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Kleiner Perkins Considering New Fund for Cloud-Computing Services Startups

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, the venture firm that backed Zynga Inc. (ZNGA) and Groupon Inc., is considering starting a new fund focused on startups selling cloud services to corporations.

Bloomberg Olga Kharif

Context & Ripple Effects

Kleiner Perkins has spent the past two years building themed vehicles around platform waves: the $250 million sFund for social-web startups launched in October 2010, followed within a week by confirmation it was raising more than $1 billion for its main funds. The firm's consumer-web bets — Zynga, which it calls its best investment since Google, and Groupon — defined that era, and its iFund passed 300 million downloads by mid-2011.

The Bloomberg report, picked up by GigaOM and ITworld, says the firm is now considering a fund aimed at startups selling cloud services to corporations — an extension of the same themed-fund playbook toward enterprise buyers. It arrives alongside a confirmed strategic pivot: Kleiner is pursuing late-stage growth capital as super-angel investing falls out of favor. The new fund remains unconfirmed, described only as under consideration.

First-order effects

  • Enterprise-cloud startups would gain a dedicated pool of capital from one of Silicon Valley's marquee firms, at a moment when Kleiner's attention is shifting from consumer social names like Zynga and Groupon toward corporate IT buyers.
  • If launched, the vehicle formalizes what was already underway: Kleiner's confirmed move into late-stage growth capital means the fund would likely write larger checks than its early iFund and sFund experiments.

Second-order effects

  • Rival venture firms face pressure to field their own enterprise-cloud vehicles rather than let Kleiner corner deal flow in a category where corporate customers sign multi-year contracts — repeating the competitive dynamic the sFund set off among social-focused investors.
  • More dedicated capital chasing enterprise-software deals would bid up valuations for cloud-services startups, shifting founder leverage away from consumer-web companies still digesting the post-Groupon IPO climate.

Third-order effects

  • Themed funds are hardening into the standard structure for how venture capital organizes itself — a named vehicle per platform wave, following iFund, sFund, and now potentially cloud — which concentrates brand-name capital into whatever category is ascendant.
  • A sustained rotation of top-firm dollars from consumer social into enterprise infrastructure would mark a structural handoff in the startup economy, with corporate IT becoming the primary customer base for newly funded companies.

The trend: Venture capital increasingly organizes around named thematic funds that chase each successive platform wave — mobile, social, and now cloud computing — with Kleiner Perkins running the template.