True Ventures: $840 Million Closed For Two New Funds

By Amit Chowdhry ● Oct 14, 2020
  • True Ventures announced it has closed $840 million for two new funds. These are the details.

True Ventures has announced it has closed its seventh early-stage fund (True Core Fund VII, LP) in the amount of $465 million along with its fourth Select Fund (True Select Fund IV) in the amount of $375 million. 

The True Core Fund VII will continue the firm’s history of providing seed and early-stage capital and resources to founders in the early stage ecosystem. And the core markets include technology-enabled consumer brands, SaaS and infrastructure software, deep verticals in health and life sciences, and other select markets. And similar to previous Select Funds, True Select Fund IV will provide follow-on capital to existing True portfolio companies that are displaying high growth potential and large-scale opportunity. Some consumer platforms including Peloton, Madison Reed, Splice, Yousician, ICEYE, HashiCorp, and Zymergen have all received follow-on capital from previous Select Funds.

True Ventures co-founder Jon Callaghan shared the news of the two new funds with True portfolio founders who had attended the firm’s Founder Camp, an annual educational event for early stage entrepreneurs which was held virtually this year. And True Design Partner and Head of Platform Jeff Veen kicked off the 3-day event by sharing his own experience and learnings as the co-founder of Typekit, funded by True in 2009 and acquired by Adobe in 2011.

In order to lead culture and talent across the portfolio, VP of Culture Madeline Kolbe Saltzman joined the True team in 2019. And additional members of the True Platform team include Senior Associate Priscilla Tyler — who works with founders on diversity and inclusion initiatives, fundraising, and other platform strategies, as well as Program Manager Lydia Morrison. Most recently, Bryan Mason — who co-founded Typekit with Veen — joined True as a special advisor in June and is working with founders on business development and go-to-market strategies.

Partners at True Ventures include Adam D’Augelli, Kevin Rose, Puneet Agarwal, Tony Conrad, James Stewart (COO), Toni Schneider, Rohit Sharma, Ulrike Kellmereit (CFO), Om Malik, Amy Errett, Jeffrey Veen, and Ann Crady Weiss.

KEY QUOTES:

“Our Select Funds renew our commitment to Core Fund companies that have demonstrated impressive growth and industry leadership. It’s not one-and-done with us. Our Select Funds, for example, allowed us to invest in five separate financing rounds leading up to Peloton’s IPO last year.”

— Philip Black, co-founder of True Ventures

“One of True’s founding insights was that fortune favors the connected entrepreneur, and since our beginning we’ve invested heavily in connecting True founders and their teams with one another for learning, support and counsel. Our platform connects founders and aggregates resources so that even the smallest new team has access to hundreds of peers who have been in their position before. We’ve created a powerful place for founders to grow, thrive and collaborate. We’re now magnifying our platform by putting even more resources – additional team members and dollars – into it.”

— Jon Callaghan, co-founder of True Ventures

“True helped us lay a strong foundation at Pendulum by supporting our work not only financially but also through the lens of a business coach.”

— Colleen Cutcliffe, co-founder of biotechnology company Pendulum Therapeutics