2022年12月6日

Nnamdi Okike和Aaron Holiday相信数据，而不是大多数风投都相信的模式匹配。考虑到他们的背景，这并不奇怪。在2014年创办他们的风险投资公司645 Ventures之前，Okike是数据驱动型投资巨头Insight Partners的负责人。霍乐迪直接来自DFJ Gotham Ventures，此前曾在高盛担任软件工程师。当然，当一家初创公司刚刚起步时，数据是很难获得的。但上周，在与科技博客TechCrunch的交流中，Okike和Holiday表示，他们的专有软件和“资源密集型早期投资模式”运作良好，645刚刚通过两只新基金从一系列传统风险投资者(基金会、家族办公室、捐赠基金)那里获得了3.47亿美元的投资承诺。一个是1.95亿美元的早期基金;另一只是一只1.53亿美元的基金，用于支持那些突破性的赢家，直到它们成熟。在有限合伙人感觉资金不像一年前那么充裕的市场上，这些数字相当可观。这些基金也与两人760万美元的概念验证基金相差甚远。 (They went on to raise $40 million from LPs in 2018, and $160.6 million in 2020, so now manage around $555 million altogether.) Some liquidity from FiscalNote, a maker of policy management software that began trading publicly in August after merging with a blank-check company, presumably helped. The team says seven other portfolio companies have meanwhile sold, and that many others are far more valuable than when 645 Ventures backed them, including two outfits whose later rounds were led by Insight. These include the $60 million Series C of the national medical practice Eden Health and the $50 million Series B round of cybersecurity company Shift5. Other milestones to crow about (for now) include the $1.4 billion valuation of the cloud security firm Panther Labs and Overtime, a sports league startup that recently raised a $100 million growth round . Of course, there have been misses. Okike says that one big regret is the NFT marketplace OpenSea, which he and Holiday had an opportunity to invest in at the seed stage and “unfortunately passed.” At the time, he says, they “didn’t appreciate how fast the NFT market was growing.” The good news, suggests Holiday, is that there are plenty of other, great New York-based startups to fund. “As a member of the board at Cornell Tech, we’re seeing lots of young entrepreneurial energy flock to the city, and several tech founders have relocated their headquarters from other tech hubs to NYC.” The team also sees a positive the fact that more “storied Silicon Valley VCs” who “once viewed San Francisco as the center of the universe” are opening offices in New York, including, earlier this year, both Index Ventures and Sequoia Capital . Are they worried at all about the competition? Not really, says Okike. “We have tailored our offering to provide a compelling value proposition as a lead investor.” One of the firm’s newest bets is Efficient Capital Labs, which lends capital from US firms to software companies in India; 645 Ventures led its $3.5 million seed round. Okike says the firm also closed a not-yet-disclosed Series A investment in a real estate software startup and that it has been, and will remain, active in real estate software, with past bets that include RentSpree , a startup focused on online rental applications and tenant screening; Aryeo , a real estate content platform that helps its users manage, syndicate, and automate listing content; and Rifiniti, a business intelligence startup that was acquired in 2019 by FM Systems, a maker of facilities management software, for undisclosed terms.