Felicis Ventures, an early-stage VC firm that's riding high with the recent sales of Plaid (to Visa for $5 billion) and Credit Karma (to Intuit for $7 billion), has raised $510 million for its seventh fund.
The bottom line: Most of the fund was raised before coronavirus sent the markets into chaos, but Felicis founder Aydin Senkut has been through enough cycles to avoid sudden investment strategy shifts.
Senkut experienced the dotcom boom and bust while an early Google executive, and raised the first Felicis fund just as the financial crisis was subsiding in 2010. He says:
- “The reality is that we’ve been thinking about it for the last 10 years because you can’t predict these black swans. We’re gonna keep focusing on critical areas that are never gonna go out of fashion.”
- His advice to startups: “You have a car and your number one job is to not run out of gas”—meaning, cash.
In addition to the new fund, Felicis also disclosed it has a lifetime cash-on-cash multiple of 5.4x across all funds as of January.
