You don't hear as much about Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Sevin Rosen as you used to. Kleiner Perkins is busy investing in anything but consumer Internet companies while Sevin Rosen decided against raising another fund last year.
But, they are still cashing checks. The pair invested $6 million in a first round investment in January 2005 into XenSource, an open source virtualization startup that agreed to be purchased by Citrix Systems for $500 million.That's a big hit for the duo. Other beneficiaries include Accel Partners, Ignition Partners and New Enterprise Associates.
Despite the lucrative exit, it has to be asked: With VMWare's IPO soaring, what went into the risk/reward analysis to convince XenSource to choose a trade sale over IPO? The fact that Kleiner Perkins and Sevin Rosen were in need of an exit surely had nothing to do with it.
For more on Citrix's proposed acquisition of XenSource, see:
The Deal
Matt Asay
Tags: xensource, citrix, kpcb, ctxs, vc, venture+capital
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