On behalf of our team at Version One, I am incredibly excited to announce that…
Version One
It has been almost 10 years since Union Square Ventures launched the first Opportunity Fund, creating a strategy that has since been copied by many other VC’s. An opportunity fund is basically a separate pool of capital that allows a VC to continue to invest in its most promising portfolio companies once the core funds […]
On behalf of our team at Version One, I am incredibly excited to announce that…
We’re thrilled to announce the closing of two new funds: Fund IV ($70M USD) and…
It has been almost 10 years since Union Square Ventures launched the first Opportunity Fund, creating a strategy that has since been copied by many other VC’s. An opportunity fund is basically a separate pool of capital that allows a VC to continue to invest in its most promising portfolio companies once the core funds have exhausted their follow-on reserves. This puts the VC firm and its investors in a position to continue to exercise their pro-rata rights in later-stage rounds instead of giving them up.
Besides doubling and tripling down on existing portfolio companies, opportunity funds sometimes have the mandate to be able to invest in later-stage companies outside of the existing portfolio…companies that the VC missed in earlier rounds of financing but are squarely in their investment focus.
We at Version One have long been thinking about an Opportunity Fund for our firm, but only recently decided that we should actually pursue this strategy. I am hence very happy to announce the Version One Ventures Opportunity Fund I with CAD $25m in commitments. The mandate of the fund is to invest in the most successful companies from Fund I (2012 vintage) and Fund II (2014 vintage).
What changed our mind to pursue an Opportunity Fund? Three factors are at play:
While raising a new fund is never an achievement per se (returning the fund profitably is!), I am very excited about our new Opportunity Fund as it gives us the chance to have an even closer and longer relationship with some of our portfolio entrepreneurs and partnering with them to build category-leading companies.
Data / AI / ML
This November marks three years since the launch of ChatGPT. That moment brought AI into the mainstream, with large language models (LLMs) seen as the breakthrough technology powering it. Since then, innovation in AI has been relentless — perhaps one of the fastest cycles we’ve ever witnessed in tech. It’s worth pausing to reflect on […]
It’s hard to believe that it has been three years since my first day at…
“It takes 10 years and $30m to become a great investor.” This quote has stuck…