Who’s Raising: Storm Ventures, Craft Ventures, And Opendoor

In a raft of SEC filings, several venture capital firms and a unicorn disclosed today that they are in the market for more money.

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The three entities, Storm Ventures, Craft Ventures, and Opendoor, make for quite the trio: Storm is a long-standing venture firm with over 20 years in the market; Craft Ventures is a new firm with its first investment recorded in 2017; and Opendoor is a unicorn that buys and sells houses.

What they share is a hunger for cash. Let’s explore what they are each raising.

Storm

Storm Ventures, founded in 1997, has put most of its capital into software, enterprise, and SaaS companies, according to Crunchbase data. The firm is also known as the place where SaaS investor Jason Lemkin cut his teeth in venture.

The filing indicates that Storm has formed a legal entity for Storm’s sixth flagship venture fund, appropriately called Storm Ventures Fund VI, L.P. Storm did not disclose how much it is targeting to raise.

Before this new fund, Storm has raised a total of $818 million over five funds1, the most recent being an India-focused $10 million vehicle. The most recent primary fund from Storm, however, was raised in 2015. That capital pooled measured up at $180 million. We expect Storm to match or beat that size with its new fund, given that the venture world has trended towards larger funds in recent years.

Craft

Craft Ventures, run by Bill Lee (co-founder of Remarq and Social Concepts, various investments) and David Sacks (PayPal mafia, co-founder of Yammer, various investments), has dozens of investments to date. With new capital under its belt, the firm may leave larger footprints.

The firm’s filing indicates that Craft is raising its second flagship fund. The firm didn’t disclose how much it intends to raise for Craft Ventures II L.P..

To-date, Craft has invested in blockchain and crypto companies, along with some software and financial services shops. And Cloud9, an esports company that Lee had already put capital into. How much of the firm’s next fund will come from its founders, and how much from external parties will be interesting if it becomes public knowledge. Some funds with wealthy partners (like, say, Bessemer today) can see a large portion of their capital base stem from investing partners, instead of external LPs.

Opendoor

A San Francisco-based unicorn founded in 2014, Opendoor is a way to sell your home quickly.

The company then, we presume, makes money on the sale of property. The idea of quickly buying homes is enticing for homeowners, and, if the company can leverage data to make lots of profitable transactions, its model could hold up.

Today’s filings suggest the company is looking for $300 million to stock a pool of capital seemingly earmarked for buying real estate. (The entity’s name—Opendoor Property Acquisition Fund LP—gives its goal away.) Opendoor has secured at least $101 million for the real estate investment fund, which “may be entitled to distributions of income” after returning capital to investors and other obligations have been met. The filing is dated for last Wednesday November 14th, despite being posted today.

It’s a lot of extra dough to raise for a company that just closed $400 million from SoftBank’s Vision Fund back in September.

Until the next time we serve up a sip, we’ll keep drinking from the filings firehose so you don’t have to.

Illustration: Li-Anne Dias