Walden Israel Closes Shop
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Walden Israel, one of Israel’s oldest venture capital funds, is closing its doors after failing to raise sufficient capital for its follow-on fund. Walden is following several Israeli Venture Capital Funds who failed to raised follow-on commitments and subsequently decided to close doors:Concord Ventures, Delta Ventures, Israel Seed Partners, and Star Ventures.
According to its original plan, Walden planned to raise a fourth follow-on fund of $125M, starting with commitments for $70M. In reality however, Walden was only able to secure commitments for $35 million, which brought the partners to the decision to close the fund. Meanwhile, Walden plans to continue supporting and financing the fund’s portfolio companies that include: data security company Safend, high-def video connectivity manufacturer Amimon, and many others. As seen below, Walden’s portfolio in Israel was mostly comprised of enterprise software and communications/ internet infrastructure.
Roni Hefetz, founder and general partner at Walden Israel, said:
“We’ve run out of money for new investments and we initiated financing for a new fund. We obtained a number of commitments, but failed to reach our first closing target. We decided not to continue, and we won’t make new investments. We don’t feel bad. At least the decision wasn’t taken because we have a bad portfolio or dissatisfied investors.”
Walden Israel is a branch of San Francisco headquartered Walden International. The International fund was founded in 1987 and has $1.6 billion under management.
See article on Globes for more coverage.
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By N2H
[...] by 2010. The main reason for closure is predicted to be difficulty in raising follow on funds (see Walden Israel) * Funds are slowing down investments in early stage tech companies. One example is 3i Group, a [...]