Charles River Ventures Closes Fourteenth Fund at $320 Million

CRP XIV Will Focus on Early-Stage Information Technology Investment Opportunities

WALTHAM, Mass. and MENLO PARK, Calif. (March 30, 2009) – Charles River Ventures (CRV), one of the nation’s leading early-stage venture capital firms, today announced that it has closed its fourteenth fund, CRP XIV,  at $320 million. The closing of CRP XIV brings the firm’s total capital under management to approximately $2.1 billion.

“Over the last two years, we’ve worked with talented entrepreneurs to achieve more than a dozen positive exits across our portfolio, including three initial public offerings as well as the largest venture-backed M&A transaction of 2008,” said Bruce Sachs, partner, Charles River Ventures. “Clearly our investing strategy is working. With our new fund, we will continue to invest in high-potential entrepreneurs and we will work hard with them to help them create hugely impactful companies.  We believe that this strategy will continue to deliver top results for the entrepreneurs we back as well as our limited partners.”

CRV’s liquidity events over the past 24 months have yielded approximately $600 million in returns for the firm’s limited partners. These events include:
• Three IPOs: BigBand Networks (Nasdaq: BBND), Netezza (NYSE: NZ), Virtusa (Nasdaq: VRTU)
• Numerous positive mergers and acquisitions including: EqualLogic to Dell; Acopia Networks to F5 Networks; Compete to TNS; Celunol merger with Diversa to form Verenium (Nasdaq: VRNM)

With CRP XIV, CRV will continue to invest in early-stage Information Technology companies within the communications, Internet, and software segments as well as emerging companies focused on energy and Intellectual Property. CRV’s current portfolio includes some of the most promising young companies in these sectors today, including Geni, Great Call, Nantero, RPX, Scribd, SMS Gupshup, Social Media, Twitter, Vlingo and Yammer, among several others. In addition, CRV seeks out investment opportunities in the earliest stages, and frequently provides seed funding to promising entrepreneurs with breakout potential.

The investing partners of CRV XIV include: Izhar Armony, Jon Auerbach, Saar Gur, Bruce Sachs, Bill Tai, Austin Westerling, Devdutt Yellurkar and George Zachary. Mike Zak will also continue as a partner of the firm, serving in advisory capacity on new investments. CRV’s limited partners include long-standing investors with the firm, including major universities, pension funds and non-profit institutions.

“In the current economic climate, we are especially grateful to our limited partners who have the long-term vision to invest in early-stage ventures and trust us with their valuable capital. We are committed to delivering the top results that they have come to expect from CRV,” said Sachs.

Source: http://www.crv.com/