NewView Capital, led by ex-New Enterprise Associates GP Ravi Viswanathan, is seeking $700 million for two funds dedicated to secondaries in the venture industry.
The Burlingame, California-based manager set a $400 million target for NewView Capital Fund III, Santa Barbara County Employees’ Retirement System materials said, up slightly from the amount noted in Form D documents filed in late 2022. As of January, NVC III had raised $191 million.
NewView was spun out of Silicon Valley venture giant NEA in 2018 through a $1.35 billion secondaries deal backed by lead investors Goldman Sachs and Hamilton Lane.
The deal supplied commitments to NewView’s debut fund. The pool was further seeded with 31 portfolio stakes divested by NEA funds, including in language learning platform Duolingo and ride hailing app Uber, Buyouts reported. Capital was also provided for both follow-on and new investments.
Ravi Viswanathan, NewView Capital
Founder and managing partner Viswanathan, who co-led NEA’s technology venture growth equity practice, set up NewView with a unique strategy, offering capital for growth-stage tech opportunities on a direct or secondary basis. The strategy’s core focus is GP-led secondaries.
NewView brings “a growth equity mindset” to secondaries, its website said, providing liquidity to early investors as well as operational support to help tech companies scale.
Secondary activity involves buying stakes in VC-backed companies from one or more investors, according to NewView’s ADV filings. In such circumstances, sellers are looking for liquidity at the end of their fund terms, have orphaned portfolio investments due to transitioning GPs, or need to reduce board seats to concentrate on new deals.
The two funds work in tandem. NVC III’s predecessor invested in growth-stage opportunities in B2B SaaS, fintech, consumer internet and AI, while the original special opps fund advanced portfolio acquisition. Together, the pair raised $544 million in 2022, with a second special opps fund rolled out later that year.
The venture secondaries market, long viewed as “the younger sibling” of the private equity secondaries market, is coming into its own, Venture Capital Journal reported, because of LP demand for liquidity and companies staying private longer. This has sparked record fundraising among specialists like NewView.
The opportunity’s size was discussed by Viswanathan in a 2023 Capital Allocators podcast. “The venture secondaries space is so underpenetrated,” he said. Estimating penetration at 0.3 percent, he said the market “just in what we’re doing” is about $50 billion-$100 billion.
Other members of NewView’s team include partner Ankit Sud, formerly a General Atlantic investor, partner Ben Fu, a one-time NextWorld Capital GP, and partners Chetan Chaudhary, David Yoo and Tim Connor, all longtime operating executives.
