AUSTIN, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--LiveOak Venture Partners, an Austin-based venture capital firm that invests in early-stage startups across Texas, today announced the successful close of Fund II, a $105 million oversubscribed fund.
The LiveOak team has held a steady, growing presence in the Texas market since its inception in 2013 having invested close to $100 million in startups across the state. Co-Founders Krishna Srinivasan, Venu Shamapant and Ben Scott met at Austin Ventures in 2000 and invested over an additional $150 million in Texas startups prior to the creation of LiveOak.
Focused on building world-class category winners, Fund II is backed by an expanded institutional LP base and has already led investments in six companies including Austin startups Eventador, Osano and Rollick, and Dallas-based AmplifAI.
“Texas is exploding with opportunity,” said LiveOak Co-founder and Partner Krishna Srinivasan. “We are continuing to execute on our proven playbook of creating successful companies for close to 20 years in Texas. Early stage investing is a local neighborhood sport, and as such, we are looking to be the local lead investor and first money in companies to harness their full potential and help create the next generation of category leaders coming out of this market.”
Enterprise Value Created Across Multiple Macroeconomic Cycles Over 20 Years
The partners at LiveOak Venture Partners have a vetted track record of delivering positive returns across diverse macroeconomic cycles over two decades. In this period, the partners have collectively created over $2 billion dollars of enterprise value across a spectrum of investments. A big factor in value creation is the active board role partners play in these investments, assisting with team building, strategy formulation and facilitating syndication with other venture firms.
In LiveOak’s six-year history, the firm has led or co-led 24 investments in companies past their seed stages. Collectively, these companies have raised over $400 million since LiveOak’s investment. Notable portfolio companies include recent exits such as Digital Pharmacist (acquired by K1 Investment Management for over $100 million) and Opcity (acquired by News Corp for $210 million) as well as active ongoing segment leaders such as CS Disco (recently raised $83 million), OJO Labs(recently raised $45 million) and others including TrustRadius, Infocyte and Mavenir.
“LiveOak was an outstanding partner for our business,” said Chris Loughlin, CEO of Digital Pharmacist. “As the lead investor and most active board member, they supported us through the challenging and successful times. They helped us develop and execute our strategy of building a network of 7,500 pharmacists and pharmacy owners, and played an enormous role in sourcing and closing key hires — their team was critical in empowering our vision into the reality of becoming the definitive leader in our category.”
Fund II: Continued Focus on Building Category Leaders out of Texas
Fund II marks a continuation of LiveOak’s investing thesis of backing entrepreneur-first, world-class category leaders from Texas in a capital efficient fashion. The fund’s focus will still be on first institutional funding for startups headquartered in Texas’ four largest tech hubs: Austin, Houston, Dallas and San Antonio. Initial investments will range from $2 million to $4 million and scale up to $10 million over the full company life cycle.
Fund II marks the beginning of a broader venture capital franchise for LiveOak, according to LiveOak Co-Founder and Partner Venu Shamapant. “We’ve seen the spectrum of boom and bust cycles over the past two decades. Our strategy has been to remain true to what we do best — invest in early stage, tech and tech-enabled service companies based in Texas. The tremendous LP support during the raise of Fund II, with the addition of several new institutional LPs reinforced that we are doing it right. We continue to believe in and back Texas entrepreneurs.”
About LiveOak Venture Partners
LiveOak Venture Partners is a venture capital fund based in Austin, Texas, founded by Ben Scott, Krishna Srinivasan and Venu Shamapant. With 20 years of successful venture investing in Texas, the founders of LiveOak have helped create nearly $2 billion of enterprise value. While almost all of LiveOak's investments begin in the early stages, LiveOak is a full life cycle investor focused on technology and technology-enabled service companies based in Texas. LiveOak Venture Partners is a lead investor in exciting high-growth Texas-based companies such as CS Disco, Digital Pharmacist, NSS Labs, OJO Labs and Opcity.
