Venture firm O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures has announced its third fund, raising $85 million (you can see the SEC filing here). The firm, which makes seed stage investments, says that OATV Fund III is the largest fund to date.
O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, which was founded by Bryce Roberts, Tim O’Reilly and Mark Jacobsen, has funded Foursquare, Bit.ly, Codecademy, Good Data, Get Satisfaction and others. The seed firm’s average investment size ranges from $500,000 to $1 million.
Managing partner Roberts wrote in a blog post that the reasoning behind raising more money was to “provide for greater time diversity within the portfolio.” O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures will also be making a few more “Series A” stage investments beyond seed funding. And Roberts writes that the “little larger checkbook” will be able to help the firm “continue to spot and invest in trends that may take a little longer to make their way into the mainstream.
From Roberts’ blog post:
Since that first fund super angels have sprouted wings, accelerators have been, um, accelerating company formation and incubators have stopped being a 4 letter word. We’ve been deeply fortunate to have been able to catch the seed stage wave early and work with some of the most dynamic and thoughtful founders in our industry. Their hard work and vision have allowed our funds to perform quite well in relation to our peers and enabled us to have far more interest in our new fund than we were able to accomodate.
OATV had previously raised $59 million for its second fund in 2010, and $51 million for its first fund in 2007.