K9 Ventures Closes $42M Technology-Focused Pre-Seed Fund

Palo Alto, CA-based early stage venture capital firm K9 Ventures has closed its third fund, at $42m.

K9 Ventures III, L.P., is backed by several high quality institutional partners, including university endowments, fund of funds, family offices, and key individuals.
It is a technology-focused pre-seed fund that will continue to execute on the same strategy as the prior fund (K9 Ventures II, L.P., which was a $40M fund), being the first institutional investor into companies (at pre-seed) that are creating new technology platforms or new markets geographically located in the San Francisco Bay Area. The fund will make 3-4 investments per year.

Led by Manu Kumar, the firm started investing Fund I in 2009 with $6.25M under management. The first fund invested in 19 companies and 6 M&A exits, with returns ranging from 3x – 15x. Portfolio companies included CrowdFlower, Twilio, DNAnexus, HighlightCam, CardMunch, Lytro, Lyft, BackType, IndexTank, Everlaw, card.io, Boomerang, Lucid Software, Torbit, Occipital, TapCanvas, NimbleVR, eShares, and Enuma.
K9 Ventures II began investing in 2012 and backed 14 companies over a period of 5 years. Portfolio companies included Coin, MobileSpan, Osmo, KidAdmit, Auth0, Caarbon, Dishero, Bugsee, Gradescope, and five anannounced startups.

FinSMEs

16/08/2017

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