Bloomberg Beta, the early-stage venture capital arm of Bloomberg LP, today announced that it has closed its second fund with $75 million. That’s the same size as Bloomberg Beta’s debut fund, with all of the money again coming from the parent company.
Three quick notes on this:
1. Bloomberg Beta continues to avoid fin-tech investments, so as not to create competitive conflicts with Bloomberg LP. It has, however, invested in Slack and some companies within the Slack ecosystem. Not fin-tech, but possibly a challenger to part of the Bloomberg machine’s dominant sauce.
2. Any of Bloomberg Beta’s four partners can greenlight a deal (i.e., there are no partner votes). Fund head Roy Bahat says: “At the seed stage, the cost of missing is very high but the cost of betting wrong is very low.” Indeed, typical first checks are now between $500,000 and $1 million.
3. Bloomberg Beta regularly sets up meetings between entrepreneurs and Bloomberg LP but, according to Bahat, fewer than 10% of such conversations last year were with startups in which Bloomberg Beta had an equity stake.