Only five months after unveiling a $650 million fund, Ben Horowitz and Marc Andreessen’s young but esteemed venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz has created a new $200 million co-investment fund intended to supplement larger, growth-stage funding rounds.
Twitter, Foursquare, Zynga–these are just a few of the most famous companies Andreessen Horowitz has invested in.
The firm’s original fund from November was designed to be doled out in chunks ranging in size from $50,000 to $100 million, for seed-stage startups to late-stage monoliths. And that’s how it’s played out since, with over 30 companies raising money from the fund so far. Many recent deals for Andreessen Horowitz, however, have been tilted toward later-stage companies that necessarily required considerable chunks of funding to solidify and accelerate their growth.
“These companies have a substantial need for capital,” explains John O’Farrell, General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz,” they’re hiring aggressively, expanding internationally, making acquisitions, investing in facilities, pouring money into marketing—all to double down on their success and win the entire market. Often, they want to meet their needs with one new investor. The size of their market opportunity allows for very attractive returns for the investor they choose to work with.”
Instead of being used as a completely alternate or separate fund, then, the co-investment fund will be used in tandem with the earlier fund for bigger rounds.
From the established and well-known to up and coming, from hardware for consumers to software for the enterprise, startups and businesses funded by Andreessen Horowitz truly run the gamut. Here are some of the biggest funding rounds graced with the firm’s participation in the past couple months:
March 2011: Jawbone, creator of bluetooth headsets, wireless speakers and more, raised $49 million from Andreessen.
February 2011: Box.net, cloud storage for the enterprise, raised $48 million in a Series D round led by Meritech Capital Partners, with Andreessen, a repeat investor.
February 2011: Mobile gaming startup TinyCo raised $18 million in Series A funding led by Andreessen.
February 2011: This really wasn’t a funding round, but Andreessen Horowitz invested over $80 million in Twitter by purchasing stock in private secondary markets, a spokesperson at the firm has confirmed.
In addition to its new funds and latest investments, the firm has also been expanding its internal team. Most recently, Scott Weiss and Peter Levine have joined Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz and John O’Farrell as partners.
