Xfund, founded three years ago as the Experiment Fund by four VC firms to fund young startups, now has $100 million in fresh capital from its current limited partners.
And Xfund co-founder Patrick Chung, formerly of New Enterprise Associates, is now a full-time general partner joining Hugo Van Vuuren in the company’s Cambridge, Mass. location. Both Chung and Van Vuuren are Harvard alums and part of the Xfund’s game plan with its initial $10 million fund was to help talented people — from Harvard or other local schools — stay local as opposed to say, moving to Silicon Valley, if that was right for their company. But it’s not crazy religious about this strategy; it also has an office on Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park, Calif.
“We always saw ourselves as a national company,” Chung said in an interview. “Did it make us happy to hear Mark Zuckerberg say that if he were starting his company now he’d stay in Cambridge? Yes. But we want to follow our companies wherever they go.”
Xfund was founded by limited partners NEA, Breyer Capital and Accel Partners but is “legally and financially independent” of the school. It claims a “liberal arts mindset.” Harvard, with its huge ($36.4 billion!) endowment, does not invest in companies founded by enrolled students of the university although presumably it could invest in their ventures post graduation.
According to a statement announcing the news
At Xfund we believe technical talent is necessary, but not sufficient, to build incredible companies—that entrepreneurs with grounding in the liberal arts often make more insightful innovators and entrepreneurs.
Current portfolio companies include Kensho, Ravel, Philo, Zumper, Rest Devices and Rock Health.


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