Telstra Ventures has closed its third fund at $500 million, down from its prior fund but maintaining the firm’s position as one of Australia’s best funded venture capital investors.
Announcing the final close on 13 September, joint managing directors Matthew Koertge and Mark Sherman said the fund would be used to advance investment in “all the Cs”, cloud, cyber, crypto (including blockchain), carbon and climate, coders, creators and consumers.
Sherman, who is based in San Francisco said: “We’ve developed a world class reputation for identifying, investing and serving extraordinary entrepreneurs.”
He said Fund III had already been invested in 15 start-ups including Cequence, ClosedLoop, Enable, Forage, FTX, LambdaTest, Lively, Pandion, Sleeper and Strata. Data science analysis had been used to help identify investment targets and would also be used to help drive investee businesses.
Sydney-based Koertge said that over the last 10 years Telstra Ventures had returned more than $800 million to LPs who were continuing to back the firm.
“The fact that we were able to raise these funds from a range of existing, and more than 35 new limited partners across the globe, when there is considerable volatility in finance markets and pandemic issues to navigate, speaks to the high reputation that our team, our portfolio company entrepreneurs and the quality returns they have delivered from our first two funds,” he said.
From a total of 88 investments, the firm had so far received returns from 33 liquidity events (M&A or IPO), with 17 of those events resulting in company valuations of above $US1 billion (unicorns), and including five achieving valuations of above $10 billion (decacorns).
Koertge said that since Telstra Ventures’ inception, strategic relationships with Telstra had driven revenue of $640 million for its portfolio companies.
The 33 liquidity events that have returned capital to Telstra Ventures to date included Auth0, BigCommerce, Box, Cloopen, CrowdStrike, DocuSign, Rancher, Skillz, Snap and Whisper.
Telstra Ventures was formed as a corporate venture firm for Telstra (ASX: TLS) but in 2018 was transformed into an independent venture capital firm with investment in the business by US-based global fund-of-funds manager HarbourVest Partners, ahead of the firm raising $675 million for Telstra Ventures II.
Image: Telstra Ventures’ new fund has invested in ClosedLoop which is focused on improving health care using data science and AI.