There has been a bit of a landrush of late on enterprise companies focused on big data and how best to harness that in the cloud, and today sees the launch of a new fund that will fuel the growth of even more companies working in that space. OpenView Venture Partners is today announcing its third fund of $200 million, aimed at operational support for enterprises, including in areas like big-data management in the cloud, which accounts for 75 percent of OpenView’s investments to-date.

Boston-based OpenView says the fund was originally intended to be around $150 million but got oversubscribed — a testament not only to how much investment money is swirling around at the moment, but also the focus specifically on the field of enterprise services that OpenView has been championing up to now.

“Since 2006 and 2007, a lot of VCs have been focused on the shiny toy of consumer services,” says Adam Marcus, the MD of OpenView. “We have stayed true to our mission of being a B2B software [VC]. That has made it easy to raise funds for us.” OpenView will not use the fund to move into early-stage or seed investing, he says. Typically the companies OpenView funds are already bringing in a minimum of $1 million in revenues and are at their expansion stage.

Marcus says that the first investment from the fund is due to be announced next week. It will be in the identity-management space, he says, a company based out of Texas. “It’s about big data and the cloud and taking advantage of these two underlying tsunamis,” he said. “And about helping to manage the data onslaught overwhelming companies today.” It will be a new investment for OpenView.

What else is the fund interested in? Although mobile has been a hot area in consumer startups, it has been slightly more problematic at the B2B end, Marcus says. “We have a hard time finding competitive advantage and product differentiation in mobile,” he admits.

But he does point out that one good area is mobile device management and subsequent security across the network. Another is in the area of enterprise companies that help make the consumer propositions work better. That includes an investment in the API platform Mashery, which picked up $11 million from OpenView last year. “The thesis was that APIs are the new plumbing and Mashery is the leader there,” he says.

Another area that OpenView will be exploring for investment is the area of personalization and targeting software.

Funding will also be used to further OpenView’s approach of helping to build up companies that are already in its portfolio. That has included staffing them up, offering go-to-market support, market research, lead generation and in some cases even product development.

March is shaping up to be pretty sunny in Boston, both on the weather and the venture fundraising fronts. Boston-based OpenView Venture Partners is announcing today that it just closed a $200 million third fund, surpassing its initial $150 million target and securing all of its commitments in three months, according to managing director Adam Marcus.

All of OpenView’s LPs returned for the third fund, and all upped their commitments, says Marcus. The Boston firm has a pretty specific method for identifying investment opportunities—business-to-business software companies making $2 million to $20 million in annual sales and wanting to get to $100 million in revenue—a focus that proved beneficial when fundraising, Marcus said. OpenView typically invests $5 million to $15 million in those startups.

“Since 2006 we stuck with our mission and kept our discipline to expansion stage tech companies,” says Marcus, noting many VC firms have broadened, adding focuses on seed stage deals. “We stuck to our knitting. Our LPs were very happy to see that.”

The firm also has a consulting arm called OpenView Labs, which offers recruiting, research, and marketing services to its portfolio companies. (I profiled that division earlier this year.) Last month, the Labs division announced that it filled more than 50 positions across its portfolio companies in 2011. That’s been another boost for the firm in its LPs’ eyes, says Marcus.

OpenView started talking to investors in October and had closed the first $100 million of the fund late last year, which my colleague Greg reported in January as part of a VC funding roundup. At the time, local VCs Excel Venture Management, .406 Ventures, Kepha Partners, and Flagship Ventures were also pulling together funds in the range of $100 million to $250 million. And earlier this month, news surfaced that Bessemer Venture Partners, Greylock Partners, and Summit Partners are all in the process of raising big funds.

OpenView got started in 2006 with a $108 million fund and closed a second fund, at $131 million, in 2009. The firm has 18 portfolio companies and has completed one exit in its history, selling LoyaltyLab to TIBCO in December 2010 for $23 million. Earlier this month it invested in a follow-on round for Exinda, a maker of network optimization technology. Marcus says it will be announcing the first deal from its third fund sometime next week.

Erin Kutz is an Associate Editor for Xconomy. You can reach her by e-mail at [email protected] or by phone at (617) 252-0700, or follow her on Twitter at @erkutz.

OpenView Venture Partners, a Boston-based investing firm, raised $200 million for its third fund as it seeks out early-stage business-software companies.

The fund was “significantly oversubscribed” and exceeded the $150 million the firm expected to bring in, OpenView said today in a statement. OpenView has about $445 million in capital under management.

Rather than competing with Silicon Valley’s top firms for the hottest social-media and consumer Internet deals, OpenView looks for startups in other regions that sell software to businesses. Of its 18 current portfolio companies, only Mashery Inc. is in the San Francisco Bay Area. Investments elsewhere include Balihoo Inc., a marketing automation company in Boise, Idaho, and Acronis Inc., an online-backup service near Boston.

OpenView was founded in 2006 by Scott Maxwell, who was previously a managing director at Insight Venture Partners. As Insight started focusing on more mature companies, Maxwell created OpenView to fund younger startups.

None of the firm’s companies have gone public yet, and the only one to be acquired was Loyalty Lab Inc., which Tibco Software Inc. (TIBX) bought in 2010.

OpenView Venture Partners announced today it took three months to raise $200 million for its third expansion-stage fund. The fund exceeded its $150 million target. The firm raised $125 million for its second fund, which closed in the fall 2008, the day Lehman Brothers collapsed. The firm raised $100 million for its debut effort in 2006. The OpenView team includes founder and Senior Managing Director Scott Maxwell, as well as Managing Directors Adam Marcus and Brian Zimmerman.

PRESS RELEASE

OpenView Raises $200 Million Fund

New Fund and Track Record of Success Reaffirm Pioneering Consultative Approach to Helping Expansion-Stage Companies Scale

Boston, March 21, 2012 — OpenView Venture Partners, an expansion-stage venture capital firm focused on providing technology companies with deep operational support, announced today that it has raised $200 million for its third fund. OpenView’s largest fund to date was significantly oversubscribed, exceeding its $150 million target to hit a hard cap of $200 million in just three months.

“We are very excited to launch our third fund and to continue our mission of helping some of the world’s best expansion-stage technology companies succeed,” said Scott Maxwell, OpenView’s Founder and Senior Managing Director. “This fund will allow us to continue to invest in the best expansion-stage companies globally while also enhancing our unique platform for serving the needs of the companies we invest in.”

Through its strategic consulting arm, OpenView Labs, the firm is able to provide hands-on support to the management of its 18 portfolio companies. Together with its network of senior advisors, the Labs team partners with and consults to OpenView’s portfolio companies on a range of functional areas, including recruiting, go-to-market support, and research and analytics.

Since its inception, the firm has completed more than 100 significant projects on behalf of these companies, spanning recruiting, market research, product management, agile product development, lead generation, sales team development, and go-to-market strategies and tactics among other areas.

The firm has helped fill dozens of roles across the country for its portfolio companies, including placing more than 50 people in portfolio companies in 2011 alone. Recent examples of the work OpenView has done to support its portfolio companies include:

• Market Channel Discovery — Completed a significant project to help Boise-based local automation software provider Balihoo identify the best marketing channels and influencers for its go-to-market strategy. “OpenView’s team really helped us sharpen our focus,” commented Pete Gombert, Balihoo’s CEO. “The expertise they bring to our organization has had a tremendous positive impact since day one.”

• Sales Director Recruitment — Identified and screened candidates for Philadelphia-based Monetate, a marketing optimization technology company, resulting in the placement of four new sales directors. “OpenView’s incredibly efficient recruiting efforts were an eye-opening experience for us,” said Monetate’s Founder and CEO, David Brussin. “They were able to listen to our targets, build lists accordingly, and deliver people who were qualified personally and professionally, saving us time and money.”

• Outbound Prospecting Team Development — Sourced the majority of the 11-member prospecting team for Mashery, an API management solution provider headquartered in San Francisco, and provided the coaching, infrastructure, and resources the team needed to succeed. “OpenView’s sales expertise has allowed us to expand our sales funnel across the country,” said Oren Michaels, Mashery’s CEO. “We’re now better positioned for growth than ever before.”

OpenView backs expansion-stage, high-growth software, Internet, and technology-enabled companies that generate between $2 million and $20 million in annual revenue and are seeking between $5 million and $15 million in venture capital. The firm was ranked No. 6 on Heardable’s March 2012 list of the Top 50 Brands in Venture Capital.

About OpenView Venture Partners

OpenView Venture Partners (openviewpartners.com) is an expansion-stage venture capital fund based in Boston that is focused on high-growth software, Internet, and technology-enabled companies. Through its staff of seasoned operating executives, who collectively bring several decades of technology and management experience to the firm, OpenView is able to help portfolio companies quickly optimize their product, go-to-market, and organizational and operational functions. Founded in 2006, the firm invests globally and has approximately $445 million in total capital under management.

About OpenView Labs

OpenView Labs is the strategic and operational consulting arm of OpenView Venture Partners, a global venture capital fund that invests in expansion-stage technology companies. The Labs team consults to the management of OpenView’s portfolio companies across an array of functional areas, including recruiting, go-to-market support, and research and analytics. Together with its network of senior advisors, the team supports OpenView’s portfolio companies on a range of initiatives ranging from methodology incubation and market research, to providing strategic coaching.

In 2009, the Boston-based venture capital firm OpenView Venture Partners was not satisfied with its branding.

Rather than hiring a marketing firm, OpenView founder Scott Maxwell found his solution in a book called Get Content Get Customers. He was so inspired by the potential of content marketing, he brought in co-author Joe Pulizzi to lead a workshop, which in turn sparked OpenView’s marketing and content strategist Amanda Maksymiw to use content as a means of establishing the firm as a thought leader and build a solid brand.

Since launching OpenView Labs—the company’s content hub, featuring blogs, a podcast, videos, and more—website visits have increased by 600 percent. Newsletter subscriptions have risen from 200 to 11,000. And on March 16, OpenView was heralded as a Top 10 VC Brand by Heardable.

Maksymiw, who helps support a content creation team of 25 staff writers and a dozen freelance contributors, recently took some time to talk with us about her favorite tools, the importance of sticking with your core mission, dodging bandwagons, and more.

Following:

I rely on a series of blogs to get great information in addition to my Twitter feed to stay up-to-date. I subscribe to a handful of marketing blogs or bloggers (Content Marketing Institute, Business2Community, Convince and Convert, Ardath Albee, and David Meerman Scott, to name a few), but I do find that a lot of great information is shared via Twitter. It helps me cut through the clutter and identify content that I want to check out.

Creating:

I get most excited about the content on our OpenView Labs site in general. I smile when I talk about it because we have worked really hard to share the information senior managers need to help build bigger and better companies. We are creating something really unique from any other venture capital firm, and that is what keeps me going.

Geeking:

Professionally, my favorite tool is HootSuite. I manage the social media accounts for my firm, and this tool makes it really easy for me to seamlessly update the different networks while maintaining consistency across platforms. It is such a time saver! Personally, I love Instagram. I am a really visual person, and I like the simplicity and graphic nature of the app. All in all, I really enjoy looking at the pictures that everyone posts!

Listening:

I always keep an eye out on startups and other companies in the tech industry to see what ideas we can apply to our model. OpenView’s M.O. is to always improve and try new things, and you never know where the ideas will come from. I try to always carry a small notebook with me so I can jot down my thoughts to bring back to the office.

Branding:

In general I really think that our overall content marketing strategy has positioned OpenView as a thought leader. It wasn’t one tool, one piece of content, or one event. Collectively, we have been working to share the best new ideas for senior managers of growing technology companies through our corporate blog, content site, e-newsletter, and social media channels, andthat has made the impact.

Our audience can see that we haven’t strayed from our core focal point of offering valuable information about helping companies make it through the expansion stage. And I think that is one reason why we have been able to see the success we have.

Mentoring:

My biggest piece of advice is to not jump on any bandwagons. There are a lot of trends and new technologies popping up out there. Every day. Before you dive in completely, it makes sense to do some research and testing to see if the new tool, network, tactic, etc. makes sense to help your brand achieve its goals.

As an example, your target audience may not care about infographics or Pinterest, so you wouldn’t want to allocate a lot of resources to them. But, smart marketers should always be willing to experiment. Otherwise you may miss out on an opportunity!