Bling Capital Nearly Closes Out $90 Million For Seed & Early-Stage Funds, Filings Show

Ben Ling, a former GP at Khosla Ventures and prior exec at Facebook and Google, has closed out the fundraise for his eponymous seed-stage venture fund, Bling Capital.

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Bling Capital made a number of filings on Thursday afternoon.

Bling Capital Fund I LP, a $58.03 million venture capital fund that will serve as the firm’s primary investment vehicle. 160 investors contributed capital to the fund, according to the filing. The filing says the fund first closed investor capital in late September 2018.
Bling Capital Fund I Opps LP, another investment vehicle targeting $30 million in capital commitments, of which $27.3 million has already been raised from 102 limited partners, according to the filing.
Bling Capital Fund I-A LP, a sidecar fund that’s been fully raised with $1.97 million committed from 34 investors. Together with the primary fund, Bling Capital raised $60 million for seed investments.

Additionally, the firm filed paperwork for a $7 million special purpose vehicle—traditionally a low- or no-fee capital pool raised to invest in one particular transaction—for its investment in Neutron Holdings, the legal name of electric scooter and bike service Lime. Bling Capital was a named participant in Lime’s $310 million Series D round, announced last week.

According to a TechCrunch profile of Ling from November 2018, a number of Silicon Valley’s elite backed the fund, including Marissa Mayer, Nellie and Max Levchin, Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman and Quora CEO Adam D’Angelo.

Bling plans to invest $750,000 to $1 million in “one to two U.S. companies per month in exchange for 10 percent equity,” according to TechCrunch. The opportunity fund is reserved for follow-on investments.

Bling Capital’s website lists a number of big names in the firm’s portfolio, including Airtable, Lyft, Palantir, Square, Gusto, Udemy, and many others. According to Ling’s biography on the firm’s website, he invested in those companies as an independent angel investor.

Illustration: Li-Anne Dias