Venrock gets lean and mean with $350M venture fund

Smaller and more tightly focused will be the dominant style for Venrock Associates' new venture fund. The venture group--a busy player in the biotech space--says that it closed its new healthcare fund with $350 million--a sharp drop from the $600 million it was able to gather for its last fund launched in 2007. "We were proactive on the size of the new fund," Bryan Roberts, a Venrock partner, told the Wall Street Journal. "It fell out of who we had (at the firm). If we could find great people...

Third Rock raising $400M venture fund for biotech “game-changers”

Third Rock Ventures, an aggressive investor in biotech startups that promise to develop game-changing technology, is out raising a new $400 million fund. And the news hit on the same day Third Rock announced it is leading a $25 million Series A for Foundation Medicine--a new biotech player led by a well-known figure in the life sciences field. Mass High Tech reports that Cambridge, MA-based Third Rock spelled out its aspirations for the new fund in documents filed with the SEC. The venture...