Condé Nast owners scale back venture company plans

The Newhouse family, which owns Condé Nast, is no longer looking for outside investors to join its venture company, Advance Vixeid Partners.

In fact, the investment arm has been brought back in-house and even changed its name to Advance Venture Partners.

Despite limited success in the past as it tried to diversify from its old print base, the billionaire family, headed by octogenarian Donald Newhouse, says it can do the investment thing all alone.

They had filed with the SEC to seek outside funding back in 2015 — a plan that has now been scrapped.

Andy Siegel, the former Yahoo and General Electric executive, who was heading it when it was still known as Advance Vixeid, was put into an operational role with the company’s American City Business Journals back in February.

A second executive at Vixeid, John Murray, left the company, while a third, David ibnAle, was put in charge of the newly named fund. He is working primarily out of the San Francisco office.

Last year, it made only one investment.

This year it invested $10 million for a minority stake in Lorne Michaels’ Above Average, which produces comedy videos.

Sources close to the family say they are only looking to take minority stakes in early- to mid-stage investments.