Emerging Managers Keep… Emerging

I wrote here yesterday that a seed-stage fund called MentorTech Ventures just closed its inaugural fund. This wasdone in the context of todays jaunt down to Philly (I should leave soon, since my plane does), because MentorTech focuses primarily on IT and medical device companies that originate within the University of Pennsylvania. But it also could have been within the larger context of new emerging managers, which continue to pop up like Peyton Manning after the first of what will be many sacks. Heres two more:

Alumni Capital Network: A new private equity firm that plans to participate in leveraged transactions for companies with revenue of between $25 million and $500 million, across a wide range of industries. The alumni refers to both the firms team and its limited partners. The managing directors including six former Accenture partners Thomas Fox, Richard Golden, James Honohan, William Kapler, Jeffrey Miller and Walter Nollman plus Tom Donohue, a former managing director with Inter-Atlantic Group. Its limited partners are expected to be almost exclusively other Accenture alumni or those with one degree of Accenture separation (i.e., former Accenture clients, family, etc.).

The obvious downside is a lack of track-record, but thats unlikely to matter to this particular group of LPs. The firm is expected to hold first close later this month on its inaugural fund, which is targeted at $25 million but which is expected to end up with closer to $35 million.

.406 Ventures: Baseball fans will correctly guess that this firm is based in Boston, since its name is derived from Ted Williams fabled 1941 batting average. It has had virtually no press that I can find (Update: PE Insider wrote a piece last October), but the buzz is palpable. A large part of that is due to the team, which includesGuardent co-founder Maria Cirino, former ThingMagic and CCBN CFO Larry Begley and Arcadia Partners co-founder Liam Donohue. It plans to focus on early-stage IT and services companies in the Northeast, including those in the IT security/infrastructure, tech-enabled business services and next-generation software spaces.

Donohue declined to comment on the advice of the firms attorneys at Proskauer Rose, which is code for: Were fund-raising, and our attorneys are worried about SEC marketing restrictions. I also tried someone at Proskauer Rose itself, but have no idea why I thought such a tact would be more successful. Market sources suggest that .406 Ventures likely will raise something in the range of between $100 million and $150 million.

They also say that this signals the swan song for Arcadia Partners, since Donohue is moving on and fellow general partner Andrew Hallowell recently was named CEO of Arcadia portfolio company KnowledgePlanet. The only general partner left is former Massachusetts Governor Jane Swift, who also did not return requests for comment.