Bloomberg enters world of venture capital with $75M fund

Bloomberg is launching a new $75 million venture capital fund to support early-stage companies.

The fund will be called Bloomberg Beta and will invest in startups that are “producing insights from data” and “making the experience of work better.” This could involve anything from content discovery to human-computer interaction technology. Bloomberg has already invested in Newsle, Nodejitsu, Codecademy, Errplane, and ProsperWorks.

Bloomberg is a large international mass media company that distributes information about financial data. The Bloomberg Professional Service has more than 315,000 global subscribers. The corporation also provides enterprise solutions and financial software tools, such as analytics and equity trading platforms, data services, and news.

With this venture capital fund, Bloomberg will continue its “longstanding pattern of entrepreneurialism” and the belief that “the best investors are entrepreneurs and the best entrepreneurs are investors.”

Roy Bahat will head up the fund in San Francisco. He previously led IGN Entertainment and is the chairman of hardware startup Ouya. Karen Klein will take the lead in New York. She is the former head of new initiatives at Bloomberg and was VP at Softbank’s venture fund. The third team member, James Cham, recently worked as a principal to Trinity Ventures and was previously vice president of Bessemer Venture Partners.

Photo Credit: Michael  Tapp