Javelin Venture Partners raises $105M fund

Early-stage San Francisco-based VC seeks to invest in 20 high-tech startups with its new funds

Javelin Venture Partners, a three-year-old early-stage VC based in San Francisco, is expected to announce Wednesday morning that it's raised $105 million for its Javelin Venture Partners II fund.

The Javelin team expects to invest between $500,000 and $3 million in roughly 20 startups, with some capital reserved for follow-on rounds. This new capital is on top of the $75 million initially raised by the partners Jed Katz and Noah Doyle, when the venture firm was founded in May 2008.

"The fund size allows us to make the type of investments we want to make in capital-efficient companies," said Jed. "And, it allows the entrepreneurs some flexibility in their eventual outcomes.

"We don't always have to shoot for a billion-dollar exits, like the larger funds do. With that said, we're looking for scalable companies that can become very large."  

According to Jed, the Javelin Venture Partners II will focus on the same areas it has always focused on:  digital media, Internet commerce, advertisig platforms, cloud computing, mobile and healthcare.

While Javelin is fairly young as a VC, it's been quite active. It's invested in 22 startups since inception, and has seen one exit - the sale of Scout Labs to Lithium Technologies. Among some of its current investments are Altruik Automated (search engine), Emdigo (mobile app distribution platform), PowerCloud (software to manage wireless networks for SMBs), and Netpuls (interacive entertainment for excercise equipment), SmartZip Analytics (real estate service), Sociable Labs (marketing programs for social networks) and Yap.TV (application for enhanced TV viewing on second-screen devices, like the iPad). The average investment is $1.5 million and the average ownership stake Javelin takes in the companies is between 20% and 30%. 

Despite current concerns about bubble prices in both later-stage and early-stage deals, Jed said that the pricing environment seems reasonable.

"We have seen the occasional early stage valuations get bid up, but in general valuations are fair and have not moved much up or down since the financial crisis," said Jed. "Seed valuations especially have a natural floor at the lower single digits because there has to be enough of a stake for the founders to be motivated. Overall, we believe that the ecosystem is working really well right now."

Javelin Venture Partners is a longstanding sponsor of our Vator Splash events. We're super stoked about their success.

(In the photo: Richard Mordini, Sarah Rice, Noah Doyle, Jed Katz, and Alex Gurevich)