HighBar Partners (together with its affiliates, "HighBar") today announced the closing of its strategic growth capital fund, HighBar Partners II, L.P. ("HighBar II" or the "Fund"), with $130 million in equity commitments. HighBar II was oversubscribed, exceeding its original target of $100 million to reach its hard cap.
HighBar specializes in operationally and strategically focused investments in enterprise and infrastructure software and software-as-a-service companies. The firm's unique investment model and resources make it an ideal partner when evaluating and structuring investments in companies undergoing complex strategic, financial or operational change. HighBar II will build on the strategy of HighBar's earlier vehicles, a sector-driven approach to investing in situations where it can contribute significant resources to technology companies that are experiencing business transformations. HighBar II investors consist of some of the largest global institutions, including public pension funds, endowments and foundations, fund-of-funds, financial institutions and family offices.
"We are pleased to have received such significant interest from a distinguished group of investors for our first institutional investment fund. We seek to deliver returns that help our management teams, co-investors and limited partners reach and exceed their goals," said John Kim, Managing Partner at HighBar. "Our unique model and resources will help us continue HighBar's success targeting technology opportunities where we can contribute patient capital, strategic and operational guidance, and execution," said Roy Thiele-Sardina, Managing Partner at HighBar.
HighBar was originally formed as a personal investment vehicle for three executives who were part of the founding teams at Sun Microsystems and Brocade Communications Systems. HighBar has since grown into an institutional firm with investment and operating executives who work closely with the firm's portfolio companies during the evaluation, planning and execution phases of development.
The Fund has already made four investments: Blazent, an IT service management and data analytics software company; Soonr, a cloud collaboration and content management solution provider; Vyatta, a software-defined-networking business that was sold to Brocade in 2012; and Zettaset, a Hadoop infrastructure and management software for large-scale enterprise deployments.
Gunderson, Dettmer, Stough, Villeneuve, Franklin & Hachigian LLP served as legal counsel.