Bain Capital Ventures only needed two months to raise $850 million for its latest two funds.
The firm began fundraising for its $650 million BCV 2014 investment vehicle and a $200 million coinvestment fund on April 2 and had wrapped up financing for the two funds by June 6, according to document shown to TechCrunch.
The core venture fund represents an 8 percent bump from the previous $600 million fund that Bain raised in 2012 for its last venture investment vehicle, and both funds were two times oversubscribed, according to the document.
With these new investment funds, Bain Capital Ventures has brought its total capital under management to roughly $3 billion. The firm raised its first fund in 2001, a $250 million vehicle.
Boston-based Bain Capital Ventures’ newest fund comes as venture capital enjoys its best years since the bubble burst around the time the firm was formed. Firms have invested $9.5 billion so far this year and have wrapped up $8.9 billion in new commitments, according to data from the National Venture Capital Association and Thomson Reuters.
So far, the firm’s 2009 fund has been returning just over 1.3 times its invested capital, with a 12 percent net internal rate of return as of Dec. 31, 2013, according to a Bloomberg report on Bain’s fundraising efforts.
Big earners from the firm’s 2009 portfolio include Liazon Corp., a private benefits exchange company acquired by Towers Watson in November 2013, and Rent the Runway, the online fashion rental company, which is valued at over six times its original investment, according to the Bloomberg story.
Bain Capital Ventures is the venture arm of private equity behemoth Bain Capital, which was founded by the former Republican presidential candidate and Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney in 1984.
Like its predecessors, the latest Bain Capital Ventures fund will invest in technology companies focused on security, compliance, cloud virtualization and open source development, while also pursuing business services around enterprise software, financial technology, data ad informatics, retail and marketing, healthcare and IT services.
The firm will continue to write checks ranging from under $1 million to $50 million for growth investments. Early-stage commitments will continue to be focused on New York, San Francisco and Silicon Valley, and Boston, while growth deals could come from anywhere — including investments in the midwest, where Bain Capital Ventures has already made some commitments.
Given the larger sizes of deals that are getting done in the current market, Bain Capital Ventures raised an additional coinvestment vehicle to provide additional capital for some growth equity deals, according to a document seen by TechCrunch. The firm structured the vehicle so that it can only invest at entry alongside a core Bain Capital Ventures fund and can only invest within an undisclosed specified size range. The coinvestment fund cannot back later-stage rounds of prior venture or growth investments.
The venture arm of Bain Capital has been steadily growing its investment staff in recent years. The firm made a big hiring push in 2012 and 2013 picking up Salil Deshpande from Bay Partners, Matt Harris from Village Ventures, and Todd Maclean, from Accel Partners. The firm also promoted Ben Holzman to managing director in 2012.
Already this year, Bain’s venture group has invested in 11 deals, including Iron.io, a software as a service business focused on workflow and processing; Openfin, a provider of run-time software for financial desktop applications designed to compete with Bloomberg terminals; Bitcoin Opportunity Corp., and Manicube, a platform that allows offices to offer in-office manicures and pedicures. On the growth side, Bain Capital Ventures led the $20 million Series B round for Clari.
Photo via Flickr user Damian Gadal