GFT Ventures Fund I - Well Positioned for Current Environment
This past quarter was a busy and exciting one for GFT Ventures Fund I. Our first ever Annual Meeting on October 27th at the Battery in San Francisco was a huge success with a great turnout – a big thank you to everyone who attended and supported us. Some of the photos taken throughout the day are included below. On the fundraising front, we are excited to report that we had an additional Fund I closing at the end of September 2022, and have since signed more commitments, bringing our total fund size over $120M. Although we are now well oversubscribed from our initial $100 million target, our charter allows us to receive commitments up to a cap of $150 million. Given that we have continued interest from new LPs, we continue to fundraise on a very selective basis and anticipate our final closing in the coming months.
A number of you have asked us how we are approaching what’s now become a very uncertain economic environment, characterized by increasing volatility across almost all asset classes. In general, we feel extremely well positioned to not just weather (but, in fact, to capitalize on) the current capital markets downturn. The extremely fortunate timing of our fundraise has left our fund holding largely “dry powder” just at the time when startup valuations are reverting to more historically normal (i.e. much more attractive) levels. At the same time, our existing portfolio is performing quite well, with three “write-ups",” and we have recently closed on a new investment in a data engineering automation company called Switchboard (more details below). Finally, we are working very closely with all of our existing portfolio companies to not only assure their success, but also to maximize their opportunities, despite any economic headwinds they will encounter.
Thank you again for your generous support of GFT Ventures. As mentioned at our Annual Meeting, our original GFT Ventures Frontier Technology thesis remains well intact. And we continue to see exponential growth opportunities ahead of us in our core focus areas – AI, Data Science and Blockchain. We love what we do, and we do it with passion. And we couldn’t be more excited to be sharing this journey with such a quality and dedicated group of supporters.
Best regards,
Jeff Herbst and Jay Eum
Founding Managing Partners, GFT Ventures
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