![\"\"](\"http:\/\/mediamemo.allthingsd.com\/files\/2010\/02\/patricof1.jpg\")
<\/a>Remember a year ago? When everyone was sure that venture capital shops were going to fold up left and right because institutions wanted nothing to do them, or the startups they bet on?<\/p>\nActually, that turned out to be true<\/a>. But some angel investors<\/a> are getting into the game again, and a\u00a0 small number of VCs have been able to round up dollars for new investments, too.<\/p>\n Today’s example: Alan Patricof’s Greycroft Partners<\/a>, which has all but completed raising a new fund.<\/p>\n Patricof and his team won’t comment officially about the status of the fund, which follows a $75 million fund he raised four years ago. But he hasn’t been discrete about it, and lots of startup investors have been chattering about Particof’s attempt to raise $125 million for new deals.<\/p>\n That’s partly because Patricof is famous in the investment community — his resume<\/a> goes back to the late 1960s, and includes wins in Apple (AAPL) and AOL (AOL), as well as bets on media properties like the Huffington Post and PaidContent<\/a>’s parent company ContentNext. And it’s partly because Patricof has, by his own admission, struggled to raise the money over the last year.<\/p>\n Yesterday, for example, Patricof spoke about his fundraising effort, quite candidly, at the OnMedia conference. From Mary Kathleen Flynn’s account at The Deal<\/a>:<\/p>\n “A year ago when we started raising our second fund, which is somewhat bigger, we wanted an institutional base,” Patricof said.\u00a0”We went out for six months and didn’t get a single response. Then we went back to our original investors, sent out a letter again, and four weeks later we raised a lot of money with just a letter and no phone calls. The individual investor market is a great market.” It’s unclear how much Patricof has raised this time. When I talked to him about his progress in mid-November, he told me he thought the fund would be oversubscribed. But sources believe he may also end up breaking the fund into two chunks.<\/p>\n Buy This Item: [Click here to buy this item]<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n\n
\nFundraising is “tough” these days, said Patricof.\u00a0”But I wouldn’t be smiling as much as I am today if it wasn’t having a positive ending.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n