The two independent managers running the corporate venture-backed BlackBerry Partners Fund are considering whether a merger may simplify the organisation that is undergoing a global expansion.
The potential merger of Canada-based VCs RBC Venture Partners and JLA Ventures could streamline the management of the $150m BlackBerry Partners Fund started two years ago that has struck two deals in the past month. RBC Venture and JLA are the two co-managers of the BlackBerry Fund, which was backed by three Canada-listed companies, Research in Motion, the maker of BlackBerry phones, media company Thomson Reuters and Royal Bank of Canada (RBC), at its launch in 2008.
It would also simplify relations with the planned $100m BlackBerry Partners Fund China, which is an affiliate managed autonomously by China Broadband Capital Partners (CBC), a venture capital firm focused on media and communications investments in China.
The China fund is expected to close at the end of August with a number of partners at CBC moving across to be solely dedicated to the new fund while BlackBerry Partners expects to open an office in Silicon Valley, California, by the end of the year.
Kevin Talbot, co-managing partner of BlackBerry Partners Fund and managing director of RBC Venture Partners, said a merger of JLA and RBV Venture was "certainly" a possibility and one they had had "given a lot of thought to behind the scenes". John Albright, the other co-managing partnerof the BlackBerry Partners fund and head of JLA, was unavailable to comment after calls and emails.
Talbot added: "Venture capital does not scale very well and is labour-intensive. There are three ways to go global. You can fly in and out of countries, such as North America, Ireland and Israel where we’ve recently done deals; you can open a field office, with [our one] in Silicon Valley to be open by the end of the year and perhaps one in the UK or Europe; or in some markets, such as China, you need a different level of attention, hence the BlackBerry Partners Fund China."
He said China was an appealing market as despite having the world’s largest number of mobile phone users it was still relatively untapped. He said there were 720 million Chinese subscribers last year with 13.2% growth but just 15 million had 3G smart phones, such as the BlackBerry.
The $150m BlackBerry fund’s Ireland deal was struck last month to invest in Ireland-based network service company Aepona while the fund led a $9m investment in California-based Transpera yesterday.
Transpera provides of a platform to monetize web video on mobile phones and raised $9m in its series C round. The round included existing VC investors Flybridge Capital Partners, First Round Capital and Labrador Ventures but no reported mention of seed investor IDG Ventures. Intel Capital, the corporate venturing division of US-based chip maker Intel, also participated having backed Transpera since launch in 2007 and in its $8.25m second round two years ago.