At the time of its IPO, Facebook had three venture investors on its seven-member board:  Accel Partners’ Jim Breyer, Founders Fund partner and angel investor Peter Thiel and Andreessen Horowitz’s Marc Andreessen. Now, all three are named as individual defendants in at least one class action lawsuit filed in federal court in New York, alleging that they signed a prospectus that contained “untrue statements of material facts” and failed to publicly disclose downward revisions for earnings forecasts, which were given only to “a handful of preferred investor clients.”

As it turns out, two of those VC board members – Breyer and Thiel – also sold stakes in the IPO, which they increased significantly several days before the May 18 offering.

Accel made $1.86 billion in Facebook’s IPO and still holds 152.3 million shares of stock in the social network. The firm increased the number of shares it contributed by 28% in the two weeks leading up to the debut, according to a May 16 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Thiel and Founders Fund, meanwhile, sold 16.8 million shares, a 117% increase above what they had planned to sell two week earlier. They hold 27.9 million shares. Among the VC board members, only Andreessen Horowitz, which has 6.6 million shares, did not sell any stock in the offering.

Now, on the face of it, the decision of Facebook’s VCs to stay on the board through the offering isn’t anything unusual. True, many VCs do step down in advance of an IPO, as was the case late last year for Foundry Group’s Brad Feld, who departed Zynga’s board a month before the gaming company’s December offering. But staying is commonplace. For instance, Sequoia Capital’s Michael Moritz and Greylock’s David Sze are still on LinkedIn’s board, and Accel’s Kevin Efrusy remained a director at Groupon through its IPO before announcing in April that he will step down. Moreover, the Facebook VC directors are all experienced public company board members, with Breyer mostly famously associated with Walmart, Andreessen with Netscape, and Thiel with Paypal.

Nor is selling shares in an offering anything remarkable. Though it’s more common for VCs to hold all their shares, they often sell some in the offering. A survey of the six venture-backed IPOs immediately prior to Facebook, for instance, showed that for two of them – Envivio, a developer of video delivery systems, and Proofpoint, an email security provider – VCs unloaded shares. As for the three biggest pre-Facebook social media IPOs – LinkedIn, Groupon and Zynga – only Zynga had venture investors selling shares in the initial offering.

But while staying on the board post-offering and selling shares during an IPO are relatively common behaviors, they’re not always wise. In particular, conflicts of interest – or the appearance of them – can arise when VCs seek to exit stakes and serve out board terms at the same time. Staying on the board also means a VC may be named in lawsuits filed following the IPO. Given the number of securities class action filed each year, the possibility of being a defendant in one is not remote.

So what’s the appropriate course of action? I wasn’t able to track down an attorney or VC willing to talk on the record about the Facebook situation. But Craig Miller, a partner at Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, offered some more general suggestions for VCs in determining when is the appropriate time to give up a board seat.

“I would recommend that the venture fund investors step down from the board prior to the public offering,” Miller says. This doesn’t need to be done as soon as the company files to go public, since not all filings culminate in an IPO. However, he says, the VC board member should be ready to step down when the registration statement is effective, and it’s pretty clear the IPO is a go.

For VCs who stay on the board, it’s key to keep in mind that they have fiduciary duties to two parties: the portfolio company and limited partners in their fund. Those duties consist of three parts: a duty of care, a duty of loyalty, and a duty of good faith. More often than not, Miller adds, fiduciary duties to limited partners and portfolio companies are aligned. Both, after all, want to maximize shareholder value by building a successful company. But there are situations where they may conflict. For instance, if a company is seeking outside funding at terms that could impact prior venture investors, the VC board member should generally step aside in that decision-making.

What about balancing what’s good for the company in the short term and what’s best in the long term, I asked. For instance, what if VCs seeking to exit their investments make decisions that inflate the value of the company in the near-term, but cause damage down the road?

At the end of the day, directors must always be acting with care toward portfolio companies, Miller says, adding that he’s not aware of a case involving such charges. Because directors are presumed to be acting in the best interest of companies, he adds, they’re protected by the business judgment rule, which essentially requires a board member to show their decision was the result of a reasoned judgment.

Miller’s advice on balancing fiduciary duties is pretty much in line with a white paper published five years ago by a group of venture capitalists led by Levensohn Ventures’ Pascal Levensohn. The paper, entitled “A Simple Guide to the Basic Responsibilities of a VC-Backed Company Director,” advises that “the legal fiduciary duties associated with board service are duties to all of the shareholders, not just to the shareholder class in which a VC director’s firm has made an investment.” The paper also recommends that “VCs should openly address their expectations regarding a liquidity event” and that the board “should openly discuss the timeframes for exit options.”

Even in the event of a lawsuit, it’s unlikely venture firms will pay out of pocket for partner/board members who are named in suits as board members, Miller adds. Typically, they are covered under a portfolio company’s directors and officers insurance.

Image: Reuters

The Dallas startup isn’t taking $100 million at a $1 billion valuation (it has done limited fundraising, between angel investors and $3 million Series A round it reeled in from SOS Ventures and Infinity Ventures). It isn’t even a consumer-facing business like Pinterest–OrderWithMe looks to provide smaller retailers an option to order from foreign manufacturers they otherwise might not be able to access. Even though OrderWithMe has been making big waves in China, it might not steal as many headlines as the social investing scene has in the US.

So far, much of the capital OrderWithMe raised has gone into the company’s establishment of quality inspection for the vendors it does approve for group buying—and, with Rakuten’s partnership, the Techcrunch Disrupt Beijing winner may need a fresh batch of capital soon to continue building scale.

Its partnership with Rakuten adds 38,000 potential buyers to OrderWithMe’s network, CEO and co-founder Jonathan Jenkins told peHUB. Jenkins co-founded OrderWithMe with his wife Danielle, while living in China after graduating college.

“It isn’t about just linking businesses to opportunities in China—we’re trying to streamline order processes for small retailers here,” Jenkins said. He said the partnership with Rakuten has no impact on the company’s commitment to serve US businesses.

As its team of 30 in China will ramp up development (and possibly grow) to match anticipated demand, the US-based online merchant supply outfit OrderWithMe is rolling out the new products—literally, in fact.

On the heels of the big news that the company is partnering with the strategic game-changer, Jenkins, along with some of his US colleagues, is embarking on a cross-country RV tour, where they’ll hand out $1 million in free products at various small businesses along the way. Keep an eye on the startup’s Twitter feed as its ‘roadshow’ develops.

Image Credit: OrderWithMe

Its shares were up 8 percent in early afternoon trading on the Nasdaq, after opening 11 percent higher and then rapidly heading south to touch their initial public offering price of $38. The gains were below market forecasts of as much as a 50 percent jump.

“We have got some unhappy guys out there,” said Wayne Kaufman, chief market strategist at John Thomas Financial, a retail broker on Wall Street. “They were hoping for Facebook to be considerably better. I bet there are a lot of disappointed people in the market.”

Facebook, which has about 900 million users globally, priced its IPO at the top end of its target range, becoming the first U.S. company to go public with a valuation greater than $100 billion. If a greenshoe option to underwriters is exercised, Facebook will raise as much as $18.4 billion by selling an 18 percent stake, the second-biggest IPO in U.S. history after the one by Visa Inc.

Analysts blamed the poorer-than-expected first-day showing on the vast number of shares floated and market weakness. General Motors’ decision to pull paid-advertising from the social network, announced this week, also hurt.

After a delay in the opening print that drove up anxiety levels among traders and onlookers outside the Nasdaq, the closely watched stock began trading at $42.05, rose to as high as $45 and then rapidly retreated. The Nasdaq exchange said it was investigating an issue with execution of trades.

Facebook’s IPO had been heavily oversubscribed, particularly by retail investors, despite concerns about slowing growth in the last quarter, whether the company can make money from mobile advertising, and the immense control Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg has over on the company.

Others warned that the IPO price, equivalent to over 100 times historical earnings versus Apple Inc’s 14 times and Google Inc’s 19 times, makes Facebook a risky bet.

For Facebook, Friday began with much fanfare. To rapturous applause from employees, Mark Zuckerberg — flanked by Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg and Nasdaq Chief Executive Robert Greifeld — rang the bell to kick off trading at the company’s Silicon Valley headquarters at 6:30 a.m. Pacific time.

The 28-year-old billionaire founder, wearing his trademark black hoodie, hugged and high-fived Sandberg and other employees in celebration after he pressed the remote button.

The area outside Facebook’s offices was packed with throngs of photographers, more than a dozen television trucks, and a TV news helicopter hovering overhead as the excitement reached fever pitch.

The fizzling of Facebook’s early gains put pressure on other social media stocks. Zynga, which depends on Facebook for much of its revenue, dived 13 percent before it was halted. LinkedIn Corp was off 3 percent at midday.

“When you see what’s happening with other social media stocks today, which are significantly down, as well as looking at Facebook trading flat, we think it has traded obviously at the high end,” said Destination Wealth Management CEO Michael Yoshikami.

“It’s a rich valuation, particularly given the advertising pressure they’re under now. Advertising revenue has grown significantly slower over the past few years, and that’s punctuated by GM’s decision to stop advertising on Facebook.”

“We’re not buyers at $38, particularly considering that most of their business is in mobile and they haven’t figured out how to make money yet.”

(By Alexei Oreskovic; additional reporting by Edwin Chan in San Francisco, Yinka Adegoke, Ed Krudy and Olivia Oran in New York; Editing by Steve Orlofsky and Tiffany Wu)

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It will also be besieged with investors who possess a limited awareness of the company’s development and history, competitors out to bleed the social whale dry in the mobile space, and regulators eager to chip into its billions. The company faces seemingly insurmountable challenges everywhere it turns.

Now-injured New York Yankees pitcher David Robertson best summed up Facebook’s biggest competitive challenge when, after blowing a ballgame in horrendous fashion, he tweeted: “I expected to be slaughtered tonight on Twitter, but the support y’all have shown reminds me how amazing Yankee fans are.”

Robertson, and other sportscasters and commentators, didn’t spend so much time commenting about his concern for how this would play out for him on Facebook. When ESPN’s yammering heads box out for camera time and monologues, they aren’t doing it with a Facebook logo beneath them—it is the now-ubiquitous “@” symbol, followed by their handle. Twitter’s iPhone app (naturally more attractive than the Blackberry iteration) is a breeze to navigate and puts the user at once in touch with hundreds, thousands, even, of social users. It isn’t just Twitter; Path, Pinterest, heck, even peHUB—they’ve all got a social component that Facebook did not have to fight against back when the next best thing to Myspace launched. The social scene has gotten awfully crowded.

Facebook now draws most of its revenue from advertisements, and its best place to advertise the most is to users who are accessing the social network from their laptop or desktop. Just one problem—the social network’s users are moving to mobile in droves. Already, more than half of its 900 million users are mobile—it is a shift all but guaranteed to not reverse itself. This has pushed Facebook to make deals to incorporate itself into various mobile verticals—but even the company admitted, via federal filing, that is isn’t sure where the mobile revenue will come from. The company knows it can’t provide as many advertisements to mobile users, so it has to generate more money—somehow—in the mobile space. There is, of course, the matter of getting all, and not just a portion, of that revenue. This matter remains unsettled.

For all its recruitment of political pros—the company has hired from former and current White House administrations, as well as execs experienced in international relations—Facebook could still find itself in a position of needing some very good lobbyists, if it wants to protect its revenue stream derived from e-commerce.

It is widely anticipated inside the Beltway that Congress will, shortly after the 2012 presidential election, consider legislation that could impose a national tax on e-commerce, something that lawmakers have let slide as they sought to boost the US’ trajectory in online businesses via a seemingly interminable tax break. If and when Facebook’s growing mobile business comes up against the tax man, shareholders might not respond rationally.

Then again, look at who we’re talking about: Mark Zuckerberg. When Myspace controlled the whole social stratosphere, he decided it could be beat, and did it from the discomfort of his dorm room. Against huge odds, he not only maintained his social network to half Google’s size, but fended off would-be acquirers, and even somehow still will own a majority of the company’s stock, once it goes public. Come to think of it, shareholders may—and should—feel more comfortable investing in a 28-year-old and the social network he controls instead of an investment bank CEO, and the company he can’t.

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(Reuters) – Japan-based online retailing giant Rakuten is leading the latest $100 million round of funding in U.S. social networking site Pinterest, saying on Thursday it expects the site to help it expand at home and in its 17 overseas markets.

Interest in Pinterest, where users can “pin” their photographs and images and follow others’ collections, has grown rapidly in recent months to become the 16th most-visited site in the United States, according to the Web information company Alexa.

Existing Pinterest investors Andreessen Horowitz, Bessemer Venture Partners, and FirstMark Capital, as well as a number of angel investors also participated in the latest financing, Rakuten said in a statement, without disclosing how much each party has invested.

Earlier the Wall Street Journal had said the funding values Pinterest at $1.5 billion, citing people familiar with the matter.

“We see tremendous synergies between Pinterest’s vision and Rakuten’s model for e-commerce,” Rakuten’s chief executive Hiroshi Mikitani said.

(Reporting by Bijoy Koyitty in Bangalore; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman and Greg Mahlich)
Image Credit: Pinterest

The e-book is one of about eight self-help manuals that appear to have sprung up overnight to try to capitalize on the frenzy surrounding Silicon Valley’s biggest initial public offering.

With other titles such as “The Facebook IPO Pitch: Are You In?” and “How To Invest In Facebook”, these books are far from bestsellers. But, along with countless online forums and news articles about the IPO, they underscore the desire of ordinary people – many of whom have never invested in stocks before – to get in on the $15.2 billion share sale.

“If you can’t invent Facebook, the next best bragging rights would be to say that you had invested in the social media phenom when it was a dorm room project. If not then, perhaps the IPO,” Nancy Miller wrote in a guide titled “The Facebook IPO Primer.”

Many wealth managers are advising their clients to avoid Facebook, pointing to a sky-high valuation of up to $104 billion set by the IPO, and potentially much higher once it starts trading. The company also shows signs of slowing growth, has yet to figure out how to make money on mobile, and new shareholders will have little influence as nearly 56 percent of voting shares will be in the hands of one person: Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg.

But such warnings are falling on deaf ears as many people are drawn in by Facebook’s brand name and the fact that one in seven people around the globe are on the social network. Facebook Inc on Tuesday increased the size of its IPO by nearly 25 percent and raised the target price range.

“I can’t remember another IPO that got this much attention,” said Max Wolff, a senior analyst at GreenCrest Capital. “Half the people talking about the Facebook IPO probably don’t know what IPO stands for.”

The strong demand means that most retail investors will have to wait until Facebook begins to trade on the Nasdaq on Friday to get hold of the shares – and risk getting trampled. If the stock skyrockets, the average person might end up getting orders filled at a price much higher than they wanted and then face the possibility of losses as funds steamroll in and then zip back out, taking the price off its highs.

“I don’t know if buying on the day of the IPO is the best idea, but I like the novelty factor of it and being able to say that you bought on the first day,” said Micah Stubbs, a first-time investor who works in the oil and gas industry and lives in Bartlesville, Oklahoma.

Facebook’s share price could surge 30 percent on debut day, said Reena Aggarwal, a professor of business administration and finance at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business in Washington. She suggested retail investors may be better off holding off for a few weeks until the share price settles.

“The market will try to figure out the right price for the stock and it’s going to open really high,” Aggarwal said. “There are lots of risks – the company is high growth but also high risk, and there is a lot of uncertainty, so retail investors have to be careful.”

Facebook is going public after accumulating almost a billion users, nearly $4 billion in annual revenue and a brand name augmented by the 2010 Oscar-winning film “The Social Network”, which charted the rise of Zuckerberg who started Facebook in his Harvard University dorm room.

Most ordinary people have only the slimmest of chances of getting hold of IPO shares as Facebook’s 33 underwriters, led by Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs, are expected to give priority to their most important clients, usually institutional investors.

Typically, only 5 to 30 percent of IPO shares are set aside for retail investors, underwriters say.

Discount broker E*Trade Financial, which was added to the list of IPO underwriters at the last minute, offers some help. Last week, its home page threw up a pop-up box explaining what investors need to do to get in on IPOs.

Would-be buyers have to answer about 25 questions about their financial status and investment habits. They are then prompted to place a conditional offer for at least 50 Facebook shares and a maximum price they are willing to pay per share.

Online prediction market Intrade, which lets investors bet on major events such as the U.S. presidential election, offers another alternative. It started a contract on Tuesday for bets on where shares of the social network will close on their first day of trading.

Facebook reported $205 million in first-quarter profit, down 12 percent from the same period a year ago. While sales leapt 45 percent year-on-year to $1.6 billion, that lagged the 55 percent growth of the fourth quarter.

On Tuesday, General Motors Co said it will stop advertising on Facebook, amid concerns that the ads have had little impact on consumer spending. The auto maker continues to use Facebook pages for marketing its vehicles, but the news underscored the risks Facebook faces as it tries to boost revenue from its huge user base.

RegentAtlantic Capital is among the wealth managers recommending clients stay away, without much success.

“Most clients or their children have some interaction with Facebook, so I believe the demand will be high,” RegentAtlantic wealth advisor Chris Cordaro said, warning that there could be “a lot of pain” ahead for investors who buy at inflated prices on Friday.

Because of such concerns, some retail investors plan to get in and get out of the stock quickly. That may be fine if they get in at the IPO price but if they end up buying once the shares have started trading up, they may not be so lucky.

“Retail participation is associated with more speculation and noise, and because of that there is more volatility,” said David Sraer, a professor of economics at Princeton University. “They tend to herd together and be on the same side of the market, which drives imbalance.”

Retired chemical engineer Alvan Sweet ordered through Schwab 10,000 Facebook shares worth $380,000 at the high end of the indicative IPO price range. If he is lucky enough to get an allocation, he plans to dump the shares on day one or two.

Sweet, whose son is a senior managing partner of the IPO Boutique advisory firm, has invested in IPOs before but says this is the first time friends in his Florida condo community have pestered him about getting shares. “They were hoping that because my son is in the business I would have access,” he said.

One of his friends, Lucky Bloch, admits to losing money on an IPO before. But he is confident this investment will pay off.

“Initially Over-Priced is what IPO should stand for,” he complained. “If you can get in before the first day, then sell a couple of days later, there’s money to be made,” he told Reuters. “Can you help me get shares?”

(By Alistair Barr and Olivia Oran; additional reporting by Alexei Oreskovic and Sarah McBride, editing by Edwin Chan, Tiffany Wuand Richard Chang)

Image Credit: Shutterstock

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Image Credit: Jonathan Marino

The Livermore, Calif., cleantech company that has received $296 million in venture funding took another step toward that goal by announcing on Thursday a key deal with its new technology partner Toshiba. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but it includes both an equity investment from the Japanese technology giant and a technology transfer agreement.

Bridgelux’s venture backers include Chrysalix Energy Venture Capital, VantagePoint Venture Partners, DCM, El Dorado Ventures, Craton Equity Investors, Invus Group, VentureTech Alliance and Harris & Harris, according to Thomson Reuters, publisher of this blog.

The new technology that Bridgelux and Toshiba have been working on together since January holds the promise of significant cost reduction, according to the company. It does so by shifting LED production from hard to process sapphire wafers to semiconductor industry standard silicon wafers. The companies are not the only ones examining the switch.

“Everyone said it can’t be done,” said CEO Bill Watkins. But “the yields are better than what we thought. We think we’re a year ahead of everybody.”

LED chips, or light emitting diodes, are particularly promising in lighting because they emit a relatively bright light far more efficiently than incandescent bulbs and compact fluorescents, when measured by lumens per watt. Trouble is they are relatively expensive, which is why driving down the cost of production is so important.

At present, the chips are generally made on relatively small wafers of sapphire in a somewhat labor-intensive process. Watkins said he was hit by a stark reality. While Bridgelux and competitors have improved production efficiencies to lower costs, the cost improvements are projected to tail off or end in roughly three years. So sticking with them meant becoming one in a pack of producers in an increasingly commoditized market.

Switching to silicon opens new doors. The change should allow the company to push costs lower. Bridgelux said it should be able to produce a chip in two years with 1,000 lumens of light for 50 cents, compared with roughly $18 industrywide in 2010. This could amount to a four-fold advantage over projections for current sapphire technology. That in turn could mean $4 to $5 bulbs.

The improvements will come in part because by using silicon the company can take advantage of the enormous infrastructure of factories and equipment already available in the semiconductor industry.

Bridgelux also foresees production on 8-inch wafers, twice the size of sapphire ones. The extra size could permit the company to integrate extra features into its product. Lighting controls and optional colors might be examples.

But considerable risk remains. The technology needs to be scaled to production volumes, which Watkins anticipates next year, and the yields need to improve from where they are today.

What’s more, Bridgelux isn’t the only company eying the possible technology change, and many of them have considerable resources.

Bridgelux may have a long list of backers to rely on, but it needs to see quick success with its new direction.

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.

CEO Aaron Levie — who started Box in 2005 as a dorm room project at the University of Southern California until investor Mark Cuban convinced him to drop out and focus on it full time — ruled out an IPO this year, but said the company was bringing in executives with experience at public companies.

Box, which allows employees at companies to share files and collaborate on the cloud, has brought on a new board member, Dana Evan, a former chief financial officer at Verisign, as well as general counsel Peter McGoff, who guided secondary share offers at Informatica.

“It won’t be a 2012 exercise,” Levie told Reuters, referring to the IPO. “Even though the market is pretty amazing right now, there are some things we want to get done as a company. We see these moves as ways of building a strong foundation.”

Box has also hired top Salesforce executive Tom Addis to woo enterprise customers, who make up the bread and butter of Box’s revenue. In recent months the company has signed on customers spanning a wide swath of industries, from Dow Chemical to Viacom to tech start-ups like Spotify and Pandora.

At one movie studio, for instance, sound engineers and composers use Box’s web software to share and edit large soundtrack files. Box scored a minor coup last year when it inked a deal with Procter & Gamble to get 18,000 employees to migrate to its services.

“We have customers in every vertical industry,” said Josh Stein, the managing director at Draper Fisher Jurvetson, the venture firm that invested in Box when it was still three employees working out of a garage in Berkeley, California.

“It’s not just used by sales or marketing,” Stein told Reuters. “It’s used by every department. It’s like email.”

Levie said the company now has amassed 10 million individual and 120,000 business users. His service is deployed to some extent at 82 percent of Fortune 500 companies, and its revenues have tripled over the past year, he said, while declining to provide specifics.

But plenty of hurdles still lay ahead on the company’s road to an IPO.

For one thing, Box is wrestling with steep costs of building data centers for its file-storage service and the costs of selling to new and bigger business clients. As the company aims to hook in larger corporate customers, Levie has taken to pitching to CIOs himself, while Box is also planning to open a European office before the end of the year to sustain top line growth — all of which are resource-draining endeavors.

“You don’t just send a letter to every CIO and that’s it,” said Rob Koplowitz, an analyst at Forrester Research. “They’re out visiting these folks and having in-depth conversations. And that marketing cost is high.”

Box has also come under pressure in recent weeks with the announcement of Google Drive, the search giant’s long-gestating foray into cloud-storage.

Levie has played down the ramifications, saying Box has focused on purely enterprise customers and has been prepared for Google’s entry.

“We’ve been building a company for the past five years that’s assumed Google Drive’s existence,” he said.

Regardless of the near-term challenges, Box has been fingered as one of the most attractive enterprise startups, hauling in investments from venture firms like Andreessen Horowitz, Meritech Capital Partners, and Emergence Capital Partner.

Box recently raised $82 million in funding that valued the company at over $650 million, according to regulatory filings analyzed by venture capital data provider VC Experts.

Box reportedly received a $600 million takeover bid from Citrix prior to its latest funding round last year, an offer that was seriously considered by investors but ultimately rejected by Levie and Box co-founder Dylan Smith.

Since then, Box’s investors have moved to publicly affirm their desire to usher the company toward an IPO.

“We didn’t take those opportunities because we wanted to make this a very, very large company,” said Stein from Draper Fisher Jurvetson. “People are just starting to get that it could be one of the most important software companies in the last 20 years.”

(Reporting By Gerry Shih; Editing by Richard Pullin)

Image Credit: Box.net

The VC firm began with a target of $750 million, but will be “significantly oversubscribed,” according to one individual familiar with the firm’s plans. IVP could not be reached for comment.

IVP’s 12th fund, a 2007 vehicle, has a downright enormous IRR of 46.48% as of March 2011, according to figures published by pension CalSTRS. Some of the firm’s more recent smash-hit deals include HomeAway, Twitter and Zynga. IVP’s strategy includes investments in semiconductors, medical and health companies, biotechnology and tech and Internet companies, according to Thomson Reuters data. UPDATE: A source says the VC, which has not recently made medical or biotech investments, will exclusively pursue investments in Internet, digital media, enterprise IT, mobile and communications in the future.

Not too gun-shy about revealing its performance, apparently, IVP’s site indicates its historical IRR has more or less been in line with its spectacular 2007 performance.

Perhaps not coincidentally, based on its track record, a number of IVP partners—including Todd Chaffee, Sandy Miller and Steve Harrick—recently graced Forbes’ 2012 Midas List of preeminent tech investors.

In addition to CalSTRS, other LPs of the firm include the Los Angeles Fire & Police Pension System, the New Mexico Public Employees Retirement Association and the New York State Office of the State Comptroller, according to Thomson Reuters data.

One source who spoke with peHUB said the fund lost some of its LPs, but that new ones quickly filled in. It appears that IVP has had no difficulty obtaining more capital with every fund over the last decade. In 2000, the firm raised $225 million for its 10th fund; in 2004, it took on $300 million more for its eleventh; in 2007, for its 12th vehicle, it bagged an additional $600 million (to which CalSTRS committed $50 million); and in 2010, it raised a $750 million thirteenth fund, Thomson Reuters data show.

News of the fundraising was initially reported by Bloomberg in March.

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