IA Venture Strategies - now on the Web
While I have written a bit about my new fund, we have not had a web presence - until now. Please check out the new website. You will learn more about our mission, investment approach and the team. We still don’t have much on the portfolio page as several of our companies are still in stealth mode, but what I can say is that we’ve already closed deals or have signed term sheets with companies in the realms of predictive analytics, database systems, intrusion detection and advertising technology. We are currently pursuing deals in cloud-based data distribution, data normalization and an array of related domains. Our portfolio companies are based in New York, Boston, Los Angeles - and soon to include San Francisco and London. I continue to be shocked by the amount of high-quality global deal flow across the big data realm, and as long as we see strong seed-stage deals being led by super smart, experienced and passionate entrepreneurs with vision, we will continue to deploy capital at a healthy pace.
The team is still pretty frantic closing the fund, investing in and working with our companies and just generally figuring out how to best run a fund of our size and scope. The work is virtually endless, but it is the best kind of work there is. We are working towards setting up office hours, but are not quite there yet. We also have lots of job opportunities at our companies, but that utility is not yet active on the site. My colleagues Ben Siscovick and Brad Gillespie agreed that we should have a bias towards action, getting the site up and out there even though it is a work in progress. We’d love your feedback and suggestions as we are new at this and want the site to be useful and informative for entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and media alike.
Hopefully the site helps clarify some questions about the fund, and will serve as a reference point for those considering a raise from big data domain experts who roll up their sleeves and have strategic Limited Partners who do the same. Having a baked-in set of relationships with top firms with big data problems is pretty unique among venture funds, especially one as small as ours. But creating this big data ecosystem was an essential part of my strategy to help solve the generational problems arising from the onslaught of data and information. We are in the early-innings of what is likely to be an extra-innings contest, and Ben, Brad and I are laser focused on helping to be part of the solution to these seemingly intractable problems.
Please continue to check back as we make improvements to our site and grow our business. I will also keep you posted on this blog and at @infoarbitrage as well. I will likely write one more post about the fund and its LPs after I do a final closing, but for now let me say that starting a fund has been among the most satisfying things I have ever done. And it helps having two great partners like Ben and Brad helping to make our vision of improving the management and extraction of value from big data a reality.
