Opus hits the fundraising trail, looking for $250M
Early-stage venture firm Opus Capital Ventures is hoping to scrape together $250 million for its next fund (which has a hard cap of $350 million), reports VentureWire. Based in Menlo Park, Calif., the firm used to be called Weiss Peck & Greer Venture Partners. It raised four funds before changing its name to Opus. Its last fund, totaling $280 million, was brought in in 2006.
Already, Opus has a commitment from Montana Board Investments to contribute… Continue Reading
Corefino raises $13.6M for business accounting and finance
Yet another company focused on helping businesses with their accounting — and specifically with regulatory compliance — has received its first funding, with $13.6 million going to Sunnyvale, Calif. startup Corefino.
The firm joins a set of similar companies to receive funding in the past couple months: Risk manager Agiliance with $10 million, internal investigator Vantos with $10.6 million, and archiving and eDiscovery group Mimosa with $17 million.
The specific niche Corefino is going for is… Continue Reading
People search engine Spock raises $7M, to launch next year
Spock, the Menlo Park start-up that wants to provide a definitive search engine focused on people, has raised $7 million in a first round of VC funding from Clearstone and Opus Capital Ventures.
VentureBeat reviewed the secretive company here, after getting a demo. It wouldn’t allow VentureBeat to publish screenshots, for fear of alerting competition. Ucloo in China is gunning for the same market, though Ucloo is focused on Asia for now.
Previously, Spock raised an… Continue Reading
VCs pour on to campus, in greater numbers than 1999
Venture capitalists have launched a full-court press on campuses. With thousands of venture firms jockeying for the best ideas, it’s no surprise that venture capitalists are spending more and more time with young students at the best universities.
Mark Stevens (pictured here), a venture capitalist at valley firm Sequoia Capital, has given $22 million to USC to help that school make money from licensing promising technologies developed on campus. The program will provide grants to… Continue Reading