Boston Business Journal: Volition Capital closes $600M in separate funds for new investments and ‘peak performers’
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By Lucia Maffei
Technology Reporter, Boston Business JournalBoston-based growth equity firm Volition Capital has raised a total of $600 million to grow its current portfolio of 26 technology and consumer companies, with plans to further support the “peak performers” in that batch with late-stage investments, one of the firm’s managing partners said.
Ten-year-old Volition Capital announced on Thursday the closing of $400 million for its main fund, Volition Capital Fund IV, L.P. In addition, the firm closed $200 million in capital commitments for Volition Capital Select Fund I, L.P., meant to finance Volition’s most promising portfolio companies.
Limited partners across the endowment, foundation, hospital, pension and family office communities contributed to both funds, according to Sean Cantwell, one of the firm’s four managing partners.
“We have seen in our past some portfolio companies that went on to raise larger rounds of capital. We just want to be in a position where we can support those businesses through their life cycle,” Cantwell said about the inaugural “Select” fund.
The Select fund, Cantwell continued, is reserved for “the absolute peak performers” within the core fund: companies that Cantwell described as both showing “a breakout performance” and having the opportunity to get more aggressive in, say, hiring more sales resources or expanding the R&D team. The number of investments out of the fund is still to be decided, Cantwell said.
For the main $400 million fund, Cantwell said that the investment strategy will mostly remain selective.
Businesses that Volition Capital looks to fund are bringing in between $5 million and $50 million in revenue across software, Internet or consumer sectors. They are preferably bootstrapped, tend to be founder-owned, have found a product-market fit, are based in North America and are scaling, according to Cantwell.
“Our goal is to really just keep doing what we’ve been doing for the past ten years,” Cantwell said.