Jeff Clavier’s SoftTech VC has secured $15 million of a new $35 million, likely SoftTech VC III, according to an SEC filing.
Though Clavier is not commenting on the fund, he did confirm via his blog that Charles Hudson will be joining the firm as a venture partner. A tech veteran that previously served at Gaia Online and Google before that, Hudson most recently served as VP of Business Development for Serious Business, one in a long series of social gaming startups acquired last year by Zynga. Beyond that, he also organizes two social gaming conferences (the Virtual Goods Summit and the Social Gaming Summit.) and works with Justin Smith from Inside Social Games / Inside Facebook on compiling data related to social and gaming.
Clavier also hired Ashley Cravens as his assistant, effectively growing the one-man SoftTech team to three.
This latest fund follows SoftTech VC II, a $15 million fund established in 2007 that had some big successes in GeoAPI, acquired by Twitter; mob.ly, acquired by Groupon; and Tapulous, acquired by Disney. The seed fund aimed to invest between $100,000 and $500,000 in 20 companies per year.
If you’re a startup looking to get funded by Clavier, look no further than a page on SoftTech VC called Investment Strategy and Process. The super angel breaks down, in terms more explicit than I’m used to seeing, exactly what he’s looking for in startups to fund. Here’s the introduction:
Investing in, and working with, great entrepreneurs at the very early stage of development of their companies is what we do, first and foremost. For almost 7 years now, our focus has been the consumer Internet space (dubbed “Web 2.0” since 2004) and we plan to continue doing so for the foreseeable future. By investing in 90+ Web 2.0 startups, we have learned a lot about this market – which has helped us refine our strategy and the sectors that we are interested in. However, like any investor, we are/will remain opportunistic, and we’ll do a few deals that are outside of our core area of interest – just because we like the team, the opportunity and we feel it is worth it.
Clavier has actually put together a neat little graph that shows how startups he’s funded fit into his ideal for the right startup to fund.
We’ve reached out to Clavier to learn more about SoftTech VC III and will update this post when we receive reply.
