Andreessen Horowitz secures $1.5B fund

Startups looking to get off the ground and grab some venture funding are maturing in the right time since some firms are announcing they have secured some serious funding.

Partner at Andreessen Horowitz, Ben Horowitz confirmed in a blog post Tuesday that his firm now controls $2.7 billion in funding over the last three years it has been in existence. This means that in recent months, the firm has raised nearly $1.5 billion, one of the largest fundraisings in history. 

Andreessen Horowitz has invested in companies in the seed-stages, like Cumulus Networks, to fast-growing enterprises like Airbnb, Box.net, Twitter, Digg, Zynga, Fab.com and BlueStacks. 

Horowitz revealed that in 2011, the firm hosted over 600 portfolio presentations to corporate customers and partners at its office in Menlo Park. These presentations resulted in more than 3,000 introductions between portfolio companies and prospective Fortune 500/Global 2000 senior executives.

Now the firm has relationships with over 4,000 engineers, designers and product managers and has resulted in 130 hires within the portfolio. And Andreessen Horowitz has added over 550 executives to its network in 2011 and made more than 300 executive introductions to portfolio companies.

One of the founding principles in Horowitz’s firm has been to support and ins tie confidence in the founding CEOs of these innovative startups, which he attributes a great deal of the company success in.

“In general, founding CEOs perform better than professional CEOs over the long term, and a venture capital firm that enables founding CEOs to succeed would help build the best companies and yield superior investment returns,” Horowitz wrote in his blog.

Andreessen Horowitz has invested in companies from the seed stage like JR Rivers at Cumulus Networks to entrepreneurs with fast-growing enterprises like Airbnb.

Andreessen Horowitz has funded Box.net, Twitter, Digg, Zynga, Fab.com and BlueStacks. 

Earlier this month, we reported about the strength across the VC market that showed a modest bump from the previous year. Venture firms based in the U.S. raised $16.2 billion across 135 funds in 2011, up 5% from a year ago, according to a report by Dow Jones LP Source. At the same time, however, fewer firms raised funds as the number of firms that raised new funding dropped by 12% last year.

The top five early-stage firms that raised funds include Khosla Ventures, which raised $1 billion in October, Founders Fund, which raised $625 million for early-stage investments, General Catalyst, which raised $500 million, Accel Partners, which raised $475 million and Redpoint Ventures, which attracted $400 million.  

In Europe, fundraising looks even bleaker. Venture capitalists raised $3 billion across 41 funds in 2011, a drop of 20% in the number of funds attracting new capital and an 11% decline in the amount of capital raised compared to the prior year. 

It’s clear that Andreessen Horowitz is gearing up as a strong young VC firm with serious fundraising capabilities.