Golden Ventures, formerly Golden Venture Partners, has announced the closing of its third fund, Golden Ventures III, with commitments of $72 million.
“Although significantly larger than our previous two funds, we deliberately capped the fund size at CAD$72M (approximately US$57.5M). This amount allows us to invest in additional infrastructure to better support our current and future portfolio without the pressure to deviate from our concentrated, seed stage investment focus,” said Golden Ventures in its Medium blog announcement.
Golden Ventures III investors include family offices and individuals, Northleaf Capital, HarbourVest, Kensington Capital Partners, Teralys Capital, and new US institutional fund of fund LPs: Cendana Capital, Foundry Group Next and Venture Investment Associates.
photo credit: Golden Ventures
Medium Blog
Announcing Golden Ventures III
Today, we are thrilled to announce the closing of our third fund. With aggregate commitments of CAD$72M (approximately US$57.5M), Golden Ventures III is our largest fund to date and was raised to continue our mission of supporting the very best founders (and working alongside the very best co-investors, mentors, entrepreneurs and LPs) who seek to change the world in disruptive, meaningful and lasting ways.
We feel incredibly grateful today when we look at the community around us, and we continue to push ourselves to be the very best seed stage partner. Our mission is to serve founders — to us, that means we have to be a (if not “the most”) valued partner on your cap table or in your network/ecosystem.
Since the inception of Golden Ventures I in June 2011, we’ve invested in 40 companies across the US and Canada. Some of these companies will be familiar to you and some will not. What we can say with certainty is that we are better as a fund for every one of these investments and we continue to learn and push ourselves every day to help our founders in their quest to realize on their vision.
What’s The Same?
We remain fully committed to our focus on being a concentrated seed stage investor. We will invest in 20 to 25 companies at seed stage while reserving follow-on for future investment rounds. We continue to optimize for the company’s success and believe in the differential impact of having high-value co-investors around the table.
We will continue to invest across Canada and the United States with our core investment geographies: Toronto/Waterloo, Bay Area, Los Angeles, Boston and New York, but we’re always open to new geographies and believe firmly that the next major venture scale company could be from anywhere. The Toronto tech ecosystem is growing rapidly, and we’re proud to call this place home. We will continue to invest aggressively in our home geography and expect to maintain our approximate 60/40 Canada/US split.
What’s New?
We’ve adapted our name and refreshed our look. For years, everyone has called us Golden Ventures, or “Golden” for short. So, as we expand and diversify our team, we have decided to drop the “Partners,” and we are now officially “Golden Ventures”. Check out our new website.
Although significantly larger than our previous two funds, we deliberately capped the fund size at CAD$72M (approximately US$57.5M). This amount allows us to invest in additional infrastructure to better support our current and future portfolio without the pressure to deviate from our concentrated, seed stage investment focus. Additionally, we’re excited to announce that we’re promoting Jamie Rosenblatt to Principal and want to welcome Marianne Bulger to spearhead our People and Platform team.
From a thesis perspective, we’re now officially sector agnostic. Having invested in sectors as broad as machine learning, robotics, quantum computing, computer vision, etc. and numerous business models. We’re confident most of you won’t find this surprising. Why the change? Over time, we have learned that our fund’s superpower is more stage than sector focused. The value we deliver to our portfolio companies in identifying and achieving the critical seed stage milestones far outweighs our knowledge of any one particular area.
Our Investors
Golden Ventures III welcomes returning investment from our incredibly supportive family offices and individuals (without whom there would not have been a Golden Ventures I), Canadian institutional fund of fund LPs (Northleaf Capital, HarbourVest and Kensington Capital Partners), and new investment from Teralys Capital. We’re also very excited to be welcoming our new slate of US institutional fund of fund LPs: Cendana Capital, Foundry Group Next and Venture Investment Associates, all of whom are making their first investment foray into a Canadian based venture capital fund.
Golden Ventures III is poised to be a transformative fund. If you are building an early-stage business in Canada or the United States, we are your seed stage partner.
Sincerely,
Matt Golden, Ameet Shah, Bert Amato, Jamie Rosenblatt, and Marianne Bulger.