SacStarts - venture capital

Pitching for Venture Capital (SARTA)

Adam Kalsey — Fri, 01 May 2009 23:37:12 +0000

Date:

May 20 2009 - 8:30am - 11:30am

DFJ Direct’s Scott Lenet talks about how startups can raise venture capital for SARTA’s Leadership Series.

This session is geared towards any entrepreneur who wants to learn more about raising funding from VC’s or angel investing. Scott will walk you through the steps of idea generation to the coveted ‘term sheet’. New for this year will be an interactive panel of local entrepreneurs who have been through the steps of raising capital from a VC. Scott will also discuss the changes in the economic environment and how they are affecting your chances of raising capital.

More details and registration

DFJ Frontier raises $55 million fund

Adam Kalsey — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 17:57:01 +0000

DFJ Frontier, a venture capital firm with offices in Sacramento and Santa Barbara, have announced their second venture fund, a $55 million pool that counts CalPERS and Credit Suisse among its investors.

As with their first fund, DFJ Frontier intends to focus their investments on west coast companies in media, information technology, life sciences, and other industries. The firm has made several investments form this new fund, including companies in southern California and Seattle, Washington.

Along with the new fund, DFJ Frontier named Frank Foster as a managing director and opened a new headquarters office in Los Angeles and a fourth office in Portland, OR.

Local angel investor Jim Schraith has joined the firm as a venture partner.

DFJ Frontier typically invests in early stage companies, providing seed or first round investments in west coast technology companies. The company often acts as the lead investor and takes an active role in the management of their portfolio companies.

Engine Yard secures $3.5 million from Benchmark Capital

Adam Kalsey — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 19:07:58 +0000

Sacramento born Engine Yard has raised $3.5 million in venture funding from Benchmark Capital. The company, now located in San Francisco, still has data centers and several employees in Sacramento.

Engine Yard didn’t start out looking for funding. They are already profitable and didn’t see their Rails hosting and support business as lucrative enough to get the large payouts venture companies often require.

Benchmark Capital came calling after they continued to get pitched by startups that were using Rails as their technology. Benchmark saw that Engine Yard’s technologies might allow then to grow a software business to provide technology to Ruby on Rails startups. Engine Yard is one of the chief supporters of Rubinius, a high performance virtual machine for Ruby, and Merb a Rails-compatible framework that promises higher performance.

Much of the money will be used to accelerate development of these projects. Last month, Engine Yard hired the Rubinius core developers after hiring project lead Evan Phoenix last May. Engine Yard co-founder Ezra Zygmuntowicz is the lead developer of Merb.

This is Engine Yard’s first round of equity financing. They previously closed $2.5 million in lease financing to help build out more data centers.

American River Ventures co-founder scaling back

Adam Kalsey — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 17:29:02 +0000

One of the co-founders of local VC firm American River Ventures is stepping back. ARV is currently raising another fund, but The Sac Bee’s Bob Shallit says that Corely Phillips has other plans.

Raising a new fund takes a long term commitment, often taking a decade or more to raise the money, make the investments, and wait for those companies to grow their businesses to a successful return for the investors. Phillips says he doesn’t want to commit that much time and plans to spend more time with family and friends.

American River Ventures was founded in 2001 with a $100 million fund focused on early-stage technology companies. Included in their investments are local firms Agoura Technologies, KeyEye Communications, and SynapSense.

Before founding ARV, Phillips was an active angel investor. He managed two startup technology companies through successful mergers as CEO of Manzanita Software Systems and founder of Grafpoint. Phillips sits on the boards of ARV portfolio companies SynapSense, OpenClovis and Senforce Technologies.

SynapSense raises $10 million

Adam Kalsey — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 00:07:08 +0000

Folsom’s SynapSense has raised a $10 million series B round, bringing the total amount raised by the company to $12 million.

According to Sacramento Executive,

[The] initial product offering from SynapSense enables green data centers to dramatically reduce energy costs and carbon footprint while optimizing data center operational efficiencies. Customers have found that the SynapSense Wireless Green Data Center Solution provides data center operators up to one million vital signs per day, which can enable savings of up to 30 percent of energy costs by providing new data intelligence, triangulation and tools to monitor and react to actual data center conditions.

The round was led by green-tech VC Emerald Technology Ventures of Zurich and all existing investors participated in this round. Last May the company raised $2 million from local investment firms American River Ventures and DFJ Frontier as well as Nth Power of San Francisco.

Top new companies announced

Adam Kalsey — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 18:19:28 +0000

At last week’s Sacramento Region Venture Capital Conference 28 young northern California companies presented their ideas to a panel of VCs and angel investors.

Nine of these companies were selected to present a second time in the “Finalist Showcase” after being named by the panel as the top companies in the conference.

Four of the top nine companies are from the Sacramento region: NexGen Medical Systems (Sacramento) and Pediatric Bioscience (Sacramento), Revionics (Granite Bay), and S Machines (El Dorado Hills) all made the cut.

The companies showcased here are in good company. Golden Capital Network, a sponsor of the event, says that over $1 billion has been invested in companies featured in its other showcases since 1999.

Tim Draper Rocks Sacramento

Geoff Sakala — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 04:21:45 +0000

Tonight Tim Draper of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, the global venture capital firm, literally rocked the house during his presentation to Techcoire. Upon closing his entertaining discussion "Change the World" Tim closed with a lively rendition of his rock n roll song about typical entrepreneurial adventures. The song Riskmaster, was written by Tim and put to music by an unnamed rock n roll legend. Download the song. Making a special appearance was Andy Beal, CEO of newly acquired Maxpreps.com. Andy's company was recently bought by CBS for an undisclosed sum. The sale was another in a series of wins for Sacramento region entrepreneurs. When asked about his thoughts on the Sacramento scene Tim simply said, "it's got something happening." Key points from Tim's talk for entrepreneurs were to find a way to put a zero in your balance sheet, just not the cash line, to move fast and get customers, and take advantage of viral marketing.

Phil Angelides, Venture Capitalist

Adam Kalsey — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 22:18:25 +0000

Venture Beat tipped me off to an interview with former state treasurer and gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides in which he announces he’s raising a venture fund. The fund will be based in Sacramento and will focus on environmental technology with some real estate investments.

Angelides’ firm joins numerous other funds that are focused on alternative energy, including Vinod Khosla’s Khosla Ventures. Kholsa was widely criticized for backing an alternative energy ballot measure that would benefit his investments. Khosla responded to critics by pledging to donate any direct profits to charity.

The fund will be raised from numerous sources, says Angelides. VentureBeat speculates that California’s pension funds are likely to invest as Angelides has previously served on their boards.