A Triangle investor whose portfolio successes include Beyond Meat and Poshmark has closed on a third fund in hopes of making more winning bets.
Chapel Hill-based Union Grove Venture Partners has disclosed what it calls Union Grove Holdings III, and it's already putting the capital to work. The fund has closed nearly $4.1 million from three investors, according to a securities disclosure posted Friday.
Greg Bohlen, who cofounded Union Grove in 2014, said the investment thesis is the same with the new money – targeting between $1 million and $8 million in direct investments while also funneling equity into venture capital funds.
Union Grove’s funds typically take five to seven years to be fully called – with dividends paid from the funds that allow it to actually over-invest, which results in investing 80 percent in funds and 30 percent in direct investments.
Bohlen said the firm’s winning strategy – at 29.2 percent net internal rate of return at year-end – is what helps it win investors.
“We have been very selective,” he said.
The money from fund three is already being doled out, including to a company developing a fish alternative. Union Grove, whose previous investments have included meat alternative Beyond Meat, recently invested in Current Foods, a firm Bohlen calls “kind of the Beyond Meat of the ocean.”
“I looked at literally hundreds of alternative protein companies,” he said.
Bohlen said he sees valuations, which rocketed last year, starting to correct. And that could mean the potential for good deals ahead, even amid market uncertainty.
“We think when everybody else is panicking, we think it’s the absolute best time to be in marketplace,” he said.
Union Grove has partnered with a slew of firms over the years on investments, from Battery Ventures to TechStars. Its direct investments, in addition to Beyond Meat (Nasdaq: BYND) and Poshmark (Nasdaq: POSH), include firms such as Semprius, RocketLawyer and Moxie Software.
Bohlen, a veteran of Morgan Creek Capital Management, was once CFO of the Aurora Funds. He also served as director for private equity coverage at UBS AG in Raleigh in the early 2000s.
