Go big or go home: Google Ventures adds $100M to its fund

Google Ventures, Google’s venture capital arm, has boost its fund size to $300 million from $200 million in a bid to compete with the largest, most established venture capital firms in Silicon Valley.

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As originally reported by Reuters, the firm will be able to invest in more later-stage deals, typically over $10 million per investor. According to AllThingsD, it will also double down on its efforts to invest in mobile technologies.

Currently the firm invests in a broad spectrum of companies from health IT to online coupons.

“It puts a lot more wood behind the arrow if we need it,” said Bill Maris, managing partner of Google Ventures told Reuters.

The firm was founded in 2009; the majority of its partners are drawn from the top positions at Google or are founders like Digg’s Kevin Rose (pictured above).

Since its inception, Google Ventures has proven that it’s not afraid to break outside of the venture capital mould: it brought on a team of designers to work with the portfolio companies, and has hired three full-time PhD statisticians to crunch data to determine which startups would yield the greatest return on investment.

Google Ventures invests in over 100 companies per year; a typical investment is around $250,000. It currently selects around 15 startups per year for a larger investment of over $10 million. Portfolio companies include DocuSign, Airtime, ClearStory Data and Blue Bottle Coffee.

Check out our in-depth analysis of Google Ventures.