Dick Kramlich, the co-founder of NEA, is launching a new $130 million early-stage fund called Green Bay Ventures with partner Anthony Schiller.
The fund is geared toward companies Series B and down, focusing on applied artificial intelligence in areas like manufacturing, energy, transportation and logistics, a source tells us. The fund was disclosed in a regulatory filing, and the firm declined to comment. Kramlich was an early investor in Apple along with several other high-profile companies through NEA.
The fund will largely take a similar philosophy to NEA, making early bets on founders. Other than that, details are pretty sparse. But it seems pretty clear that with Kramlich’s history in Silicon Valley, he’ll attract wide interest from potential LPs. A source told us that the LPs include “very successful families that basically span generations from all over the world,” all of which have extensive connections in the industries the fund is targeting.
This comes at a time when there has been a distinct lack of technology IPOs, with AppDynamics’ IPO essentially being pulled in favor of selling to Cisco. Snap is expected to go public next month, and it’ll be the first tech IPO of the year — and one of the largest in recent memory. Venture funds naturally play the very long game, so Kramlich may have been able to assemble a batch of LPs that are betting that the market may heat up a little bit in later years.
(The photo above was taken from Schiller’s Facebook profile, calling Kramlich his business partner.)