We’re in the midst of fund raising now. It’s been an educational process.
Two weeks ago, we spoke with a placement firm which helps funds raise money from institutions. We were told that we are too small for institutions to be interested.
They apparently want to invest at least $10MM into a fund. This is because of their own size, which many institutions are now in the billions of dollars. It simply does not make sense for them to place money into another vehicle at less than that amount. They need to put larger amounts of cash to work, at one time.
The next constraint is that they want to be no more than 10% of any venture fund. This means that any fund they invest into must be at least $100MM in size.
With us at $25MM, we’re too small for them. We’re thinking about this as we continue our talks with other potential investors.