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One of Silicon Valley’s oldest venture capital shops is making a play to organize its big-deals practice around a new hire.
Matt Heiman has jumped to CRV, an early-stage venture capital firm founded in 1970, to help lead its new push into later-stage consumer companies, he told Recode. It’s another departure from the consumer practice at Greylock Partners, which was founded in 1965 but is trying to execute a tricky generational transition, like lots of the elite Silicon Valley investing firms are in 2018.
Heiman, who at Greylock has backed companies like the home-rental startup Sonder as well as Coinbase, said he will be the sole CRV partner focused primarily on more mature startups — concentrating on fields like real estate and financial technology — with help from early-stage partners.
“CRV has a bit more under-the-radar persona,” Heiman said. “But I saw the opportunity for this to be one of the last global venture funds.”
Greylock made its name with investments in marquee companies like Facebook. But while the firm still has celebrity names like LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman on its investing roster, it is trying to pass the reins from the old guard to younger investors like former Twitter executive Josh McFarland.
Several young, high-profile general partners who backed consumer companies have exited Greylock over the last few years, including Sarah Tavel, who departed for Benchmark, and Josh Elman, who decamped for the stock-trading company Robinhood. Heiman was not a general partner, but Greylock is a small team with fewer than a dozen investors.
CRV has primarily focused its attention on early-stage enterprise companies, but like other elite Silicon Valley firms, it is increasingly trying to win big-money, late-stage deals. After reportedly scrapping a plan to deploy $400 million into those types of investments, CRV is planning to spend up to $150 million on late-stage deals, Heiman said.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
