends who graduated together from UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business in 1996 - came together to start the firm. Doyle previously co-founded the loyalty network startup MyPoints, acquired by United Online for $112 million in 2001. He later joined the geospatial startup Keyhole, acquired by Google for an undisclosed price in 2004, and stayed at Google three more years before leaving the company to consult with and invest in startups.
Unlike other firms that have a specific focus on certain sectors, Javelin is a generalist fund, looking more for opportunities that fit its fundamental business criteria than a specific space. It has made investments in spaces such as consumer marketplace, on demand, educational technology and vertically integrated e-commerce.
The last time that Javelin raised a fund was 2013, when VC firms raised $17 billion, only $3 billion more than was raised in Q1 of this year alone.
This new fund also puts Javelin in rare company: according to data from Pitchbook, since 2008, only four other firms have closed their first and fourth early stage fund. They are Slow Ventures, Harrison Metal Capital, AddVenture (out of Moscow) and Open Ocean Capital (out of Helsinki).
In addition to the new fund, the firm also announced that Alex Gurevich who has been part of Javelin since joining in 2010, has been promoted to Managing Director for JVP-IV.
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