The 11-year-old, early-stage firm True Ventures, with offices in San Francisco and Palo Alto, has closed its fifth fund with $310 million, slightly more than the $290 million that the firm raised for its fourth fund, which closed in 2014.
Presumably, it could have raised much more. True was the first investor in WordPress parent Automattic, a “unicorn” whose eventual public offering is widely expected. The firm also wrote the first checks to the 3D printing company Makerbot, acquired for $604 million in 2013; ad tech company Brightroll, sold to Yahoo in late 2014 for $640 million in cash; cybersecurity company Caspida, acquired for $190 million by Splunk in the summer of 2015; and wearable device maker Fitbit, which went public in June 2015 and is currently valued at $3.3 billion. (It was valued at north of $7 billion in the months following its offering.)
True typically writes check of between $1 million and $3 million, often to entrepreneurs with whom the firm has worked previously. Its ownership target for that amount is typically 22 to 25 percent of the company.
True is managed by cofounders Jon Callaghan and Phil Black.
Other team members include partner Puneet Agarwal, who joined True in 2008; partner Adam D’Augelli, who joined True in 2010; partner Om Malik, who cofounded the media company GigaOm; partner Toni Schneider, who is also “head tinkerer” at Automattic; venture partner Rohit Sharma, who was previously CEO of the e-commerce recommendation engine Syfto; venture partner Ann Crady Weiss, who is also CEO of the smart nursery products company Hatch Baby; Christiaan Vorkink, a VP who joined True in 2008 and manages a network of products and services designed to support those founders funded by True; design partner Jeff Veen; and Tony Conrad (pictured above), a partner and member of the founding team.
Conrad is also the cofounder and CEO of About.me, which invites users to make a one-page site that makes it easy for others to learn about them.
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