This is hardly news since it leaked almost a month ago. Today our portfolio company Twitter announced that it has raised $35mm from two west coast venture capital firms, Benchmark and IVP. Union Square Ventures will also invest to maintain our ownership position, as will Spark Capital and several other investors.

Biz has the news on the Twitter blog.

There’s not much else to say other than I am thrilled that Twitter will be working with Todd Chafee and his partners at IVP and Peter Fenton and his partners at Benchmark. The list of investors in Twitter just keeps getting better and better.

I’d also like to address one question I’ve read in a lot of comment threads regarding the recent twitter financing rumors – why raise money now?. Twitter has a very small team and has a fairly small burn rate given the scale of the service it operates and its growth rate. The money Twitter raised last year would have and could have kept the company operating for quite a while.

But there’s a saying that I heard early on in my tenure in the venture business that still rings true.

The best time to raise money is when you don’t need it

That’s what Twitter did. I think it’s a smart move and I am particularly pleased that we’ve added two very smart and seasoned venture capital firms to the mix. Well done team Twitter.

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