Friday, October 31, 2008

MIT VC Conference: December 6th

The MIT Venture Capital club just opened up registration for the 11th annual MIT Venture Capital Conference. It happens on December 6th, and while registration costs $245 for early birds, there's also an entrepreneur showcase in the evening that's free for anyone to attend.

I'll be there, moderating the closing session with Harmonix Music Systems co-founder Eran Egozy. And I'm going to try to arrive early to see Dan Primack's opening session with Paul Maeder and David Fialkow, from Highland Capital Partners and General Catalyst.

More on the event:

    ...Every year, the conference brings together over 400 venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, and industry leaders to discuss current opportunities and challenges in Venture Capital investing.

    This year, the conference theme is Reinventing Venture Capital. A Keynote Panel of founding partners from leading venture capital firms will open the conference with a discussion of evolving strategies of the venture capital community and the entrepreneurial ecosystem in the dynamically changing industrial, financial, and economic conditions around the world.

    Dr. Jamshed J. Irani, Director of Tata Sons, one of India’s oldest, largest, and most respected business conglomerates, will deliver lunch keynote address. The conference will close with a fireside chat with Eran Egozy, CTO and Co-Founder of Harmonix, a MIT Media Lab startup which created Rock Band and Guitar Hero.

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Friday, September 14, 2007

How big will GC's fifth fund be?

Several Boston VCs tell me that General Catalyst's fifth fund is close to closing, and everyone I've spoken with expects it to be quite a bit bigger than the fourth fund, a $400 million war chest announced in January 2006.

One Boston VC says he's heard word from limited partners of a $450 million fund with a $250 million side fund. Another tells me he expects the total will be bigger -- in the $700 to $800 million range. A third says that one aspect of GC's story -- the founders have known each other since high school -- is reassuring to LPs, who want to be sure that a fund's partners will be able to work together smoothly over its ten-year life-span.

General Catalyst co-founder David Fialkow had no comment when I asked him about the new fund earlier today.

The firm dates back only to 2000; among Boston VC partnerships, it's among the most heavily-focused on video and the Net, with investments in Brightcove, Maven Networks, ViTrue, ScanScout, Visible Measures, Kayak.com, and Eons.

Update: An entrepreneur source e-mails to say "it's definitely north of $700." (One of his prior companies was backed by GC.)

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