Wed

Feb 28
2007

Tim O'Reilly

Tim O'Reilly

O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures

It's been leaking out around the edges that O'Reilly has gotten into the venture business, but by SEC rules, we weren't allowed to say so publicly until we had closed our fundraising. We did a first close late last year, and have already made four investments, but needed to stay mum until the final close. But now I can say it formally: we've launched a new venture fund called O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures.

O'Reilly has always done a bit of opportunistic venture investing, and actually had a small internal venture fund called O'Reilly Ventures. Some of our most successful investments over the years included GNN, sold to AOL, Likeminds, sold to Andromedia (which was sold in turn to Macromedia), Pyra (blogger.com), sold to Google, and ActiveState, sold to Sophos. We're also investors in Collab.Net, Intalio, Sendmail, and Zope. This is the first time, though, that we've raised money from outside investors -- a total of $51 million. Mark Jacobsen and Bryce Roberts are the managing partners. Our first three investments include Instructables, Chumby, and Wesabe.

We're focused on the same kinds of opportunities we've always seen at O'Reilly: potentially disruptive technologies coming from outside the mainstream, often from enthusiasts who only later realize that they've created a new industry. Our company mission is "changing the world by spreading the knowledge of innovators." We do that through books, magazines, online publishing and conferences, but sometimes, the right way to do it is to fund an entrepreneur to build something new and earthshaking.

If you have world changing ideas that you think can be turned into great companies, we'd love to hear from you. You can write to us here at Radar, or contact OATV directly.

P.S. We will always disclose when we've made an investment, and when we talk about the companies we're invested in. But even more importantly, just as we've always done, we try to keep a church/state line between our technology activism and our investing or other business relationships. We're far more interested in growing the whole of a new market than in giving particular advantage to any one company we're affiliated with. Of course, we invest in companies because we think they're doing something cool and important that will make them successful, and so we're likely to talk about them, write about them, and feature them in conferences -- but we'll do the same for competitors that are just as interesting.


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Comments: 8

  Shawn [02.28.07 10:48 AM]

Either bookmark http://www.google.com/intl/en/ (or whichever language you choose), or do what I do and bookmark http://www.google.com/intl/xx-bork/ for your searching needs.

  Matt Grommes [02.28.07 11:37 AM]

I heard Bryce Roberts talking about this on the Technometria podcast at least a month ago. Not that it matters but how does that conversation jibe with not being able to say so publicly?

By your first 3 investments, I can't wait to see where your money goes in the future, you've made great choices.

  BillyG [02.28.07 11:44 AM]

Congrats.

  David Ascher [02.28.07 02:48 PM]

Congrats for finally coming out of semi-stealth!

  ventureblogalist [02.28.07 08:29 PM]

do you consider east coast companies?

  Ed [02.28.07 10:45 PM]

Instructables is awesome. OATV is on the right track.

  bryce [03.01.07 05:57 AM]

Matt- I did mention the fund on Technometria as the fund had closed by the time Phil and Matt invited me to do the show.

ventureblogalist- though we're based in San Francisco, we don't put a regional constraint on our investments. All of our current investments are in California, but that will likely be changing soon...Bryce

  Luke [08.19.07 08:48 AM]

"Either bookmark http://www.google.com/intl/en/ (or whichever language you choose), or do what I do and bookmark http://www.google.com/intl/xx-bork/ for your searching needs."

I also do this ;)

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