OVP closes seventh fund on $250 million

OVP Venture Partners has announced the final close for its seventh fund, OVP VII, at its self-imposed hard cap of $250 million (€190). The fund’s target was $200 million.

Since its first close of $207 million in May 2006, OVP VII has invested in companies including GainSpan, Talyst, and Tzero Technologies, and has two more investments pending, according to a written statement.

The 24-year old venture capital firm plans to invest the fund in another 20 to 25 Northwest and/or California companies in the communications, software, security, semiconductor, digital biology and nanotechnology fields, it said. OVP noted that its investment strategy will remain the same: to make initial investments of $1 million to $5 million in pre-revenue companies, and over the life of each deal, increase the investments in each company to between $8 million and $15 million.

The fund’s limited partners include Meketa Investment Group, GKM Generation Funds, the Alfred I. DuPont Testamentary Trust, the Oregon Public Employees Retirement Fund, the Washington State Investment Board, and the endowments of Indiana University, Kenyon College, College of the Holy Cross and Olin College of Engineering.

Final closure of the OVP VII fund brings OVP’s total amount of capital under management to $750 million. Its last fund, OVP VI, closed in October 2001 on $185 million; its first fund, Ranier Venture Partners, closed in July 1983 on $26 million.

According to its website, the firm has backed more than 100 companies, 51 of which have had successful liquidity events, including 29 acquisitions and 22 IPOs. Some of its representative portfolio companies include Coinstar self-service coin counting machines, AskMe Corporation, a software platform for knowledge sharing, and NanoString, a platform for automated single molecule identification and digital quantification.