Life sciences VC shop KdT Ventures disclosed its $100 million fourth fund on Wednesday morning, just over two years after announcing an $80 million fund.
The seven-year-old firm said the new money will mainly go toward its bread-and-butter investment type: writing the first institutional check to a fledgling life sciences startup.
KdT has backed companies including gene therapy developer Rejuvenate Bio, Africa-focused genomics company 54gene, lab operations platform Elemental Machines, AI-driven small molecule maker Terray Therapeutics, and Sid Mukherjee-associated biotech Faeth Therapeutics.
The firm raised the fund quickly after telling investors about its plans at an annual meeting in March.
Cain McClary“Basically, immediately after the annual meeting, we were full,” managing partner Cain McClary told Endpoints News. It said it had to turn away multiple investors for its previous fund because the firm prefers to stay “disciplined on fund size,” he said.
The KdT team thinks of itself as the third, fourth and fifth employee at many of its portfolio companies, McClary said, so the firm didn’t want to drastically grow its fund size beyond its recent efforts.
“Our special sauce and core competency is really that zero-to-one step of these companies, and the feeling at the firm is that potentially when you have a much larger asset base, you are distracted by the later and larger checks,” McClary said.
With a portfolio of over 70 companies, KdT is also creating its first in-house company based around a clinical-stage therapeutic that it in-licensed, McClary said.
“If things go well, I think that folks will hear about it early next year,” McClary said.
But the firm is likely going to focus on its core mission of helping other entrepreneurs build their own companies, the KdT founder said. It typically invests $500,000 to $5 million for initial checks.
“Generally we are a crawl, walk, run type of firm,” McClary said.
The firm is based in Austin, TX, but has a venture partner in Houston and two people on the ground in Research Triangle Park, NC, McClary said, though it invests across regions.
KdT’s investors are mainly individuals, family offices, fund of funds, large institutions and endowments, McClary said.