John Hartnett, CEO, SVG Partners; Rory Mullen, IDA Ireland (West Coast US); John Stanton, SVG Ventures; Philip Grant, consul general of Ireland to the Western US; John Ryan, general partner, SVG Ventures; and Arts Minister Jimmy Deenihan, TD
SVG Partners, the Silicon Valley-based venture-capital firm that emerged from the Irish Technology Leadership Group (ITLG), has gone live with its second venture fund.
SVG Venture Fund 1 has a portfolio of 15 companies and has been investing since 2011. Companies include 3D Printing pioneers Mcor Technologies, mobile payments company Flint Mobile, and restaurant loyalty platform Posiq.
SVG Partners‘ CEO is John Hartnett, who is also the president of the ITLG. Earlier this week on St Patrick’s Day, he opened its new headquarters in Los Gatos, California, just outside San Francisco.
In October, the ITLG revealed plans create a €25m Global Irish Investor Group that will support scaling-up Irish tech companies with capital, expertise and access to global customers.
Also in October, SVG Partners revealed it was making a US$6m Series B investment in California mobile commerce player Flint Mobile.
SVG most recently invested in Altocloud, a customer communications platform led by former Cisco SVP Barry O’Sullivan.
Partners include John Stanton, former vice-president at Palm, and technology veteran John Ryan, founder of Macrovision (now Rovi) and Rich Moran, former Venrock VC.
Focus on early stage investments
“We are delighted to launch our second technology fund, which will continue its focus on early stage technology companies,” said Hartnett.
“This funding coupled with the domain expertise of our advisory board, led by Craig Barrett, former chairman and CEO of Intel Corporation, and an 8,000-strong global network, will help to accelerate and scale these companies.”
SVG Partners continues to grow its existing Silicon Valley Global Accelerator in downtown San Jose, California, that was opened in 2010.
The SVG Accelerator facility today has more than 40 resident companies and organisations, including biotech start-up SiSaf; MediaMelon, a CDN optimisation company; and Manos Accelerator, the first Latino accelerator.
