UPDATED 12:41 EDT / JUNE 06 2013

On a Short Leash : Bloomberg Launches $75M Fund with Early-Stage Concerns

Bloomberg has appointed former IGN boss Roy Bahat to head Bloomberg Beta, its newly formed venture capital fund. The $75 million VC’s investment team includes former Trinity Ventures principal James Cham and Bloomberg business development guru Karin Klein.

Bloomberg Beta is focused on creating and funding early-stage startups that specialize in Big Data, technology platforms, content discovery, media distribution, networking and communications. Bahat and his crew will also keep an eye out for investment opportunities revolving around human-computer interaction and “radically new organizational models” (whatever that means).

The fund has already invested in a number of emerging firms, including Newsle, MkII, Nodejitsu, Codecademy, Errplane and ProsperWork.

The interesting thing about Beta, besides its all-star executive team and high-profile sponsor, is that it’s registered as an independent fund. This status gives it more flexibility than most corporate investment arms, but not as much freedom as larger funds.

“Bloomberg is smart to start figuring out what is hot in tech via their new fund,” explains SiliconANGLE Editor in Chief, John Furrier. “However, their goal is to provide financial return not strategic investment. The only issue that I have is that the money in the fund isn’t big enough. That being said, I’m sure Bloomberg as the sole Limited Partner (LP) will have no problem refreshing up the fund if the investments are working. So they have a short leash and that is a concern for entrepreneurs, because the lack of follow on financing is an issue with such a small fund.”

Beta succeeds Bloomberg Venture, internal incubator that was founded in 2008. It fell apart in earlier this year when co-founder Matt Turck signed up with FirstMark Capital as a managing partner.


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