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Sequoia Capital and Bain Ventures are among the top investors backing the firm’s second fund, Kearney Jackson, the early-stage-focused firm said Wednesday as it prepares to invest in more startups.
Kearney Jackson, founded by former Spotify executive Sriram Krishnan, said it has closed a $14 million second fund. He was also joined by Sunil Chaya, formerly a VC at Menlo Ventures, as Associate GP.
The fund, named after the street names the two longtime friends have been with for years, plans to continue investing in SaaS, fintech, and infrastructure firms. There are rounds.
“Starting with KJ2 investing $150k to $300K into pre-seed or seed stage startups, occasional Series A. We’re hoping for 0.5% to 2% ownership in direction so we’re happy to partner. Lead VCs in these rounds. From Sunil Chaya In addition, we are now looking to increase our check volumes for KJ2 and beyond,” Krishnan told TechCrunch.
Several venture capitalists include a16z’s Marc Andreessen, Chris Dixon, Iconic’s Doug Pepper, Greg Stanger, Arnav Bimbett, Will Griffith and Devish McCann, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, BlackRock’s Mark Woolley, and Polygon co-founder. Genty Kanani and Microsoft’s Manik Gupta backed the fund.
Menlo Ventures, Kleiner Perkins and Foundation Capital are LPs in the fund.
“We look forward to their return to KJ2 and to strengthening our relationship with them. The founders in our portfolio have benefited greatly by connecting with senior investors who provide valuable insights and guidance in addition to providing capital.” Krishnan said.
It’s amazing that so many operators and VCs have backed Kearney Jackson. Krishnan says the company promotes high-quality founders to big funds, which is a “win-win for founders/VCs.”
Kearney Jackson backed Sprigg in its pre-seed round and introduced the founder to Bill Trenchard’s first round of capital. The two hit it off and the first-round Capital led the Sprig seeding round. Class, another startup in Kearny Jackson’s portfolio, is backed by Accel and Insight Partners. The seed and Series A funding rounds of CTRLStack and Cortex, two additional KJ portfolio firms, were led by Sequoia Capital.
Both Krishnan and Chaya have made a series of successful investments over the years. Krishnan is an investor in Figma, Notion, Airbase, AngelList, Sorare, Calm and Khatabook, for example. Chaya, who has had stints at Piper Jaffray, Tenaya Capital and Nextworld, has raised more than $60 million over the years and is now worth about $500 million, he said.
The bipartisan GPs said they plan to host several events this year in San Francisco and New York for founders and other funders looking to start their own businesses. Kearney Jackson distributed about 20% of its $3.6 million in 2018, Krishnan said.
“I have worked with many investors in my career – and pound for pound, Kearney Jackson is at the absolute top in value added. KJ has been a partner to me and CtrlStack since before day 1, and she was the first capital. As I developed my vision for CtrlStack, thinking about sequencing and resourcing, KJ helped me narrow the strategic landscape and accelerate the journey to product-market fit,” said Dave Nag, Founder and CEO of CtrlStack. Nag, who sold his previous startup Wavefront to VMWare, is an LP in the fund.
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