Working Capital
Matt Quinn

Andreessen Seeking $650 Million for Start-ups

 

The venture capital firm started last year by Netscape Communications founder Marc Andreessen is looking to raise $650 million to invest in start-ups, Bloomberg News reported Wednesday.

The fund will invest in tech companies of all levels of development, according to the news service, citing an anonymous source.

This is a pretty daring time to be raising money. In the second quarter of 2010, 38 U.S. venture capital funds raised just $1.9 billion, according to Thomson Reuters and the National Venture Capital Association. That represented a 49 percent decline, by dollar commitments, compared to the first quarter of 2010, when 38 funds raised $3.7 billion. It was also the worst quarter for fundraising since the third quarter of 2003.

Andreessen, of course, has a nice track record as an investor, having made seed investments in both Twitter and Facebook.

Andreessen Horowitz, the firm co-founded last year by Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, started out with a $300 million fund. (Horowitz co-founded enterprise software company Opsware, which he sold to Hewlett-Packard for $1.6 billion in 2007.)

The new firm has so far invested in companies including Foursquare, social network browser RockMelt, Skype Technologies, employee collaboration software maker Asana, and gaming company Zynga Game Network, Bloomberg noted.

Matt Quinn contributes to the Wall Street Journal's corporate finance blog. He has also written extensively about banking and corporate finance for publications including Inc., American Banker, and Financial Week. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.