Exclusive: Norwest Venture Partners has closed its $3 billion seventeenth fund

In 2019, Norwest partner Lisa Wu showed up at an L.A. restaurant to meet Ritual CEO and founder Kat Schneider. At the time, Schneider was running her company—and she was pregnant.

And Wu showed up, flying in with gifts for Schneider’s soon-to-be baby.

“I remember so vividly sitting at this Japanese restaurant, and she completely understood how I was working to manage both things,” said Schneider. “Having known me since 2016 as a seed investor, she was there for me, not as a nagging parent, but as someone who cared about the whole me.”

Schneider is still moved by the gesture even now, and I was too, listening to her recount this story about working with Wu and Norwest Venture Partners. Truthfully, it’s not the kind of story I was expecting to hear as I looked at the firm, which over its long history has expanded substantially—after all, it’s hard to retain a personal touch when you’re in growth mode.

Now, Norwest has closed its seventeenth fund at $3 billion, Fortune has exclusively learned, setting the stage for yet another chapter in one of the VC industry’s longest-running stories.

The firm as we know it was founded in 1961. But it has its deepest roots even further back than that, in the Norwest Corporation, a Minneapolis-based banking conglomerate that rose to prominence during the Great Depression. Norwest would ultimately merge with Wells Fargo in 1998, and the bank has been the firm’s primary LP ever since.

Norwest’s story seems to be one of a slow, deliberate expansion—and it could have flopped.

But somehow Norwest has grown into a firm that’s multi-stage and multi-sector. And at a time when many firms are cutting ties with their international outposts, Norwest promotes a distinctly international identity, with a big presence in India. “Even the managing partners, none of them think of India as somewhere out there, in the back of your mind,” Niren Shah, managing director and head of Norwest India, tells me.

New threads of the business have been built up over time. Norwest launched its heath vertical in 2010. And in 2022, the firm brought on Dr. Tiba Aynechi as general partner to start biotech, overseeing what is now a sort of diversified business-within-the-business. The firm’s growth equity business got off the ground in 2009 when Jon Kossow, the managing partner and co-head of the growth equity team, joined. That portfolio includes CoreLogic, Vuori, Avetta, and Kendra Scott. And many of those deals originated with one of my personal favorite dying arts—a thoughtful cold call, followed up with the long game.

"Cold calling will probably be the most important skill you can develop in your life,” he said. "But we’re very patient people, which I think is also really important for the long term-minded."

How do all these pieces fit together?

The firm seems committed to proving that scale is not necessarily at odds with an individualized touch. Even as times have changed and the firm’s focus has widened, it’s stayed true to that tune.

In another era, Neil Young was celebrated for his ability to make a stadium feel like a living room. Today, you could say the same of Taylor Swift, whose intimacy with her massive audience is undeniable. Norwest’s history spans the time between Swift and Young and, in a way, I think Norwest is trying to do the same thing—make something increasingly expansive feel close.

Asking Andy…In this week’s Ask Andy column, founding CEO of Bonobos and Pie Andy Dunn sounds off on what it means to juggle ambition with family life. His advice: “If you have to choose between a startup and your family, pick your family. Your kids will leave one day, your ambition will not.” Read the whole column here.

See you tomorrow,

Allie Garfinkle
Twitter: @agarfinks
Email: alexandra.garfinkle@fortune.com
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This story was originally featured on Fortune.com