Insight Venture Partners may have cracked the code to successful venture capital investing. The company has made its fair share of notable software IPOs in recent years: HelloFresh, Pluralsight, Smartsheet and Alteryx, and many more. But now, the team has pulled off its greatest feat to date.
Last month, Insight announced that it has closed its tenth fund, Fund X, with proceeds totaling $6.3 billion in capital. The latest fund represents a new record for Insight, where the previous fund closed at $5 billion in 2015.
Jeff Horing, the founder of the firm, bet big on SaaS in the mid-90s, before much of the investing universe had caught on. Today, his firm typically focuses on $10 to $50 million companies, but has been known to step out of that range for unique opportunities. Through it all, the firm has adhered to three pillars for success: scale, experience, and focus.
With over 20 full time investment professionals, Insight uses technology when canvassing for new opportunities to ensure maximum efficiency when scouting the marketplace.
Insight continues this proactive attitude once it has invested in a company. Insight Onsite is the firm’s signature approach to helping its companies develop sound business practices and grow efficiently. The initiative comes from the realization that while founders are typically excellent product people who have a great feel for what customers want, but very often they do not know how to manage a business.
Insight provides guidance on which go to market strategies would work best and countless other decisions necessary to make sure a business thrives.
Like so many of its seed companies, Insight itself has been scaling up in recent years, standardizing these processes and strategies to create a longstanding competitive advantage in an ever-changing marketplace.
Few funds can match Insight’s resources, experience and scale to tackle this kind of task. Only time will tell if Insight Venture Partners will be successful with the latest fund, but they certainly are off to a strong start.
