Arthur Ventures, an active investor in Minnesota startups with offices in Minneapolis and Fargo, N.D., has closed on $155 million for its fourth fund backing software startups in the Midwest and beyond.
Arthur's capital raise consists of two new investment funds: a core fund of $125 million and an opportunity fund of $30 million. The core fund will allow the firm to provide investment to new B2B software startups outside of Silicon Valley, while the opportunity fund will provide follow-on investments to existing portfolio companies.
In a statement, Arthur Ventures said that institutional investors (state pension funds, university endowments and nonprofit foundations), made up more than 75% of the committed capital.
The firm's new $155 million fund, which it raised in five months, is over three times larger than its prior fund. In the past few years, Arthur Ventures has invested in Twin Cities tech startups like When I Work, Zipnosis, Total Expert, Drip, nomics and phData.
The firm also was an investor in ed-tech startup Flipgrid, which sold to Microsoft in June 2018.
Arthur Ventures was established in Fargo about a decade ago and opened a Minneapolis office, led by Patrick Meenan and Ryan Kruizenga, in 2013. Doug Bergum, the former CEO of Great Plains Software Inc. and now governor of North Dakota, is a founding partner at Arthur Ventures.
"We were able to raise these new funds in just five months because of the terrific performance of the entrepreneurs that we have had the privilege to partner with over the last seven years," the firm said in a release.
