Jafco Ventures Raises $260 Million for Its Fifth Fund, Adds New Limited Partners

PALO ALTO, CA--(Marketwired - Apr 10, 2014) - Jafco Ventures, a leading technology venture capital firm, today announced it has raised $260 million for its fifth and largest fund to date, Jafco Technology Partners V. In contrast to its prior four funds where Jafco received all of its capital from its limited partner in Japan, Jafco, Co. Ltd., the new fund features an impressive list of over twenty new limited partners consisting of institutional investors, endowments, foundations and family offices.

"The consistency of our successful exits as a firm enabled us to attract a very high quality mix of new LPs," said Joe Horowitz, Jafco's Managing General Partner, "but our overall performance is due in no small part to the extraordinary entrepreneurs we have had the privilege to back and the opportunity to work alongside the greatest venture firms in Silicon Valley." Since its launch ten years ago, Jafco has realized over 20 positive exits, with 15 alone that have an aggregate market value today of over $23 billion. Included in their list of successful outcomes are Aster Data (acquired by Teradata), ClairMail (acquired by Monitise), FireEye (IPO), 41^st Parameter (acquired by Experian), Infinera (IPO), MoPub (acquired by Twitter), Palo Alto Networks (IPO), and Proofpoint (IPO).

A focused business model for venture investing

With this larger fund, rather than expanding into new geographies or different stages of investing, Jafco Ventures continues to polish its unique and highly focused business model as a mid-stage, broad-based information technology investor, with a strong value-add proposition. The partnership consists of a core team of proven, early-stage venture capital investors, augmented by venture partners who are best-in-class in scaling companies, and a world-class business development team based in Tokyo.

"A $250 million fund size is ideal for our business model, so our goal was to keep as close to that target as possible while still accommodating great new investors," said Tom Mawhinney, a veteran General Partner of the firm, "With this larger fund, we can put more money to work in each investment while continuing to apply a true team-based approach to assisting each portfolio company and to evaluate new deals."

The fund is off to a great start with several exceptional new investments. Three that were announced in the last few months include Zephyr Health, a big data analytics platform for the life sciences and healthcare industry; Origami Logic, a developer of marketing intelligence solutions and Ionic Security, the industry's first comprehensive distributed data security platform.

About Jafco Ventures
Based in Palo Alto, Jafco Ventures is a venture capital partnership that invests in mid-stage companies with great teams that demonstrate differentiated technology, compelling business models and strong momentum in their respective markets. Jafco Ventures has had the privilege to invest in market-leading companies such as Aster Data, ClairMail, FireEye, 41st Parameter, Infinera, MoPub, Palo Alto Networks, and Proofpoint. For more information about Jafco Ventures visit www.jafco.com.