![]() That strategy has served the firm well through deals in companies like Pluralsight, Smartsheet, Delivery Hero, HelloFresh, Yext and Alteryx (to name a few of the firm’s recent wins). ![]() The firm was one of the early pioneers in growth capital investing into technology companies and has always been more of a later-stage investor - writing larger checks for companies that it backs once they’ve found traction in the markets that they’re serving. Since it was founded in 1995, Insight has always had a point of view on the software industry. “The multiples are being paid without having a point of view.” “ You have a lot of generalists going after software who don’t have a point of view on these assets,” he says. However, many of the growth capital and private equity investors that are beginning to invest more heavily in technology don’t have experience in the industry, which is creating upward pricing pressure on deals, says Parekh. “There’s significant growth in firms focusing on tech investing.” “It’s hard to argue that the market is not more competitive today,” he says. It was only three years ago that the company closed its ninth fund with $5 billion in capital commitments.Īs technology commands an increasingly large share of the economy, it makes sense for the firm to raise more cash because there are simply more opportunities to deploy it, according to Parekh.īut competition is also something the firm is wary of - especially as technology becomes more popular for generalist investors. Still, the pace of investment has been pretty blistering. “The competitive dynamics is not the driver here as much as the types of companies we invest in.” “Our fund size has gone up and our portfolio size has gone up,” says Parekh. The firm is staying true to its mission of investing in companies, and continuing to commit the same amount of capital it always has, Parekh says. However, Deven Parekh says Insight Venture Partners isn’t simply following the herd with its latest raise. That’s why Sequoia juiced its fund to a whopping $8 billion ( and has already closed on $6 billion for it). That redefinition of the investors’ role - in a way trying to circumvent competition in a market by fiat - has led funds to follow SoftBank’s lead and try to raise increasingly large funds. In the wake of SoftBank’s massive $100 billion Vision Fund, investors in technology companies have said that capital has become weaponized as a way to create a competitive moat around a startup’s business - ostensibly giving it so much money that investors become de facto kingmakers for the companies they back, rather than simply enablers for success. Insight Venture Partners has raised $6.3 billion for its latest (and largest ever) fund as technology investors continue to amass increasingly large war chests. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |