A $50 million venture capital fund that prominent Milwaukee-area investors Tim Keane and Trevor D’Souza have been trying to pull together since 2012 is almost certainly dead, Xconomy has learned.
Keane and D’Souza are both members of Golden Angels Investors, a group of about 100 Wisconsin and Illinois investors that Keane founded in 2002 and continues to direct today.
Keane and D’Souza worked for more than a year drumming up financial commitments from investors for the planned VC fund, but they didn’t reach their $50 million goal and never closed on the fund, said Keane, an Xconomist. When D’Souza took a job last month as a senior portfolio specialist with Wells Capital Management, it essentially put the nail in their VC fund’s coffin.
The fund would have focused on Midwest software and technology companies, investing between $3 million and $10 million per deal, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported in a 2012 story about the fund’s launch.
“It’s an extraordinarily difficult time for raising VC, and this was an incredible opportunity for Trevor [with Wells Capital Management], so he went and did it,” Keane said in a phone interview Monday. “I don’t think the fund is going to go forward.”
D’Souza confirmed his new position with Wells Capital Management, an investment subsidiary of Wells Fargo. He declined to comment further. Keane said D’Souza remains a member of Golden Angels Investors.
D’Souza’s career includes working as a program manager for consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton and running PharmaSoft North America, a biomedical software company in Washington, D.C., according to his LinkedIn page. He later served as managing director for Mason Wells’ venture fund in Milwaukee for more than a decade.
Keane is founder of Web analytics company Retail Target Marketing Systems, a Waukesha, WI, company he grew to $20 million in annual sales before selling it in 2000 to the former Metavante Technologies.
