Venture Investment Associates’ heritage places it as one of the oldest and most successful private equity fund investors.

VIA’s first fund was capitalized at $180 million in 1993 when Stathis Andris organized it to acquire AVA Partners, the American Express private equity portfolio of investments. At the time, AVA’s purchase was the largest secondary acquisition of a private equity portfolio.

AVA was a pioneering venture capital investor in the late 1960’s, when the famed Reid Dennis, an employee of American Express, began investing in startup companies in what came to be known as Silicon Valley. Stathis led AVA’s first venture capital fund commitment in 1974 in IVA (Reid’s first independent fund), and in its first buyout fund commitment in KKR in 1976.

In 1981 Mr. Andris became the President of AVA and has since been instrumental in the formation of some of the most successful private equity funds. With the encouragement of a number of these managers as they raised new funds, Mr. Andris moved VIA’s focus to a fund of funds investment model, so as to continue to invest with some of the best firms in private equity. To-date, VIA has raised six funds with $1 billion under management, including VIA VI, which closed in 2007 with commitments of $230MM.