Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Village Ventures closing; Harris back to Bain, Peabody to Greycroft

By Galen Moore, Boston Business Journal

Village Ventures, the Massachusetts-NYC venture capital collective that comprises over 15 funds, will wind down. Village will not raise a third fund, co-founder Bo Peabody said.

It’s a surprising move for a firm that had raised two small funds and established a good track record investing in two hot areas: financial services and media. It looks like the two founders are landing safely.

Peabody is moving to Greycroft Partners, which had co-invested with Village on three deals. Co-founder Matt Harris is moving to Bain Capital Ventures, where he started his career in venture capital.

“What it came down to was that Matt and I are doing very different things. He is exclusively focused on financial services and I am exclusively focused on digital media,” Peabody said in an interview, Wednesday morning. “Inside of a small firm, it’s pretty difficult to do those two disparate things well for a long time.”

Village Ventures had raised $135 million in its second fund, and $45 million in its first. Both of those funds are now fully invested, and Peabody and Harris have agreements in place with their respective new firms to continue on the boards of their portfolio companies.

An independent firm, Leverpoint, that provides back-office services to the 15 venture funds in the Village Ventures network, will continue to operate in Williamstown, with Peabody and Harris as owners.

“The decision was, do we expand the partnership considerably so we could add two or three more partners not to mention associates, ... or do we go to places that have already established practices in those disciplines,” Peabody said. “I’m happy to say that for the first time in my life I made a mature decision.”