Sep. 11, 2014
Craig Dauchy
See more on Craig DauchyCooley LLP | Palo Alto | Practice Type: Corporate | Specialty: venture capital
Among those deals, Dauchy was lead counsel on a more than $1 billion venture capital fund on behalf of the Founders Fund.
The principals of this San Francisco-based venture capital firm include several entrepreneurs who backed Facebook, PayPal and other technology startups, he said.
Among the financial trends that Dauchy has spotted are "microcaps," any fund less than $75 million, and some even as small as $10 million.
"You have people leaving large tech companies like Google, Twitter, Microsoft, Yahoo and others, as will as spinning out traditional VC funds, and forming small funds that are backed by traditional institutional investors," Dauchy said.
Compared to the mega funds out there, he added, "Many of these microcap funds are seeking to invest at the seed stage of new tech companies, in anticipation of benefitting from the large valuation increases that they anticipate will come."
With "first capital in," Dauchy said, "It is clearly the riskiest stage to invest, but also likely to be the most rewarding if the portfolio company is successful."
Dauchy also drives Cooley's fund practice in Asia.
"We have formed more than 100 funds for more than 40 Asia-based funds," he said.
As an example, Dauchy recently represented Qiming Venture Partners in raising a $500 million fund focused on early-stage investments in the Chinese technology, health care and clean tech sectors.
Driving all of this is the technology boom, which has resulted in a significant number of IPOs and company sales in the past two years, Dauchy said.
This has enabled venture funds to return large amount of capital to their investors and has increased the rates of return for many venture funds, he added.
"This, in turn, has made the venture sector an attractive place to put capital,' Dauchy said.
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