Steve Case's Fund Will Invest $200 Million On Startups Outside Of Silicon Valley
A case in point: Washington, D.C.-based Revolution Ventures just raised $200 million in a mere eight months to fund tech companies that are not based in Silicon Valley.
Revolution Ventures is Steve Case's fund, the billionaire cofounder and former CEO of AOL. He runs it with Tige Savage (former vice president of Time Warner Ventures), and David Golden (formerly at JPMorgan).
They were aiming to raise $150 million and had given themselves the typical 18 months to two years to do it.
"While we're big fans of Silicon Valley, we've long believed that a lot of great entrepreneurs and great young companies can also be found outside of Silicon Valley," Steve Case said in a press release. "With the launch of the Revolution Ventures fund, we'll be able to deploy early stage capital to help entrepreneurs build great companies in promising new regions that are overlooked by most venture capitalists."
Obviously, it helps that Revolution Ventures already has a healthy track record. In January, Revolution sold its stake in Zipcar for $95 million. It's also an investor in Livingsocial.
The new fund is anchored by four companies who already received funding from Revolution:
- BenchPrep (Chicago), an online test prep company
- Booker Software Inc. (New York), marketing software for service businesses
- Homesnap (Washington, DC) mobile real estate app
- RunKeeper (Boston), health and fitness app
But, like we said, the money seems to be flowing these days.
Over the weekend news broke about Angel List's new service called AngelList Syndicates, where wealthy individuals can raise their own funds from other well-to-do people. Angel Jason Calacanis raised a $300,000 Syndicate fund in just one week.
Traditional VCs are throwing money at hot enterprise startups, too, with very favorable terms. Blue Jeans Network raised $50 million in a week without even trying.