\n<\/p>\n
When IVP recently announced the closing of its 18th fund, I called Eric Liaw, a longtime general partner with the growth-stage firm, to ask a few questions. For starters, wringing $1.6 billion in capital commitments from its investors right now would seem a lot more challenging than garnering commitments during the frothier days of 2021, when IVP announced a $1.8 billion vehicle.<\/p>\n
I also wondered about succession at IVP, whose many bets include Figma and Robinhood, and whose founder and earlier investors still loom large at the firm \u2013 both figuratively and literally. A recent Fortune story<\/a> noted that pictures of firm founder Reid Dennis remain scattered \u201cin all sorts of places throughout IVP\u2019s San Francisco office.\u201d Meanwhile, pictures of Todd Chaffee, Norm Fogelsong and Sandy Miller \u2013 former general partners who are now \u201cadvisory partners\u201d \u2013 are mixed in with the firm\u2019s general partners on the firm\u2019s website, which, visually at least, makes less room for the current generation.<\/p>\n Not last, I wanted to talk with Liaw about Klarna, a portfolio company that made headlines<\/a> last month when a behind-the-scenes disagreement over who should sit on its board spilled into public view. Here\u2019s part of our chat, edited for length and clarity. You can listen to the longer conversation as a podcast here<\/a>.<\/p>\n Congratulations on your new fund. Now you can relax for a couple of months! Was the fundraising process any more or less difficult this time given the market?<\/b><\/p>\n It\u2019s really been a choppy period throughout. If you really rewind the clock, back in 2018 when we raised our sixteenth fund, it was a \u201cnormal\u201d environment. We raised a slightly bigger one in 2021, which was not a normal environment. One thing we\u2019re glad we didn\u2019t do was raise an excessive amount of capital relative to our strategy, and then deploy it all very quickly, which other folks in our industry did. So [we\u2019ve been] pretty consistent.<\/p>\n Did you take any money from Saudi Arabia? Doing so has become more acceptable, more widespread. I\u2019m wondering if [Public Investment Fund] is a new or existing LP.\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n We don\u2019t typically comment on our LP base, but we don\u2019t have capital from that region.<\/p>\n Speaking of regions, you were in the Bay Area for years. You have two degrees from Stanford. You\u2019re now in London. When and why did you make that move?<\/b><\/p>\n We moved about eight months ago. I\u2019ve actually been in the Bay Area since I was 18, when I came to Stanford for undergrad. That\u2019s more years ago than I care to admit at this point. But for us, expansion to Europe was an organic extension of a strategy we\u2019ve been pursuing. We made our first investment in Europe back in 2006, in Helsinki, Finland, in a company called MySQL that was acquired subsequently by Sun [Microsystems] for a billion dollars when that was not run of the mill. Then, in 2013, we invested in Supercell, which is also based in Finland. In 2014, we became an investor in Klarna. And [at this point], our European portfolio today is about 20 companies or so; it\u2019s about 20% of our active portfolio, spread over 10 different countries. We felt like putting some feet on the ground was the right move.<\/p>\n There has been a lot of drama around Klarna. What did you make of The Information\u2019s reports about [former Sequoia investor] Michael Moritz versus [Matt Miller], the Sequoia partner who was more recently representing the firm and has since been replaced by another Sequoia partner, Andrew Reed?<\/b><\/p>\n We\u2019re smaller investors in Klarna. We aren\u2019t active in the board discussions. We\u2019re excited about their business performance. In many ways, they\u2019ve had the worst of both worlds. They file publicly. They\u2019re subject to a lot of scrutiny. Everyone sees their numbers, but they don\u2019t have the currency [i.e. that a publicly traded company enjoys]. I think [CEO and co-founder] Sebastian [Siemiatkowski] is now much more open about the fact that they\u2019ll be a public entity at some point in the not-too-distant future, which we\u2019re excited about. The reporting, I guess if accurate, I can\u2019t get behind the motivations. I don\u2019t know exactly what happened. I\u2019m just glad that he put it behind them and can focus on the business.<\/p>\n