Signal Hill Partners Remains

Last issue we asked for a “heads up” from anyone who knew what had happened to Signal Hill Partners, the venture capital firm led by Mark Nydam. Several calls to catch up on Signal Hill’s activities had yielded disconnected numbers and dead ends.

Signal Hill had announced the opening of its Rogers office, where it was moving its headquarters from El Granada, Calif., and plans to form a $25 million-$50 million venture capital fund. So its departure would have been a significant blip on that sector’s radar screen.

But we apparently wrote them off too quickly. Nydam informed us that the company has raised nearly $10 million in capital and that it’s still committed to Arkansas. That’s further evidenced, he said, by the fact that one of the fund’s partners is French Hill, president of Delta Trust Bank in Little Rock.

Nydam said Signal Hill simply closed its Northwest Arkansas office until the fund gets farther along to cut down on overhead. The lag in getting started, he said, is a product of the general downturn in venture fundraising nationwide, but the long-term prospects look bright.