INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Greycroft, the venture capital firm that backed companies like the Huffington Post, Plated and Venmo, is announcing that it has raised $250
million for its latest fund.The firm was founded in 2006 by Alan Patricof, Ian Sigalow and Dana Settle, and it now invests from a fund for
seed and Series A deals (this is its fifth early-stage fund) and a separate fund focused on growth investments.Recent bets includescooter
startup Bird and podcast network Wondery.Sigalow told me that for the most part, the firm strategy isn&t changing, though it has adapted to
what he called &the rise of the institutional seed round& by making more seed investments of its own.&I think it mostly a change in
nomenclature,& Sigalow said — where a funding round of a few million dollars would previously have been called a Series A, it is now
(And anything before that becomes &pre-seed.&)&There is on the margin more capital being deployed industry-wide now than there was five or
Rounds have gotten slightly larger.&And while Greycroft has offices in New York and Los Angeles, the firm notes that some of its recent
successes have come from Birmingham, Alabama (Shipt, which was acquired by Target) and Chicago (Trunk Club, acquired by Nordstrom, as well
asBraintree, acquired by PayPal).Settle said Greycroft tries to look at &opportunities in all kinds of markets.& Sigalow added that one of
the &big unsung advantages& of being in LA and NYC is &true access to virtually direct flights everywhere.&The firm also says that nearly
half of its investments go into startups founded by women and other underrepresented groups — its female-founded startups include
BaubleBar, BitPesa, Clique, Cuyana, Eloquii, HopSkipDrive, theRealReal, Thrive Global and theSkimm.And while many of Greycroft best-known
investments have been consumer startups, Settle and Sigalow said the firm has always had a pretty even split between business-to-business
and business-to-consumer models
It just that the consumer startups tend to get more attention from the press.Sigalow also said that lately, more enterprise and non-consumer
startups seem interested in working with Greycroft because of its consumer successes, because they&re looking to incorporate &what was
traditionally B2C functionality.&&I really think there an advantage to all these cross-discipline approaches,& he said.
