True Ventures raises $77M

True Ventures, a venture firm based in San Francisco, has raised $77 million for its first fund, according to a regulatory filing. The firm expects to close on $100 million by the end of the year.

The fund counts Paul Capital Partners, Sequoia Holdings and Park Street Capital among its 22 accredited investors.

Founded by Philip Black, a former general partner at ABS Ventures and Lightspeed Venture Partners, True Ventures has said little about its investment focus. As of early August, the firm had announced only one investment, a seed deal in GigaOm, an Internet destination for information and news on telecommunications founded by blogger Om Malik.

The partners at True have a variety of interests. Black, for example, invested in TGV Software, a company that made network programs and which was later acquired by Cisco; Telogy Networks, an early VoIP player that was snagged by Texas Instruments; and ObjectVideo, an IT company focused on video surveillance.

Toni Schneider, a venture partner, comes to the firm by way of Yahoo, where he worked on the mail client through the acquisition of Oddpost. He’s invested in Aurora BioFuels, a startup with technology to extract bio-diesel at 125-times higher yields at half the cost of current production methods, according to his weblog.

Jon Callaghan joins True from Globespan Capital Partners. He has also worked at JAFCO and @Ventures. He specialized in Interent-related IT companies while with @Ventures, investing in companies such as Critical Path, Promedix and Vicinity. —Alexander Haislip