LiveOak Venture Partners Raises $210M Fund III to Double Down on Investing in Category Leaders Coming out of Texas

  • The largest institutional Texas-focused, early-stage venture fund in the past decade, Fund III builds on the successful strategy of investing in disruptive startups in Texas
  • Over $5B of enterprise value creation by LiveOak’s partners from Texas early-stage companies across multiple economic cycles over the past two decades
  • Continuation of a proven investment approach that involves serving as highly engaged, thought partners for visionary entrepreneurs, starting with first institutional capital through the entire lifecycle of a company

LiveOak Venture Partners Team (Photo: Business Wire)

AUSTIN, Texas--()--LiveOak Venture Partners, an Austin-based venture capital firm that focuses on early-stage tech startups across Texas, today announced the successful close of Fund III, a $210M oversubscribed fund. The fund closed above its hard cap and represents the largest institutional Texas-focused, early-stage tech venture capital fund raised in over a decade. Fund III brings AUM under active management to almost $500M.

LiveOak III will continue the proven strategy of focusing on building world-class category winners out of Texas that co-founding partners Krishna Srinivasan and Venu Shamapant have implemented for over two decades. Since its flagship fund debuted in 2012, that strategy has led to investments in almost 50 Texas-based companies that LiveOak has led or co-led. These companies have gone on to raise over $1B to-date and consist of leaders such as publicly-traded $3B market cap Austin company DISCO (NYSE:LAW), as well as Austin based startup leaders Digital Pharmacist, Eventus, Homeward, OJO Labs, Opcity, Osano and TrustRadius. LiveOak has also actively invested in the Dallas market leaders such as AmplifAI, Mavenir and Take Command Health.

“The success we have had to date is a strong validation that our entrepreneur-first approach and strategy of being active lead investors in early-stage Texas tech startups has been the right approach,” said LiveOak Co-founder and Partner, Krishna Srinivasan. “With the explosion of momentum in the Texas entrepreneurial scene, we are poised to further capitalize on it and help create the next generation of leaders out of Texas in the years to come.”

Fund III: The Result of Delivering Strong Returns Across Multiple Macroeconomic Cycles

Fund III will continue its familiar theme of being lead investors in startups headquartered in Texas’ four largest tech hubs: Austin, Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio. The partners at LiveOak are active investors, focused on building teams and taking on board seats. Investments in the new fund will often begin in the first institutional rounds with initial investment of $1-$5M and scaling up to $15M over the full lifecycle of the company.

Investors in Fund III consist of top pension funds, university endowments, foundations, prominent family offices, and notable local Austin entrepreneurs. Numerous founders and executives from the LiveOak portfolio companies in Funds I and II invested.

“As we reflect on a journey that we embarked on 10 years ago, we are incredibly humbled and gratified by the trust our investors have placed in us that enabled us to get here,” said Co-founder and Partner Venu Shamapant. “We also couldn’t have done it without the support of the tenacious entrepreneurs that we work with daily. The firm is primed to scale and build a successful long-term venture franchise in the Texas market.”

Portfolio company CEO statement on Fund III

“LiveOak was our first investor eight years ago,” said Kiwi Camara, CEO and Founder of DISCO. “Their entire team is smart and analytical, provides sound strategic advice, helped us make key early hires, and coached us through follow-on financings with introductions to the growth investors all over the world. We could not have built our company without LiveOak. Congratulations to the entire team at LiveOak on the new fund.”

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 over 20 years of successful venture investing in Texas, the founders of LiveOak have helped create nearly $5 billion of enterprise value. While almost all 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.

Contacts

Media Contact
Ethan Parker
Treble
liveoak@treblepr.com

Contacts

Media Contact
Ethan Parker
Treble
liveoak@treblepr.com