Resolute Ventures seals up its third fund with $65 million from investors

Resolute Ventures just closed its third fund with $65 million. It’s a sizable step up from its first two funds, which closed with $47 million and $45 million, respectively.

The five-year-old firm, with offices in San Francisco and Boston, is run by just two general partners: Mike Hirschland, who spent 17 years with Polaris Partners before founding Resolute, and Ranaan Bar-Cohen, who joined Hirschland nearly two years ago after working most recently as a senior VP at WordPress parent company Automattic, and as an advisor at the early-stage venture firm True Ventures.

In a quick call yesterday from the road, Hirschland sounded relieved to have closed the fund, but said the firm very much plans to stick to its knitting as it moves forward. For example, though the vehicle is roughly one-third larger than its last two predecessors, there are no plans to bring anyone new into the fold to help invest it. Of Bar-Cohen, Hirschland said, it’s “just the two of us and it’s working beautifully.”

Resolute also plans to continue writing larger checks than many other “pre-seed” stage firms. To wit, instead of participate in $750,000 rounds, Resolute would prefer to lead a $1.5 million round with a $750,000 check. Explains Hirschland, “Too often, founders aren’t raising enough in these [angel-led] seed rounds to get them to an institutional seed round. The process is dilutive, and they wind up spending more time fundraising than building a product.”

The firm, which backs both consumer and enterprise companies, also plans to continue investing in “founders and ideas” — and often little more —  “that we fall in love with,” say Hirschland.

Resolute funded 33 startups from its last fund. The young firm has seen two exits to date, including the sale of the calendar app Sunrise to Microsoft for a reported $100 million; and the sale of Orbitera, a platform for cloud marketplaces, which also sold for a reported $100 million, to Google.

Some of the firm’s current, notable investments include the subscription service for dog lovers, BarkBox (it has raised roughly $21 million; Resolute led its $15 million Series B round); the home-selling service OpenDoor, which has raised roughly $320 million from investors; TrackR, creator of small wireless tracking devices that help users find their stuff (it has raised roughly $10 million); and the applicant tracking software company Greenhouse, which has now raised $60 million altogether, including from Benchmark and Thrive Capital.

Resolute’s investors include a string of institutional and individual investors. Among its backers are The Hillman Company, Medley Partners, Morgan Stanley, Top Tier Capital, Vintage Partners, and Foundry Next, an initiative that sees the venture firm Foundry Group invest in other venture firms.