The News & Observer
The new Triangle investment firm TrueBridge Capital Partners, which set out to attract a quarter-billion dollars from investors, has breezed past its target to raise $310 million.
CHAPEL HILL, NC – August 13, 2008 – TrueBridge Capital Partners today announced the final closing of its inaugural CVE-Kauffman Fellows Endowment Fund. The Fund closed with over $310 million of capital commitments, well in excess of its stated $250 million target, and was completed in a short seven months.
The News & Observer
Mel Williams, who helps manage money for the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill's endowment, is leaving to establish an
investment firm that is seeking $250 million from investors.
PE Week Wire
Tons of top-level personnel moves in the LP arena this week. The
most notable is that Mel Williams of UNC and Edwin Poston of the
Rockefeller Foundation have teamed up to form a new shop called
TrueBridge Capital. The Chapel Hill-based shop already has begun
marketing a VC fund-of-funds with a target of around $250 million,
with other types of funds expected to follow. I’m working
on a print piece about TrueBridge, which will use part of its
GP carry to help build up the Kauffman Fellows Program’s
endowment. Not only does Kauffman want to expand overseas, it
also has considered accepting Fellows for positions with limited
partners.
Senior investment professionals from UNC Management Co. and the
Rockefeller Foundation have joined the growing ranks of endowment
managers setting up their own shop. Mel Williams, vice president
of UNC Management Co., which oversees the roughly $1.5 billion
endowment for the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and
Edwin Poston, head of private equity at the Rockeller Foundation,
which manages around $3.7 billion in assets, have formed Truebridge
Capital Partners, according to a press release. The firm will
be based in Chapel Hill, N.C., and the two men will remain with
their respective organizations over the next several weeks to
help ease the transition. The new firm has also entered into a
strategic relationship with the Center for Venture Education,
the nonprofit institution that manages the Kauffman Fellows Program,
a one-year mentoring program designed to train venture capitalists.
Neither Williams nor Poston would comment on the firm's plans.
However, it is likely that Truebridge will roll out a venture
fund of funds with the aim of using the management fees generated
to help support the fellows program, according to a person familiar
with the Fellows program. The person added that the firm could
also raise other types of funds of funds down the road. The release
did state that through the relationship, the Center for Venture
Education hopes to enhance the funding of a long-term endowment,
to ensure the financial stability and independence of itself and
the Kauffman Fellows Program. Since it was launched in 1993, the
program has graduated roughly 90 participants that have gone on
to build careers at blue chip venture firms that include Austin
Ventures, Battery Ventures, New Enterprise Associates and U.S.
Venture Partners. Back in 2000, the Kauffman Center for Entrepreneurial
Leadership spun out management of the Kauffman Fellows program,
according to sister publication The Private Equity Analyst, which
covered the spin out. At the time, some 35 alumni of the fellows
program agreed to pony up $3.5 million in initial funding to keep
the program going, although it remains unclear how large the endowment
has grown today. At the time, the organization said that it was
considering raising a venture fund of funds that would draw on
relationships with the program's alumni. Williams and Poston join
a growing list of senior ranking investment pros from endowments
that have left to launch their own firms. Most recently, former
chief investment officers from The Duke Endowment and Duke Management
Co., which manages the Duke University endowment, left to launch
Global Endowment Management. Reach the Center for Venture Education
at 913-648-0002.
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