True Ventures Raises $205M Third Fund

Early-stage investment firm True Ventures has raised a $205 million third fund.

True says it now has $600 million management, and that it has funded more than 100 companies. It calls out some of those investments in its blog post announcing the fund. From the first fund, there’s WordPress-creator Automattic and ad company BrightRoll. From the second fund, there’s Salesforce.com-acquired Assistly, Adobe-acquired Typekit, and VMWare-acquired Socialcast. (On the media side, True is also an investor in GigaOm, former employer of TechCrunch writers Ryan Lawler and Colleen Taylor, and the site’s founder Om Malik is a True partner.)

An SEC filing last year suggested that True was raising a third fund, but that may have been an abortive effort — the firm tells The New York Times that the fund only took eight weeks to close. The news comes right after Madrona Venture Partners announced that it closed a $300 million fund, its largest ever.

The blog post also offers this recounting of the firm’s founding::

“When creating True, we asked ourselves a big question: ‘Why does the world need another venture capital firm?’ We found our answer in a segment of the entrepreneurial community we felt was not being served by the funding options available at that time. Great founders of early stage technology companies can and often prefer to start their businesses with $2.5 million or less of initial capital.”

That’s the vision that the firm says it plans to continue following with its third fund.