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Tim Connors Launches PivotNorth Fund To Get Back to Basics

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Former Sequoia Capital and USVP venture capitalist Tim Connors is launching his own $35 million micro venture fund, with a “back to basics” philosophy.

Connors is focusing on early stage seed and Series A financings, but he’s focusing much of his capital on Series A financings. He’s one of several new small funds that have jumped into the hot seed stage investing sector recently, including IA Ventures, Freestyle Capital, and others.

Connors, who has invested in companies such as search engine Blekko and cloud security startup CloudPassage, is particularly interested in helping companies move from an early product or idea to a solid business model and strategy.

“The place I’m most excited about, and can help folks the most, is when the business model is still a work in progress,” Connors said. “Where I have the most fun is where they’ve got some stability and focus on a specific market but need to figure out how to get the service to market in a cost effective way and have to think about all the different ways to do that.”

Connors could’ve raised a bigger fund, but settled on $35 million for a specific reason—that’s the average amount of capital per GP that has traditionally been raised for venture funds in the late 1980s and early 1990s, he said. So that’s what he decided to raise for himself. Like other smaller sized seed stage funds, he’s not going to be taking big checks on management fees. He’s brought on limited partners for his fund including two university endowments, a foundation, three fund of funds, two family offices and individuals.

Connors is among a group of seed investors that gets actively involved in portfolio companies, which is not the case for all in the sector. Wringing out “concept risk”—in other words, risk that a new idea workable--is what Connors aims to do. He's looking for technical founders going after an industry undergoing disruption or an industry worthy of disruption.

At U.S. Venture Partners, Connors was on the board of online advertising company Adify, which was acquired by Cox Enterprises for $300 million in 2008.

Connors is the sole general partner for PivotNorth as he evaluates whether to add others. After all, he notes venture partners can end up spending more time with each other than with a spouse.

One interesting focus for PivotNorth is his intention to hire a CTO, to use technology to make his firm and his portfolio companies more productive and efficient. Connors wasn't ready yet to reveal what the CTO will be building but it sounds like relationship data management for investors and CEOs.

"We back a lot of companies to help consumers and businesses use data better to be more efficient," Connors said. "But as venture guys we use data extensively. Things we can do to use data can give us the reach of a bigger firm while still being a smaller firm. It's about services to help portfolio companies and our firm be more successful and productive."